Have you ever seen one of the many videos of an elephant catching a paintbrush, putting it in paint, and producing a painting similar to something a 5-year-old could create? While watching an elephant paint is an amazing sight, we can’t help but wonder whether the training methods and results reflect animal cruelty.
A 2014 study on four captive (圈养的) Asian elephants at the Melbourne Zoo in Australia was carried out to identify stress-related behaviors around the activity of painting. While the researchers found that the elephants had a neutral (中立的) response to painting — not stressful, nor enriching- it seemed that when an elephant was not selected to paint, it displayed non-interactive behavior. This is seen as a possible signal of stress in the animals.
In addition, PETA, a famous animal rights group, has mentioned several American zoos that use harmful training methods to get elephants to paint, perform tricks, play instruments, and more. That is to say, some zoos that organize elephant painting use assaults to encourage the elephants. However, PETA argues that animal shelters should not force animals to do tricks at all.
Activist organizations warn that elephants can undergo extreme discomfort in the training process. Furthermore, many of the painting elephants are very young, at an age where they should still be with their mothers. It raises questions about whether there’s a chance they were caught for the express purpose of performing, or whether they could somehow be restored to a return to the wild.
It is difficult to support any kind of trained behavior that differs greatly from a wild animal’s natural tendencies. The role of a shelter is to allow an animal to live as close to its normal life as possible, perhaps with an eye to returning the animal to the wild; teaching them to paint does not seem to go with that target, particularly if it’s not a learned behavior that the animal would be willing to do independently.
【小题1】What is the purpose of the 2014 study?| A．To identify stress-related behaviors when elephants paint. |
| B．To identify a neutral response to painting. |
| C．To recognize stress-free behaviors when elephants paint. |
| D．To recognize elephants’ non-interactive painting. |
| A．Persuasions. | B．Benefits. | C．Rewards. | D．Attacks. |
| A．Elephants should stay with their mother. |
| B．Elephants may feel uncomfortable in the training. |
| C．Elephants are caught for the purpose of performing. |
| D．Elephants ought to be returned to the wild. |
| A．Teaching animals to paint. | B．Permitting animals to perform. |
| C．Allowing animals to live freely. | D．Training animals to finish the target. |
