Anthrozoology Blog

 I'm sure everyone has seen at least some form of wildlife in thier life from squrrirls running in the trees to birds flying above in the sky. There is also a sense awe that many people feel when they see a form of wildlife for the first time like when someone sees a fox or a deer in person, this likely triggers wildlife inspired awe, because the person experiencing it may create emotional experencies as important memories (Hicks & Stewart, 2017). This kind of sense of awe is thought of as attempted accommodation to overwelming emotional human interactions with wildlife (Hicks & Stewart, 2017). Many people also have different views on wildlife and those different views are called wildlife value orientations, these are values and beliefs with wildlife as the main topic (Gross, 2019). there are two main types of these value orientations: mutualism and domination, mutualism is the belief that humans and animals are equal and the same while domination is the belief that humans ...

 SeaWorld is known for its captive orcas, but they don't have the best animal welfare for their orcas as the tanks the orcas have been kept in have been barren and almost no source of enrichment for the orcas is provided, or at least that's what it looked like the last time I went to SeaWorld. Since the realese of the documentary Blackfish which talked about a enormous captive killer whale at SeaWorld named Tilikum and the three deathes that were caused by the orca, SeaWorld attendence had dropped by one million vistors (Walter & Verissimo, 2023).  Tilikum had had a history of aggression and stereotypical behaviors which orcas don't show in the wild, only in captivity. this was brought on from post tramatic stress dissorder from spend almost all his life in captivity (Walter & Verissimo, 2023). Three years after the realese of Blackfish, SeaWorld ended its orca breeding program in 2016 (Walter & Verissimo, 2023).  Recently SeaWorld has announced plans to redes...

The depictions of animals in media in my opinion are very confusing and depending on the type of media presented can be either helpful to the animals presented in the media or can harm them, the content of media revolves around pop culture though it's not always accurate (Harris, 2020).  Some forms of media can help raise awareness about the animals presented in the media and get people to care about the animals. Most media tends to anthropomorphize animals, which means giving them human-like behaviors and characteristics (Harris, 2020).  But there are other forms of media that can not help people's perspectives on animals and actually harm those perspectives like how anthropomorphism can present misinformation that is not true about the animals this is particularly true with carnivores who are all not a risk to people despite what media can present kinds of false info like that (Harris, 2020). And in conclusion, I just think media depictions of animals are both good and bad f...