Entertainment Animals - Animal Theme Parks

Animal theme parks are large tourist attractions that combine elements of zoos (or aquariums) and amusement parks to entertain the public. According to the National Amusement Park Historical Association, theme parks have their origins in the "pleasure gardens" of medieval Europe. These gardens featured live entertainment, games, and other forms of recreation. Although their popularity faded in Europe, pleasure gardens evolved into amusement parks in the United States and were widely popular by the end of the 1800s.

The first oceanarium (a very large saltwater aquarium) in the United States is thought to be Marine Studios of Florida. Later named Marineland, the oceanarium opened in June 1938 and received 20,000 visitors its first day. Its popularity led to the opening of a similar facility, Marineland of the Pacific, in southern California in 1954. These oceanariums were more like amusement parks than traditional educational aquariums. They relied on performing dolphins, pilot whales, seals, and sea lions to entertain crowds.

In 1963 came the release of the popular movie Flipper, about a dolphin who befriends a young boy. It became a hit television show a year later. Public demand for performing dolphins and other sea creatures skyrocketed. In 1964 a young man named George Millay developed a marine life park called Sea World in San Diego, California, and in 1965 Sea World acquired Shamu, a female orca (killer whale) captured from the wild.

Shamu was one of many orcas captured during the early 1960s for use in the entertainment industry. According to a 1997 PBS Frontline story ("A Whale of a Business"), the first captive orca had been collected for Marineland of the Pacific in 1961. The animal lived for only one day. She repeatedly smashed herself against the walls of her tank until she died. A table available on the PBS Web site in 2003 listed 133 known orcas captured between 1961 and 1997, along with their life spans in captivity. Many lived only for a few months, while the average life span for an orca in the wild is thirty to fifty years. Frontline estimated that 102 of the 133 captive orcas had died.

The original Shamu survived for six years. In the intervening years, Sea World has continued to acquire orcas and call at least one of them by the stage name Shamu for performance purposes. Eventually the company trademarked the name.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Sea World marine parks opened in Ohio, Florida, and Texas. In 1989 they were purchased by the Anheuser-Busch company, which already operated Busch Gardens, a popular park in Florida featuring bird acts, animal shows, and amusement park rides. In 2000 the company opened another theme park, also in Florida, named Discovery Cove, where visitors can experience wildlife up close and swim with dolphins and stingrays. The stingers are cut off of the stingrays to make them harmless to people. An aviary includes hundreds of exotic birds that people can hand feed. According to company officials, the Sea World marine parks, Busch Gardens, and Discovery Cove were home to more than 60,000 animals as of 2003. The company noted on its Web site in the same year that "These animals serve as ambassadors for their species by helping to entertain, educate and inspire millions of people."

Many animal welfare and rights groups are critical of the Anheuser-Busch theme parks and Disney's Animal Kingdom, an attraction opened at Walt Disney World in Florida in 1998. On its Web site, PETA has referred to these parks as "deadly destinations" and has noted that hundreds of animals have died at these facilities due to improper care. PETA argues that living conditions are not healthy for the animals in captivity and disputes claims by the owner companies of animal parks that they further conservation efforts. In 2005 PETA's Web site said that "Disney bulldozed tens of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat in the central Florida flatlands, killing native gopher tortoises and other animals" to build its Animal Kingdom, a park for imported wild animals.

The HSUS has focused its efforts on eliminating dolphin petting pools at animal theme parks. These are areas of shallow water around which visitors can gather and touch and feed dolphins. In spring 2003 the HSUS released its report Biting the Hand that Feeds: The Case against Dolphin Petting Pools. The report noted that animal theme parks are increasingly offering such opportunities for the public to experience physical contact with wild animals and marine life via feeding, petting, and swimming programs. In 1998 the federal government developed regulations for some swim-with-the-dolphin programs. These regulations included provisions regarding dolphin access to refuge areas, maximum interaction time, staff training, and safety measures. The HSUS said the regulations were suspended in 1999 due to pressure from the theme park industry, and in any event the regulations did not cover petting pools and swimming programs held in shallow wading pools.

The HSUS report also provides a number of arguments against holding cetaceans (dolphins, whales, porpoises, etc.) in captivity to entertain humans and particularly against using them in petting pools. HSUS field investigations conducted between 1996 and 2003 revealed that visitors to petting pools are not properly supervised by theme park staff and expose themselves and the animals to various health and safety hazards, including:

• Dropping foreign objects, such as sunglasses, keys, coins, souvenirs, etc., into the pools
• Not washing their hands before or after feeding the animals
• Feeding the animals human snack foods
• Feeding the animals fish that have been dropped on the ground or even stepped on
• Holding babies and small children out over the water to get a better look at the animals
• Touching the animals' eyes and blowholes
• Poking at the animals with maps and other objects to get their attention

Besides these problems, the HSUS notes that many of the dolphins in petting pools appear obese and show signs of injury from aggressive competition over food. Encouraging the public to feed captive dolphins also sets a dangerous precedent, the HSUS believes. The government actively discourages people from feeding wild dolphins under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Finally, the HSUS disputes the claim by the theme park industry that petting pools are educational, noting that "hand-feeding dead fish to obese dolphins in a cramped, overcrowded and featureless tank of chemically treated water provides visitors with scant insight into normal dolphin behavior in the natural environment."