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social union,

      An’ justifies that ill opinion,

      Which makes thee startle,

      At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

      An’ fellow-mortal!

      Samuel Taylor Coleridge expressed similar fraternal sentiments to a donkey chained in a field:

      Poor Ass! thy master should have learnt to show Pity –

      best taught by fellowship of Woe!

      For much I fear me that He lives like thee,

      Half famished in a land of Luxury!

      How askingly its footsteps hither bend!

      It seems to say, “And have I then one friend?”

      Innocent foal! thou poor despised forlorn!

      I hail thee Brother — spite of the fool’s scorn!

      And fain would take thee with me, in the Dell

      Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell …

      Lord Byron objected to angling, saying it inflicted unnecessary pain on trout, and ridiculed Izaak Walton for debasing poetry in promotion of this “cruel” hobby. His Lordship would, no doubt, have been outraged by the inane past-time of “catch-and-release” fishing.

      Byron’s arch-nemesis William Wordsworth wrote a stunning poem titled “Hart-Leap Well,” tracking the last moments in the life a mighty stag chased “for thirteen hours” to its death by a horse-riding knight and his hounds. The ballad closes with a stark denunciation of hunting for sport:

      “This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell;

      His death was mourned by sympathy divine.

      “The Being, that is in the clouds and air,

      That is in the green leaves among the groves,

      Maintains a deep and reverential care

      For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.

      ...

      “One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,

      Taught both by what she [ie. Nature’ shows, and what conceals;

      Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

      With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”

      The great, though mad, naturalist-poet John Clare openly worshipped “the religion of the fields,” while William Blake, the poet of revolution, simply said:

      For every thing that lives is Holy,

      Life delights in life.

      And, finally, there is the glorious precedent of Geoffrey Chaucer, who reveals himself to be an animal liberationist. In the “General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer describes the Prioress as a woman who cannot abide the abuse of animals.

      But for to speken of hir conscience,

      She was so charitable and so pious

      She wolde wepe, if that she sawe a mous

      Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.

      Of smaule houndes hadde she that she fedde

      With rosted flessh, or milk and wastel-breed.

      But soore wepte she if oon of hem were deed,

      Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte;

      And al was conscience and tender herte.

      Later in the remarkable “Tale of the Manciple,” Chaucer goes all the way, arguing forcefully against the caging of wild songbirds. The English language’s first great poet concludes that no matter how well you treat the captives, the birds desire their freedom:

      “Taak any bryd, and put it in a cage,

      And do al thyn entente and thy corage

      To fostre it tendrely with mete and drynke,

      Of alle deyntees that thou kanst bithynke;

      And keepe it al so clenly as thou may,

      Although his cage of gold be nevere so gay,

      Yet hath this bryd, by twenty thousand foold,

      Levere in a forest that is rude and coold

      Goon ete wormes, and swich wrecchednesse;

      For evere this bryd wol doon his bisynesse

      To escape out of his cage, whan he may.

      His libertee this brid desireth ay.”

      It would take the philosophers nearly six hundred years to catch up with Chaucer’s enlightened sentiments. In 1975, the Australian Peter Singer published his revolutionary book Animal Liberation. Singer demolished the Cartesian model that treated animals as mere machines. Blending science and ethics, Singer asserted that most animals are sentient beings, capable of feeling pain. The infliction of pain was both unethical and immoral. He argued that the progressive credo of providing “the greatest good for the greatest number” should be extended to animals and that animals should be liberated from their servitude in scientific labs, factory farms, circuses and zoos.

      A quarter century after the publication of Animal Liberation, Peter Singer revisited the great taboo of bestiality in an essay titled “Heavy Petting.” Expressing sentiments that would have shocked Grand Inquisitor Boguet, Singer argued that sexual relations between humans and animals should not automatically be considered acts of abuse. According to Singer, it all comes down to the issue of harm. In some cases, Singer suggested, animals might actually feel excitement and pleasure in such inter-species couplings. Even for the most devoted animal rights advocates this might be taking E. O. Wilson’s concept of biophilia a little too literally.

      In Fear of the Animal Planet, historian Jason Hribal takes a radical, but logical, step beyond Singer. Hribal reverses the perspective and tells the story of liberation from the animals’ points-of-view. This is history written from the end of the chain, from inside the cage, from the depths of the tank. Hribal’s chilling investigation travels much further than Singer dared to go. For Hribal, the issue isn’t merely harm and pain, but consent. The confined animals haven’t given their permission to be held captive, forced to work, fondled or publicly displayed for profit.

      Hribal skillfully excavates the hidden history of captive animals as active agents in their own liberation. His book is a harrowing, and curiously uplifting, chronicle of resistance against some of the cruelest forms of torture and oppression this side of Abu Ghraib prison.

      Hribal takes us behind the scenes of the circus and the animal park, exposing methods of training involving sadistic forms of discipline and punishment, where elephants and chimps are routinely beaten and terrorized into submission.

      We witness from the animals’ perspective the tyrannical trainers, creepy dealers in exotic species, arrogant zookeepers and sinister hunters, who slaughtered the parents of young elephants and apes in front of their young before they captured them. We are taken inside the cages, tents and tanks, where captive elephants, apes and sea mammals are confined in wretched conditions with little medical care.

      All of this is big business, naturally. Each performing dolphin can generate more than a million dollars a year in revenue, while orcas can produce twenty times that much.

      This is a history of violent resistance to such abuses. Here are stories of escapes, subterfuges, work stoppages, gorings, rampages, bitings, and, yes, revenge killings. Each trampling of a brutal handler with a bull-hook, each mauling of a taunting visitor, each drowning of a tormenting trainer is a crack in the old order that treats animals as property, as engines of profit, as mindless objects of exploitation and abuse. The animal rebels are making their own history and Jason Hribal serves as their Michelet.

      Hribal’s heroic profiles in animal courage show how most of these violent acts of resistance were motivated by their abusive treatment and the miserable conditions of their confinement. These animals are far from mindless. Their actions reveal memory not mere conditioning, contemplation not instinct, and,

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