ZenKimchi

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUY6LgLVb4U[/youtube]

“Hey!  This bear cub is deathly afraid of lions.  Let’s enclose him in a room with lion cubs and see what happens!”

UPDATE: I received this in the comments section of another post related to this.

Dear All,

I am MD of an organization aimed at preserving bear welfare in South Korea, and I have the privilege of acting as the contact point between SBS, Samsung Everland (the zoo), and WAZA, who regulates zoos worldwide. It is noteworthy that this zoo is a WAZA member. This clip has been acknowledged as disgraceful by the zoo, who admits that the behavior displayed in the clip is unprofessional, unethical and in poor taste. As the zoo is in violation of several WAZA codes of ethics, an inquiry was sent and the zoo responded with an apology. We are requesting a formal written stance be posted on the website of the zoo. For those who see this as ‘educational’: This is a zoo. There is no ecological situation in which a bear and a lion co-exist, and animals in captivity are required (by law), to be treated in a manner that mimics nature. No, there is no relevant training occurring, and assigning a human, emotional characteristic to an animal for the sake of entertainment is both ridiculous and ignorant. We find the zookeeper to be unqualified and we regret the positive reception of the clip in South Korea.

As someone who has the luxury of understanding the Hangul and the context, it saddens me that trained professionals would make such poor decisions.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Video, WTF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.