As noted in class, it is more productive, giving you more writing practice and saving class time, to move here the discussion exercise on orangutans following our reading of "Orangutans". So, what are your responses to Hartmann and Blass's questions on page 50? (2007).
Write
two or more comments to share your ideas on the questions in exercise
D.
- Should art galleries sell an orangutan's art work? Why or why not? Who should get the money?
- Do you think Nonja is well cared for at the Schönbrunn Zoo? Why or why not?
- In your opinion, are humans doing enough to care for nonhuman primates? What kind of legal protection should nonhuman primates have?
It is probably a good idea to at least skim through your classmates previous comments before adding your own - someone might have written something you want to respond to.
Hartmann, P., & Blass, L. (2007).
Quest 3 Reading and Writing (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
-Should art galleries sell an orangutan's art work? Why or why not? Who should get the money?
ReplyDelete=Yes, they should sell the art works to get money from the supports who like and want to support orangutans, and the money should go to the Schönbrunn Zoo which the oranziation can them pay for diet and medical fee.
-Do you think Nonja is well cared for at the Schönbrunn Zoo? Why or why not?
=I think that Nonja is taken care very well because the zoo can use her to be a presenter of their zoo and they can earn money from selling her art works.
-In your opinion, are humans doing enough to care for nonhuman primates? What kind of legal protection should nonhuman primates have?
=No, I thinks that humans try to preseve many nonhuman primates such as creating the law to protect many animals, but there are still have many animal trafficking gangsters who want to hunt nonhuman primates and sell them to niche markets. So, humans should do something more than just creating the law such as encouraging people to correct misunderstanding about making medicines from animal organs.
Who should get the money?
ReplyDeletePerhaps it depends on whether the creator is a person or not. So, are Nonja and her fellow nonhuman primate artists persons?
If they are, does that entitle them to the money from their art work? Or would the extension of any rights that come with personhood not necessarily include holding property?
Of course, at the moment, I presume the law would make all money the property of the primate's owner, just as slave owners once owned everything earned by their property.
In order to protect animals from their extinction, zookeepers should create the environment or circumstance the same as those animals are living before being kept in the zoo. Also, they should be brought up in the natural way. Humans should not intervene their way of life except only when there is any harm may occur. We should let them lead their lives as wildlife not pets. Every life on earth has its own duty; therefore, intervention in other duty is an interruption to ecosystem such as food web. As a result, forcing an orangutan to paint is not appropriated. Even though doing this does not harm to the orangutan, it is not the normal way of nonhuman primate’s life. All of these leading to the answer that art galleries should not sell an orangutan's art work. Doing so is sort of encouraging people to intervene its life which is not the primary purpose of keeping the orangutan in the zoo.
ReplyDeleteMoving on to the response to the question whether Nonja is well cared for at the Schönbrunn Zoo, I think that she is. According to Tourismindonesian.com and Teirgarten Schönbrunn, Nonja is fed by caretakers, even though her mother is still alive (as cited in Hartmann & Blass, 2007, p.48). Moreover, as she is outgoing with humans, I can infer that she is satisfied with her life at the zoo. In other words, she is not taken under animal abuse.
Finally, humans are not doing enough to care for nonhuman primates. To illustrate, the Africa hunting safari allows people to hunt the wildlife which includes the nonhuman primates. Although there is a limited number of animal allowed to hunt per person, it still very cruel and devastate lives. However, in the recent news, there are some greedy people who want the wildlife more than their quota; as a result, they hire other people to claim that the over quota wildlife belong to them. Furthermore, as the nonhuman primates are much closed to human being, they are often used in the medicine experiment. Consequently, the effective way to protect the nonhuman primates is to raise people awareness of the endangered species as well as the equality in life.
Peace, as has Bas, has given us some great ideas to consider in our subsequent comments.
DeleteInteraction between human and animals is a very good way to comunicate with each other as long as we do it in positive ways. Since we all live together under the same sky, we was born to help and exchange our way of lives.
ReplyDeletePainting is what people do as usual, so I don't think that Nonja's attempt to paint like human is bad thing to do. She grows up in the zoo; hence, she gets familiar with her caretakers. Then, she tries to do something like them. I don't think that she is forced to paint. However, I agree with Peace that commanding is bad for both people and animals, especially dangerous tasks, such as activities related to sharp weapons.
I think art galleries should sell an orangutan's art work. According to “Orangutans”, the price of Nonja’s artwork is about $323 to $ 2,584 which is relatively high (as cited in Hartmann & Blass, 2007, p.48). This amount of money can be used to protect orangutans from extinction and the money should go to both the zoo and related organization like WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals). For example, they can do some researches to help boost up reproduction, or help reduce animal abuse.
ReplyDeleteIn Nonja’s case, I am pretty sure that the Schönbrunn Zoo takes a good care of her. I also agree with Bas that she is a signature of the zoo, so people around the world may want to visit her and the zoo can earn money from selling her artworks.
I don’t think that humans are doing enough to care for nonhuman primates since humans still exploit nonhuman primates. However, I don’t include selling Nonja’s artworks in this case because she is not forced to do the painting and her caretaker doesn’t harm her. The legal protection that nonhuman primates should have is the right to be protected from human’s maltreatment. We should fine people who violate the regulation at the high amount of money and the highest correction should be capital punishment.
In her thoughtful comment, Poom fiarly directly raises an issue relevant to essay question 9 - the idea that nonhuman primates have at least some rights - specifically, that they not be maltreated by human beings.
DeleteSo, what about pigs, ducks and cows? Do they have the same right? Why or why not?
These sorts of questions are likely to prove very useful to anyone currently working on question 9, and probably also question 8.
Do all primates have the same rights? Why or why not?
I was a little more surprised at Poom's eagerness to use the death penalty. Capital punishment is clearly and directly against Buddhist teaching, but this is not the reason for my surprise, which is, rather, that it seems very extreme for such offences.
DeleteSouvenirs from the zoos are what I've never missed when I visit there. Nonja's artworks might get interest from some tourists. That money should send directly to the zoo or animal organisations, which look after animals not only themselves, but also their rights.
ReplyDeleteVisitting zoos and aquariums is what I always love to do when I travel around Thailand and also aboard. I've never visited Schönbrunn Zoo, yet I googled to look for some photos there. It looks huge, surrounded with a lot of trees and created environment - likes the other zoos. I guess a large numer of tourists can interrupt animals. Schönbrunn Zoo's owners should have strict rules and timetable to protect animal welfare. If they are able to so, I think Nonja would receive well treat, as well as her friends.
What people can actually do to nonhuman primates? I think we normally just see them in the zoos. Hard to touch or feed, we only observe them through their cages. Yet some group of people don't do like that and hunt them instead. Trying to threaten and harass them are the most severe crimes, which we have to have heavy punishment for doing that. Because all rules we have today is too soft to penalize, people would easily break the laws.
And Sorn, like Poom and others, thinks that nonhuman primates have some rights, which require at a minimum that they not be hunted.
DeleteWhy don't pigs, cows and other animals we like to eat have the same right? What is the defining quality that means one thing has rights and the other does not?
Do all nonhuman primates have these rights, or just some?
Pandas? Do they have the same rights?
There are some very useful discussions developing here.
Lest there be any confusion, perhaps a word of definition on the word comment might be useful.
ReplyDeleteComment does not mean sentence, paragraph, clause, phrase or any other grammatical unit, although a comment can be any of these. For example, if we write "Cool!" in response to a blog post, that is a comment; in this case, the comment is a single word. At other times, we might write a couple of paragraphs in response to an idea in a post or a paragraph we are reviewing: those paragraphs are then a single comment.
A comment, then, is any single response to an idea or set of ideas in a source: the length or grammatical units making it up being irrelevant to deciding whether it is a comment or not. So when I suggested that you write two comments in the discussion here, that could not be done by writing a single comment, as Blogger calls them using the same definition that I've just given.
Perhaps helpful to Bas and Sorn, and in one case very relevant to our readings in Quest chapter 2, are a couple of articles on BBC Future: "Do animals have imagination?" (2013, February 7), and "Will we ever… simulate the human brain?" (2013, February 8).
ReplyDeleteAlthough they will likely be most useful in the analysis part of the body of the essay, they might suggest useful ideas to include in the definition part.
I'm just watching the 2011 film Rise of the Planet of the Apes again with my evening tea and snack (I'm trying to cut out the second and third daily coffees).
ReplyDeleteIf you've seen this film, is the star, Caesar, a person at the end of the film? At the beginning? If you think the answers are different, at what point did Caesar become a person as well as a chimpanzee.
This sort of example, which helps us to think about where we want to draw lines and why, might also suggest useful examples for people defining other terms than the very challenging person.
Reference
Wyatt, R. (director), Chernin, P., Clark, D., & Silver, A. (producers). (2011). Rise of the Planet of the Apes. 20th Century Fox: the United States.
And containing ideas we might want to use, a film is a perfectly good source that we might want to cite.
DeleteOops. My mistake.
DeleteIn the reference citation for a film, the country of first release comes before the studio.
The correct reference citation is:
Wyatt, R. (director), Chernin, P., Clark, D., & Silver, A. (producers). (2011). Rise of the Planet of the Apes. United States: 20th Century Fox.
Yes, I agree that Caesar, especially, is a person(like a bit freak human). I count since he says "NO!" to the cruel caretaker. At least he can say his intention. If he can't talk, I still rank him as a person as same as his friends in fluffy gang.
DeleteI've not have a support yet. I'm working on it now.
Thanks Sorn, I also thought that when he says "No" at around 1 hour 15 minutes is a crucial point. My own opinion is that he is definitely a person then, and for a sometime before, but not from birth. But I don't think human beings are persons at birth either, unlike Thai law which does define human beings as person from the moment of birth, or first successful breath.
DeleteI wonder if Bas agrees.