Dancing bears of India

This post is about the Sloth bears of India that are trained cruelly to dance for entertainment. Making bears dance has a long history that started in ancient times. The bears are usually trained by the poorer class that has few other options to make money. The practice was until recently in many places in the world including the U.K. The bears are trained by putting hot plates under their feet and and turning on music. This is done until the bear associates the music with pain and then dances every time the music comes on. In india their trainers are primarily a nomadic group called Kalandar.  Currently international animal welfare groups are working to make so that these people do not have to use this bear as their means for making money. The practice is a horrible thing and carries up to a seven year sentence for someone caught with a dancing bear. Below is a TED talk about these bears and their conditions.

Models

This week I will talk about new models to conserve animals. For a while now it has been known that the current north American model is failing to conserve animals. Because of this the CEO of panthera has recently been talking of implementing a new method for animal conservation. The idea would basically consist of massive interlinking corridors which would allow animals to live alongside humans. The reason he says that the set model is failing is because of the human impact everywhere. So. Instead he says there will huge tracts of interlinking land everywhere some even spanning across continents. This way instead of making a small preserve we can truly protect wildlifes environments without a human impact. The picture above shows one of the corridors that is being proposed in South America.