Tag Archives: bears

Eurasian Brown Bear Photo from Wikimedia Creative Commons.

We are often told animals act only on instinct but have no real understanding of what they are doing.  To those people who maintain animals don’t feel love, hate, fear, happiness, despair or any emotion whatsoever, I say bull puckey. They don’t have any idea what they are talking about.

I have personally witnessed animals experience deep and obvious emotional moments. I have seen animals grieve for a lost companion or baby, show unfettered joy at a reunion with an old friend, show embarrassment and absolutely exhibit love and loyalty.

Because pets or animals in general do not speak our language, the tendency is to ignore what they do say to us in their own language.  The tendency is to overlook the fact that we are the ignorant ones in the conversation. 

Look no further than the story of a female bear subjected to both cruelty and abuse at a bile farm in China.  If this bear doesn’t convince you animals feel deep emotions or at least soften your heart then you have no feelings or heart of your own.

FACT:  Of  the thousands of bear bile products seized by authorities every year, approximately 98 percent come from China, but the practice is commonplace in other nations too, like Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Japan.

First, you must understand what a bile farm is.  It is a place where bears are kept in cages so small that as they grow larger they are literally crushed.  A hole is drilled in the bears abdomen and a permanent tube is inserted into their gallbladder so bile will drain out.

FACT:  The International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimates approximately 14,000 Asiatic, Brown and Sun bears across south Asia suffer this type of treatment, accounting for about half of the species’ population in the region.

The reason for this cruelty is Traditional Chinese Medicine which says bear bile has curative powers.  It doesn’t seem to bother the people who practice this form of medicine that tremendous abuse is done to innocent and intelligent fellow beings.

Bears are known to beat their heads on the sides of their cages and to hit themselves repeatedly in the chest, but the “farmers” put it off to the “crazy” bears trying to kill themselves.  Funny how no one mentions the bear might also be in great pain from the bile draining through the tube inserted into their gall bladders.

FACT:  The Sun Bear or Malayan Bear is sometimes called the Honey Bear.  This bear is listed as threatened on the endangered species list.

The female bear we are talking about today heard her cub cry out in pain.  In a rage, she broke out of her cage, ran to he cub and smothered him to death then ran full speed into a wall killing herself.

This is a pure case of an emotional mother bear making a decision she was not going to let her cub suffer the pain and indignity she had gone through in life. Any human mother who does not understand this bear’s actions isn’t much of a mother in my view and should read the true Jewish story of  Masada and what those mothers and fathers did when faced with no way out.

Sun Bear or Malayan Bear also called the Honey Bear from Wikimedia Commons

FACT:  The recent decline in the sun bear population can be largely attributed to the hunting of “nuisance bears” that destroy crops and widespread poaching driven by the market for their fur and for their bile, which is used in Chinese medicine.