Captivity

"Kathy looked me right in the eye. Then she took a breath, and never took another one. She sank to the bottom of the tank. Every breath a dolphin takes is a conscious effort, so they can decide not to take the next breath. That's what I mean by suicide"
- Ric O'Barry, a dolphin trainer turned dolphin activist, on the death of one of the dolphins he trained

I was reading an article on the papers about the plight of dolphins in captive as well as the terrible ways they are captured.

The idea of being snatched from your natural surroundings and forced to live in an unnatural place where conditions are much lesser than your prior state, often to the border of cruelty, is unbearable.

The article details how dolphins are captured; hordes driven into an inlet from the sea, healthy ones taken captive while the unlucky ones get clubbed to death. It also talks about lives of the captive dolphins, placed into concrete 'jails' to circle around the same enclosure, pandering to the screams of its audience. Most of dolphins in captivity live much shorter lives than their lucky counterparts out there in the ocean, many of which suffer from painful ulcers and even insanity from the extreme stress brought about by captivity.

I read a quote sometime back: "Humans are an extraordinary species, they are the only species who can experience empathy, so much so that such can even be felt for non-living objects."

The feeling that you often get when you see someone, or even animals, in plight, is a feeling we take for granted, but we don't realise that it's the very ability to do so that makes us human. Not our ability to fight, nor our ability to think of ingenious ways to destroy and annilhilate, but the ability to feel sadness or happiness for another, for us to experience the hurt and pain indirectly from the plight of others.