Animals Go Wild!

A simple search on BBC News for the story of the Australian orangutan who managed to escape her cage by short-circuiting the electric fence (by jamming a stick into the wire), led to an amalgam of BBC videos of runaway animals doing "funny", "human" stuff.. like bursting into supermarkets and riding in cars.

Here are a few links to some of these hilarious videos of wild animals going wild:

The sad story of the orangutan who managed to escape and then returned to her cage, the outside world probably seeming too strange and alien for someone accustomed to prison all her life, can be seen here.

In addition, please find enclosed:

Runaway bull's supermarket sweep

Deer stop at a beer shop

Cow rides in back of car

Shoplifting seagull caught on camera

and finally...

Cat turns up on weatherman's set.



These videos seemingly have no real news value at all - they are simply put up there as funny anecdotes about human-animal relationships, where animals cross the line into our designated zones. Indeed, these are the sort of videos that you can easily find on YouTube, and it seems interesting to me that the BBC has so many of them online. Go to any one of them and you'll be led into a maze of many more.

I'm not really sure what to make of these videos. For one thing, they are seemingly there purely for entertainment value - more reminiscent of that terribly annoying show, The World's Funniest Animals on Animal Planet (which I'm sure I'll write about in great detail some day), than any sort of real journalism. There is no message there, it's just the spectacle of seeing an animal going out of its place, transgressing the human boundary, or leaving its designated role behind (i.e. escaped apes and runaway horses). In some instances it is a clear example of animal cruelty (transporting a cow by car?) and others it's simply a matter of seeing a cute animal (i.e. the cat that drops by the weatherman's set) or an animal doing seemingly human things (i.e. that silly, shoplifting seagull that steals a packet of crisps). A quick look at the choice of words describing the piece about the bull in the supermarket really defines the attitude towards the animals that pervades these sort of stories. The bull was at a market (read = going to be sold into slavery? slaughter?) and managed to escape, fleeing into a supermarket where he became confused, terrified, thus terrifying the employees, and eventually made it back out again. According to the BBC, the bull did "some "on the hoof" shopping", "paying a visit to the Cummins' SuperValu" and eventually "leaving for pastures greener". The derogatory and patronizing phrasing really says it all.



If there is any larger theme, it is one of animals trying to break free, and many of these videos seem very sad to me. The orangutan is a prime example. But also the deer running through the beer shop - take a look at that video and see how frightened and utterly confused they are, bumping into things all over. Where did these deer come from? Immediately, a contextual story begins to form in my mind. But there is nothing else in the news item - no more details - nothing but the mildly interesting, but seemingly unimportant, fact that some animals, at least for a little while, didn't behave like they were supposed to.