Captivity

There is a chat room that's going on right now uh hello okay hold on one second hello but anyway welcome aboard so glad to have you thank you happy to be here yeah it's an honor and it's um i know it's going to be a great show and everything and everybody out there we're going to be This evening, we're going to have to discuss about these zoos out there, zoo investigations that Born Free USA has been doing.

So it is a series of undercover zoo investigations, the larger issue of keeping wild animals in captivity for human entertainment.

Okay, so Devin, you want to go ahead and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and how you got started and we'll go from there.

Of course.

And I got started with Born Free back in 2015, actually.

I was Working with the primate sanctuary we have here down in South Texas as a primate caregiver.

So that's where I got started with learning about the exotic pet trade and keeping wild animals in captivity and all of the damage that can be done to wild animals when they're kept in private possession.

So, yeah, I got started working as a primate caregiver back in 2015.

And obviously, I know in your podcast, you talked about that.

But for our dogs, too, they are captive animals.

They're predators at the end of the day, with four legs, an incredible nose, amazing vision, and they have their life, their, their ability to move and to hunt and to seek.

And we inhibit that ability because with the best of intentions, we want to keep them safe.

I, I think seeing-

... and see behavior problems differently?

Yeah, I think seeing dogs as captive animals, I think people feel guilty about it.

Mm.

Um, I don't like the word pet, but I also think it's more accurate in some ways than companion because, although I use, I use companion in my writing often because it's very fraught for me, the choice of word and property is accurate too.

Um, I often will describe dogs as captive animals.

People find that really bothersome.

Like, my dog's not captive.