My partner and I aren’t fans of zoos (we feel sorry for the animals) but wanted to see Pandora, so we rope-dropped Animal Kingdom yesterday with the intention of bypassing all the live “exhibits” and doing the other attractions and shows. We were having a wonderful time (Flight of Passage was truly amazing), and then we made the mistake of taking a shortcut across Discovery Island, where we happened to catch sight of a vulture just sitting on the grass. We were confused as to why it wouldn’t fly away, and so we asked a cast member. She told us its wings were clipped to prevent flight, adding that it wouldn’t be able to survive if allowed to fly off. As I later found out through the wonders of Google, “clipped” is the euphemistic way of describing what they do to these birds, which is to remove parts of the wings entirely to make them permanently flightless (a procedure called pinioning). I suppose I can understand the justification in the case of endangered species that need to be kept and bred in captivity (which these vultures happened to be), but they do it also for birds that are far more numerous and really don’t need to be kept in zoos. All those flamingoes you see happily wading around? They can’t fly either.
While I realise that this is a zoo problem rather than an Animal Kingdom problem, I really wish Disney would stick to creatures of the animatronic variety rather than participate in these barbaric practices. I can’t see the magic in gawking at a hobbled bird.
