Circuses and theme parks are already widely under attack. Many have downplayed their performing creatures or cut them entirely in the case of circuses. Others still are marred with systematic boycotting and active campaigns and leafleting against them. In response theme parks, like seaworld make specious claims that they are doing research.

However, although much derided, these interfaces are ones in which the intimacy that trainers develop with their animals offers a profound insight into the close ongoing often tremendously cooperative relationships between humans and animals. Little of the intellectual understanding that trainers have of their animals is communicated to the larger public, but it does involve deep cross species understandings, and does demonstrate the tremendous skill and expertise about animals that develops outside of formal academic contexts.

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