Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

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Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

by Jason Hribal, Jeffery St. Clair (Introduction)

3.56 of 5 stars 3.56 · rating details · 48 ratings · 17 reviews

A Siberian tiger at the San Francisco Zoo leaps a 12-foot high wall and mauls three visitors who had been tormenting her, killing one. A circus elephant tramples and gores a sadistic trainer, who had repeatedly fed her lit cigarettes. A pair of orangutans at the San Diego Zoo steal a crowbar and screwdriver and break-out of their enclosure. An orca at Sea World snatches hi...more

Paperback, 280 pages

Published January 11th 2011 by AK Press (first published November 1st 2010)

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Nov 07, 2011 Daniel Burton-Rose rated it 3 of 5 stars

A notable effort to write a "from below" history of zoos and aquariums by a student of prominent radical social historian Peter Linebaugh. One disappointment is that despite Linebaugh's profound work on transcending racial divisions in trans-Atlantic resistance movements, this book suffers from the standard animal rights appropriation of the African-American liberation struggle, without supporting or engaging with that struggle in any substantive way. Counterpunch co-editor and the book's co-pub...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Christopher Rex rated it 2 of 5 stars

As much as I like stories about elephants trampling sadistic trainers, monkeys and orangutans figuring out how to pick-locks and tigers escaping from zoo enclosures to maul teenagers who taunt them, this book really fails in proving its central thesis. The little stories therein are good, but the book reads more like a collection of newspaper articles about animal attacks and escapes rather than being centered around a well-researched thesis or idea. The author claims that attacks (and escapes)...more

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Aug 05, 2011 Lorien rated it 2 of 5 stars

“Animal Resistance”, at first glance, doesn’t seem to be such a loaded term, especially when talking about wild or feral animals. Anyone who’s been around wild animals knows that they resist capture and captivity. That seems pretty clear when one considers animals caught and used in horrific (or “inhumane”) ways, like bear bile farms, or when one considers how feral cats act when captured for TNR.

However, most of us humans don’t see resistance to captivity in animals in zoos, aquariums or circus...more

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May 12, 2012 Leanne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: animals, history

I appreciate the author's expose of zoos, waterparks, laboratories, and circuses. I especially like the way he draws attention to the way they hide or try to explain away the surprisingly large numbers of animal escapes and acts of resistance. It is very disturbing to learn just how willfully these greedy institutions ignore the protests of suffering, intelligent species and continue to ruthlessly exploit them. I was also unaware of how drastically shortened are the lifespans of many captive spe...more

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Apr 20, 2011 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Decent case against circuses, zoos, and water shows. Basically, it details over and over animals fighting back and attacking their tormenters. I have a soft spot for True Crime books, so this kind of filled that for me. Its pretty brutal, both what they do to the elephants, tigers, and dolphins and all, and when the animals decide to fight back. I knew that circuses and water shows were messed up, but I didn't know that zoos were as bad as presented in the treatment of animals. Makes sense thoug...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Penny rated it 3 of 5 stars

Read for Vegan Book Club.
This book explains how zoos, circuses, carnivals, aquatic themed parks have problems with their animals who want to be free or are fighting back at their trainers and others.
Elephants, tigers, primates, and sea mammals really get angry and unruly as they age in captivity. Sometimes they are fighting back at people who have abused them or teased/taunted them. Don't these animals have rights of their own?
The beginning of the book reviews case histories where animals were p...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Wendy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is an easy, riveting read, as well as the best case for ending animal captivity (particularly "wild" animals in circuses, zoos, and other forms of human entertainment) that I've ever seen. Its only flaw is that the introduction (by another writer), while certainly fascinating and educational on its own, seems very disjointed from the rest of the book, and even contradicts the text of the book at times. Bottom line is, READ THIS, especially if you've wondered why animals don't stand up...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Jasmine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american

This is a book about animal resistance, it's about the fact that we aren't attributing human qualities to animals we are claiming only humans have brain processes shared by many animals, I mean it isn't like we are the only ones with frontal lobes.

Animals can learn, animals can manipulate, animals can hate.

this is a book about why we respect animals. Or why I respect animals. It's about how when I say freddie and I had a talk and we came to an agreement, or Freddie is annoyed with me, or Boris...more

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Aug 01, 2011 Wendy Kobylarz rated it 3 of 5 stars

On the one hand I liked this book quite a bit.

On the other, I expected/had hoped for more from this after listening to a couple interviews with the author.

Hribal explores captive animals' resistance to their captors and tormentors. He documents how animals can, like people, differentiate between people and shows that wild animals who have had enough don't just kill randomly (even though they could easily do that) but target their prey. Even to someone actively trying to rid herself of speciesi...more On the one hand I liked this book quite a bit.

On the other, I expected/had hoped for more from this after listening to a couple interviews with the author.

Hribal explores captive animals' resistance to their captors and tormentors. He documents how animals can, like people, differentiate between people and shows that wild animals who have had enough don't just kill randomly (even though they could easily do that) but target their prey. Even to someone actively trying to rid herself of speciesism, it's still amazing on one level to read how captive animals can, and will, do this. Hribal delves into the history of the animals, and shows that retaliation is not uncommon (though zoos and circuses would have us believe so).

But after a while it becomes somewhat tedious. It's as if he wants to show all the times he could find that elephants (for example) have been abused and resisted, but unfortunately there is little difference in the way this is done. The stories are horrifying because they showcase how humans abuse and exploit animals as a constant, ongoing source of profit and view animals only as profit-making machines, with total disregard for any familial bonds or suffering these animals endure. And how the zoos, aquariums, etc whitewash everything for the public (which is only too willing to believe those lies).

After reading of a number of incidents about elephant resistance, I wanted something new; one person called it a laundry list of events, and that's what it feels like.

I'd hoped Hribal would document other kinds of animal resistance to captivity and torture - certainly there are plenty of examples of "farm" animals escaping, swimming rivers, jumping fences. From listening to an interview with Hribal, I had also hoped he would explore the way animals have been exploited to build our society - everything from plowing fields to pulling carriages and being caught for food and clothes - and that a case could have been made for this sort of long-term resistance to centuries of exploitation.

While such a lack is disappointing, it might not have been quite so disappointing had the book been edited. Typos by the score were distracting, although the use of "solidarity confinement" for "solitary confinement" was amusing in its way (considering the anarchist publisher).

This is a book that could have been great but only succeeds in being good - though to a lay audience, to people not into animal rights, the editing could suggest that we are not terribly competent.

I'd cautiously recommend this to activists, but can't really recommend it for non-activists. And that's the rub, because even when animals don't consciously resist their tormentors activists already understand that they suffer and don't want this - and non-activists don't.

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Nov 01, 2011 abclaret rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book deals with the rather thorny issue of animals escaping enclosures and attacking, primarily their captors. So it’s fair to say there was a little controversy surrounding the publication of this book. There are a string of articles about in Hribal’s name, which try to argue animals are part of the working class. This book is simply the logic of his intellectual trajectory.

I have read comments that have tried to argue this book presents a good case against the captivity of animals in zoo...more This book deals with the rather thorny issue of animals escaping enclosures and attacking, primarily their captors. So it’s fair to say there was a little controversy surrounding the publication of this book. There are a string of articles about in Hribal’s name, which try to argue animals are part of the working class. This book is simply the logic of his intellectual trajectory.

I have read comments that have tried to argue this book presents a good case against the captivity of animals in zoos, circuses and theme parks, but that’s simply not the premise of the book! Hribal centrally believes, animals “have a conception of freedom and a desire for it. They have agency.” (pg 26) He goes on further on the agency theme claiming, “not only did the animals have a history, they were making history. For their history led directly to historical change.” (pg 29-30)

So let’s be frank, when an elephant escapes a performing circus, seeks out and tramples its sadistic trainer; when a monkey repeatedly escapes its zoo, leading to redesign after redesign of the enclosure; when a captive orca attacks her trainer mid-performance in SeaWorld and when a tiger escapes and mauls children tormenting her – this is a political struggle, as defined by Hribal.

It’s simply difficult to know how to assess this. Animal captivity speaks to me about our alienation from ourselves and nature, and the ability of capital to commodify it back to us, and also about anthropocentrism. Leave it to no doubt, I think zoos et al are pretty repugnant, in the same manner I do opulent shopping centres and tedious call centres. I just don’t see the political links the author is trying to make. Either way, what I believe or what I don’t believe, the onus of Hribal proving his thesis simply falls flat.

The book essentially is a compiled list of testimonies of various animals contesting their captivity, so he never really moves beyond empirical research. Most of the stories are just conveyed in his rather loaded narrative. So there is virtually no discussion about psychology, socio-biology, consciousness or philosophy nor does he develop on anything put out by animal rights gurus like Best and Singer. The book feels like its asking for a radical leap of faith based on a string of observations.

What’s worse is there feels to be a rather odious whiff of misanthropy about the book. Even if you accept that animal handlers, trainers, and even vets are part of the apparatus, why are animals attacking random people? Were affectively told in one incident this is reasonable because “teasing is endemic…[and p]ellet guns seem to be a particular favourite weapon among visitors.” (pg 106-07)

The book is poorly argued, one of the few books I recall where the prologue carries more weight than the rest of the book and is littered with spelling mistakes. I simply can’t fathom what made AK Press print this.
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Jul 03, 2011 Shaun rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is not so much a great book as a well-researched dossier of incidents of elephants, primates, whales, etc escaping from captivity in zoos and circuses and/or attacking their trainers and captors. Hribal's prose just doesn't do it for me, even if his thesis does. The author was a student of Peter Linebaugh, whose work is a big influence on mine currently - and I greatly appreciate the underlying themes, namely that we should see these attacks and escapes as calculated revolts against captivi...more This is not so much a great book as a well-researched dossier of incidents of elephants, primates, whales, etc escaping from captivity in zoos and circuses and/or attacking their trainers and captors. Hribal's prose just doesn't do it for me, even if his thesis does. The author was a student of Peter Linebaugh, whose work is a big influence on mine currently - and I greatly appreciate the underlying themes, namely that we should see these attacks and escapes as calculated revolts against captivity and enslavement rather than aberrations or trivial, curious mishaps.

In the epilogue, Hribal encapsulates much of the book: (after a paragraph addressing why zoos never release recalcitrant animals and rarely fund sanctuaries for animals that don't handle zoo life in accordance with their captors' aims) The zoo industry is full of such contradictions. It helps people learn about the importance of animals, but not what is vitally important to the animals themselves. Sea animals, elephants, and primates (etc) are capable of such amazing feats, but they are incapable of demonstrating their intentions and making their own choices. The industry encourages you to think that these animals are intelligent, but not intelligent enough to have the ability to resist. The industry encourages you to care about them, so that you and your children will return for a visit. But it does not want you to care so much that you might develop empathy and begin to question whether these animals actually want to be there.

The intro includes a kind of muddled attack on the term "anthropomorphism" that set me off a bit. The author's idea, as I understand it, is that anthropomorphism is a pejorative term used for those who would ascribe culture and determination to animals, and that the idea itself is old hat. I think the problem is that the term is unfortunate when used to mean that, in animal cultures, we see only reflections of our own human culture, rather than understanding that animals have their own culture which does not necessarily mirror our own or even fit definitions in which we could find ease of comparison to our own. I actually do think the term (and practice) is problematic, and I would have liked to read more exploration of this idea in this book, but there's just a rather flippant dismissal on the front end and not much else - the book delves into instances of attack/escape and doesn't spend as much time analyzing the paradigm shift that Hribal is certainly spending a lot of time thinking about and calling for (which is, I think, sound).

Told through meandering anecdotes of animal escapes, the writing is unfortunately pretty lacking and the grammatical mistakes are rampant, too. As a Pittsburgh resident, I found it humorous that the city's name comes up often either with or without the "h", which is a common mistake - however the oversight and inconsistency with which this occurs, sometimes within the same page, is illustrative of a larger lack of cursory editing throughout.

Despite it's faults, it's a quick read and a good reference, useful for pursuing further info on the incidents the author includes. Plenty of admirable digging for buried stories in here.
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Feb 24, 2011 Alissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Honestly, the prologue and the epilogue were the highlights. The stories within were crammed together and a bit repetitive. It is indeed interesting to learn about the plight of animals in captivity but I would've liked a bit more commentary, history. That said the fact that the stories of so many unique animals was told is important and to hear of all of these animals fighting back and/or escaping is uplifting (though most all of their stories end tragically). I would recommend it to animal act...more

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Feb 29, 2012 Rebby rated it 5 of 5 stars

Hribal does something here that has not been done before. He argues that animals have agency and make history. This thesis is both provocative and original; and he does a remarkable job proving it. Fear of the Animal Planet is a book that will get better with age, as it will definitely take time for people to catch up to its ideas.

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Jan 28, 2012 Butterfly rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the more original thinkers that I have read in a long time. Wonderful storytelling. Sections of the book should definitely be used in high-school programs.

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Aug 06, 2011 Rosanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

So very troubling to read about wild animals in captivity for our amusement and entertainment.

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Jun 28, 2012 Erik rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'll give it 2 because the content is awesome, but this was a slog.

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Dec 22, 2011 Will rated it 2 of 5 stars

The introduction by Jeffrey St. Clair is amazing, and pretty much hits all the keys points from the book itself. The rest of the book was a bit of a let-down. In any case, interesting ideas!

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Shelves: politics, natural_history, rebellion_-_resistance, animals

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