Captive sun bear series III: Life in hell

If these baby bears can past the crucial infant stage where extensive cares was needed, they could pretty much make it to adulthood without any problem. However, more suffering once they grew bigger and stronger. By a year old, they could reached 15 kg, and were no longer safe pets to their human owners. Their strength grew, together with the tools that they used to find food: claws and canines, which could potentially did a lot of damage, if they wanted to. Depending on where were them kept and who kept them, they could be locked in small metal cages, sometime as small as 1m x 1.5m x 1.5m. In places like mini zoo or private menageries, they were usually kept in slightly larger cages with cement floor. One thing for sure is that these bears will never had a chance to feel soil, use their claws to dig, or their canine to bite (I will write more about how a wild sun bear live in the wild later). Most people who live in the countries where sun bears are found have no idea what is animal welfare about. In their dictionary, there is no such terms like “animal rights”, nor “animal welfare.” They do not think that the animals also have feeling, emotion, dignity, and can feel pain like a human being. What most people think about most animals is that they are here to serve us. As a result, bear owners do not feel it is wrong to cage a magnificent wildlife like a sun bear in a small cage. They think that as long as they feed the bear, and the bear stay alive, they are doing a very good job on “TAKING CARE” of the bears.

Sun bears are very “durable” animals. I say so because they can pretty much live on any kind of food once they passed the infant or young cub stage. They can be fed on pure fruit diet or pure rice diet by the owners or animal keepers who do not have a clue on nutritional or balance diet for a carnivore like sun bear. They will feed them whatever is the cheapest, easiest to obtain, and simplest for their job: “taking care” of bears! Most people will never feed these bear any meat product because they think by doing so the bear will become a “man eater” or be very dangerous. Yet, most captive bears are over fed, they are obesed, and look being well “taken care” of.
Local tourists who visited the menageries, mini zoos, crocodile farms, or even zoos, do not think that it s wrong to keep the bears in such poor condition. Almost no one will feel sympathy for the bears being raised in such a poor condition. In stead, they think that the bears were quite funny, quite amusing, and fun to watch, especially these bears may stand up right to beg food from visitors. No one complains about the bears have small room to roam, hot under baking tropical sun, etc. At the end, these bears continue their suffering, no one concern about their welfare.