Awakening from the Nightmare

"Who would have thought ten years ago that whales and dolphins could be captured, trained, displayed to an interested public and sent on air journeys of many hours' duration?... Who would have thought ten years ago that big game, like elephants, rhinos, hippos, and the swift gazelles and antelopes, could be captured alive by a shot of a hypodermic needle from a gun? The possibilities opened by this invention should be obvious to everyone.

Instead of going on safari for weeks at a time with a large column of porters, the modern collector takes to the car and has a much easier time. In former days, the elephant mothers had to be killed if the young was to be taken because it was impossible to get close to a herd of elephants or rhinos on foot on on horseback. Though not without risk, the car can be used to separate the mother from her offsping. Zebras, antelopes and giraffes have no chance of escape when they are pursued not only by one horse but by 100 horse power... but unless it is skillfully done, capture by car may lead to overstrain or even complete exhaustion. Much experience, good cars, and a certain amount of imagination are essential.

Nocturnal animals have no chance of escape when they are hunted with strong headlamps and searchlights, which dazzle their eyes so that they cannot see the hunter. For many years this method of catching the shy and swift antelopes and gazelles, and even rhinos and hippos, was strictly prohibited, but today it is in common use.

A sheer accident taught the natives of the wooded slopes of Mounts Kilimanjaro and Meru in Tanzania how to catch colobus or guereza monkeys, still relatively rarely seen in captivity. At weekends the natives would drink a home-brewed beer called pombe... the dregs are simply thrown away. Since guerezas very rarely climb down to the ground, the natives were amazed to see a whole colony of these monkeys climb down from the trees and crowd round the dregs, possibly attracted by the smell of alcohol. ... they liked it and ate as much as they could. When the natives came closer, the monkeys were so drunk that they were unable to reach the trees, let alone climb them, and a large number of them had to sleep off their hangover in a European capture station, on their way to the zoo."

~ a modern zoo trader quoted in Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos, by Derrick Jensen and Karen Tweedy-Holmes