Animals in Sport

Bullfighting
Bull Fighting, a popular sport in Spain, Portugal, Southern France
and many LatinAmerican countries is a "blood sport", or a sport that
results in violence against animals. In spain, the type of bullfighting
that takes place is usually fatal for either the matador or the bull.
The goal of bullfighting is for the matadors to stab the bulls,
especially in the head, between the horns. This often leads to a
slow, painful death for the bulls. The whole process of bullfighting
causes huge amounts of stress for the bull. Currently, a "bloodless"
version of bullfighting is becoming popular in California, US, and in
France.
In a poll in 2002, 68.8% of all
Spaniards had no interest in bull
fighting whatsoever. Only 10.4%
actually had a lot of interest in the
area. Of this small percentage of the
population, most were over the age of
65.
In the United States, 46.2 % of Americans said that they hated or
strongly disliked bullfighting.
The Spaniards introduced bullfighting in Cuba and Argentina, but it
never became popular, and was abolished during their independence
(1901 in Cuba, and 1899 in Argentina). In Spain and Portugal,
bullfighting is still legal, but television stations are not allowed to
show it live. The Canary Islands, with the exception to cockfighting,
have banned all acts of cruelty against animals.

Most recently, on December 18, 2009,

Catalonia officially banned bullfighting with
over 180,000 signatures in support of the
ban.

Cock Fighting
Another blood sport, cockfighting is a fight between two roosters.
Cockfighting is now illegal in the United States and in most of
Europe. However, cultural differences in several coutries have kept
cockfighting from becomming illegal. These
countries include:
o Mexico,
o Peru,
o the Phillippines,
o Pakistan,
o southern India,
o the Pacific Islands,
o Southeast Asian countries

Dog Fighting
Dog fighting is another blood sport and is similar to both bullfighting
and cockfighting, but is considered one of the worst and one of the

most serious forms of animal abuse. In dog fighting, two dogs fight
each other, and sometimes they fight to their death. Dogs such as
the American Pit Bull Terrier and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier are
bred especially for fighting because they are large and heavy dogs
with a strongly developed head and a powerful build.
Fighting dogs have to suffer through mistreatment throughout their
training years, often fighting against bait animals, such as
bunnies, kittens (and cats) and smaller dogs. These bait animals
are taped with duct tape (to not injury the fighting dog) and are
often killed during training. If a dog does not fight up to his owners
expectations (and survives the fight) often times the owner will
inhumanely kill the dog. The methods used to kill the dogs can
include gunshots, electrocution, drowning, hanging, and
strangulation.
Although illegal in most countries, dog fighting
is very popular in basically every country. In
Afghanistan, India, Latin American countries
(especially Argentina, Peru and Brazil), the
United States, Canada, and the United
Kingdom, dog fighting is technically illegal.
However, in most countries enforcing the anti-dog fighting laws is
nearly impossible because the culprits need to be caught in the act
of dog fighting.

Horse and Dog Racing

Although both horse and dog racing are not considered blood
sports, Thoroughbred, Standardbred and Quarter Horses along with
Greyhound dogs have to endure torturous training and races.

Dogs train and race to a lure, which

was often a fake rabbit. Making them
chase something that is both unreal and
unable to be caught by the dogs is a
cruel joke and causes them to have a lot
of stress. Racing dogs often times suffer
from parasites and tick-related diseases,
malnourishment, and tooth problems
because they did not get proper medical care when needed. In the
past, after the dogs could no longer perform as well as their owners
wanted, they were bred, euthanized or sold for testing purposes.
Now, organizations have formed around the world to protect former
racing greyhounds by finding homes in which the dogs can be pets.
The four major dog-racing countries are Australia, Great Britain,
South Africa, and the United States.
Horse racing is popular worldwide, and is as stressful to the horses
as dog racing is to dogs. The horses are forced into starting gates
with no room for them to move inside the gates. Often a horse will
panic and start bucking while in the starting gate or while they are
being put into the starting gate. This increases the chance of injury
to the horse, the jockey and any other humans or horses near the
panicking horse. The chance of injury to the horses during the
races is also very high. Hundreds of horses die from racing related
reasons every year. The horses have to endure the pain from whips
because they are trained to run faster when hit by the whip. After
their careers, race horses usually either breed or get sold to tar or
slaughterhouses.

Warfare
Horses are well known for their involvement in human wars. Not
many know about how dogs, bats, monkeys, sea animals and birds
have been involved in wars throughout the history of the Earth.

Since the times of Ancient Greece and Rome, dogs have been used
in wartime. In the past, dogs, such as the Epirotes, Pugnace
Britanniae, Great Dane, and Mastiff breads, have fought alongside
warriors. Dogs were used on the front lines, as messengers, for
transportation of armory, for rescue and transportation of humans
and other goods on sleds in Russia. In World War II dogs were used
to detect Japanese infiltrators because of their keen sense of smell.
Then, as time passed, the idea of Tankdogs appeared. From an
early age, dogs were trained that their food was location under
tanks. Then, they would be starved for a while and then released
with bombs attached to them. The bombs would explode when the
dogs searched under the tanks for food, thus damaging the enemys
tanks. In the Vietnam War, dogs were used as scouts, messengers,
mascots, companions, rescuers, and mine detectors.

Monkeys were set on fire and then pointed in the direction of enemy
camps in hope of destroying said camps. As time passed, people
learned to train monkeys to detonate mines, so a human life
wouldnt be sacrificed. Currently, monkeys are being used behindthe-scenes in experiments.
Bats are a very unusual type of creature to use in wars. The theory
was to attach bombs to the bats. These bombs would have some
sort of irritant on it that would cause the bat to chew the
attachment, thus detonating the bomb. Fortunately, bats were
unreliable and the theory did not work.

Various sea animals, such as dolphins, sea lions, whales, walruses,

seals, and sharks, were used to detect sea mines and Vietcong
divers during the Vietnam War. These animals were trained to take
off facemasks of the divers, and stab the divers with whatever was
attached to them. Sometimes, knives were attached, and other
times hypodermic needles with pressurized carbon dioxide were
attached. With the hypodermic needles, if the sea animal pricked a
diver, the carbon dioxide would cause the diver to explode, and
therefore kill him. Dolphins were also taught to carry nuclear
weapons under water to enemy soil.
Finally, in early history Pigeons were often used to send messages
about war happenings to people because they could cover a lot of
land in a short amount of time. Pigeons could also detect the
presence of chemical and nerve agents, which was very helpful for
the army.