We all love critter movies but we sometimes forget that wanting to take the species home with us to keep as pets has an impact on the sales and exploitation of those animals.
It happened with 101 Dalmatians and golden retrievers after Air Bud and the St. Bernard breeds after Beethoven.
As Fix.com noted, even owls got a resurgence in sales after the Harry Potter series.
Finding Nemo, the 2003 film about ostensibly the need to keep fish like the Blue Regal Tang and the clownfish in their natural habitat, actually generated a market for wild fish from coral reefs to be kept in tanks.
Now the sequel Finding Dory has once again raised concerns about the marketing of wild fish for in-home entertainment.
As lots of moviegoers after seeing Finding Nemo wanted to get their own “Dory” or “Marlin,” conservationists are also bracing for another rush on tropical fish.
PETA for Kids recommends no one should buy a fish, or any animal for that matter, from a pet store and everyone should pledge not to visit aquariums or marine parks like SeaWorld.
Some aquariums (even ones like The Marine Life Institute in Finding Dory that operate as a “rescue, rehabilitate, release” facility) actually encourage the public to handle, touch, and pet stingrays in “touch tanks,” where the harassed animals have no way to escape. Nearly everywhere touch tanks are offered, stingrays die prematurely
Other animals like orcas live miserably at marine parks like SeaWorld. The marine park forces intelligent orcas, who swim up to 100 miles a day in the open ocean, to live in tiny tanks that would be the same as you living in a bathtub. Because of this, they can become aggressive and have even been known to chew on the metal gates and concrete corners of the tanks and damage their teeth.
Source: Fix.com Blog
h/t: Fix.com PETA for Kids
Photo credit: @bg_underwater via Saving Nemo Facebook
