Persecution of animals’ bodies: but how far will they go?

Humiliating sentient beings even in death to amuse an audience

On 20 November, we received a new report. On his Instagram account, a photographer had published several videos of him and a friend entertaining themselves with a dead wild boar. The boar was attached to a car with a rope before being dragged along the tarmac. The passenger of the car filmed the body and was amused by the situation: “we’ve got a problem here, there’s a wild boar behind us”. The animal was then attached to a wheelchair and wheeled around to bursts of laughter. Between those who find decapitating geese and rabbits to be a rite of passage and others who entertain themselves with a dead animal, what has this society come to?

For many months, we have been alerting the public to these repeated outrages. From the head of a wild boar abandoned on a public bench to the remains of foxes hung at village entrances, it is hard to see where these people who think nature is a playground and those who live here with these objects at their disposal will stop. Being able to kill them limitlessly is not enough for them, they must also torture their remains!

The law allows the worst atrocities against wild animals. Let’s change that!

Let’s not forget that, in France, the law does not ban acts of cruelty against wild animals. They can be hunted, killed, and even tortured with no consequences. How can anyone understand this difference in treatment? Like dogs, wild boars are capable of great affection. Like dogs, they feel pain. So why treat them differently?

The explanation is clear: to preserve hunting. All of the attempts to protect wild individuals are met head-on by the hunters’ lobby. And while our politicians deliberate, it is always the same ones that pay the highest price: badgers and foxes who are going to be massacred even in their burrows, including the young, birds who are killed with bare hands within the context of traditional hunting, which the government is looking to reauthorise…

Although our many fights have been fruitful and have allowed us to save yet more lives, from mountain Galliformes to badgers, it is essential that we continue to give wild animals a voice. While waiting for them to be protected, you can sign our petition for a radical reform of hunting!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice