BY a curious cultural coincidence, Valentine’s Day this year, saw in the Chinese ‘Year of the Tiger’. I wonder how many of these magnificent felines will still be prowling free when the calendar cycle repeats in 12-year’s time.

Already their numbers in the wild are estimated to have fallen to around 5,000. In the natural world, wild creatures have been pushed towards extinction by the expansion of human activity into their territory.

Anything that can’t be eaten, farmed or kept as a pet is on notice. We devise negative labels for species we can’t control so a ‘rogue elephant’ or a ‘man-eating tiger’, once branded, is fair game for extermination, while their natural habitat is hacked down for palm oil plantations or fields of roses.

When an animal attacks a human being, whatever the provocation, the story normally ends with the ‘reassurance’ that police have destroyed the offending beast.
I recall that Australian beaches became a no-go area for errant sting rays following the death of the popular Australian naturalist Steve Irwin.

There was even expectation that the captive killer-whale, which pulled its trainer to her death in the pool at Florida’s SeaWorld Park recently, should be slaughtered. Why? Certainly not to provide meat for human survival. No, because it failed to act like a five-ton plaything and suppress all its natural instincts for a couple of barrels of mackerel, in order to entertain chair-bound camera-popping tourists and line the pockets of animal circus impresarios.

Training in the appropriate context, is indeed a positive means of honing natural animal instincts for the benefit of human survival.

In the case of ‘man’s best friend’, it capitalises on olfactory skills far beyond the competence of man or machine. Guiding the visually impaired, sniffing out victims of earthquakes and detecting drugs demonstrate a working cooperation between man and beast over and above mere companionship. But we’ve always had an ambivalent attitude to the animal kingdom. Having dominated and ‘domesticated’ species of our choice, their populations swelled and diminished at human will. Anglo-Saxon America would not have been developed without the horse, nor would the interior wastes of northern African been penetrated without the camel.

But how rapidly did horses disappear from the planet after the carnage of the First World War and the arrival of the internal combustion engine?

If animals are to be reared, fattened and consumed, there’s no getting away from the fact that they have to be despatched. Mercifully we’ve moved away from the grisly hunting practices of our forebears, and the neat rows of pink, shrink-wrapped items on the meat and poultry shelves offer a convenient displacement from the killing event.

Nor are we particularly keen to learn of the darker side of the factory farming process which accounts for over 90% of meat products in American and UK supermarkets. We might rail against the barbaric exploitation of animals for dubious medicinal products in the Far East, bear baiting and bull-fighting for pleasure, but in the land of professed animal lovers we can’t ignore the unacceptable way unwanted greyhounds and ponies are disposed of by the barrel of a gun, or the constant call on the RSPCA to rescue the neglected and abandoned victims of Christmas indulgence.

All of which makes the controversy over the husbandry of our own dear icon – the pedigree Jersey cow, seem tame by comparison.

For generations, these fine, even-tempered beasts have served the island with prolific milk yields, acted as tourist promoters and international goodwill ambassadors ever since their hardiness, high butterfat and, yes, doe-eyed, star quality became a marketable commodity. Call it exploitation if you wish, but alongside the immeasurable pride they’ve generated for their owner/breeders, they’ve been subjected to arranged marriages and ridiculed by third-rate visiting comedians who’d never before seen a cow wearing an overcoat.

They’ve even endured having their natural headgear lopped off, all to preserve their ‘uniqueness’. Yet the detailed attention to blood-lineage in order to achieve exclusive ‘breeding’ is as meticulous as would satisfy any Royal Family chaperone.

Such is the price of true celebrity and veneration. Compare that with the behaviour of the walking clothes pegs whose pursuit of two-dimensional career-development led them once to pose in the buff in protest against the fur trade, but, with collective amnesia, have resumed draping animal carcases around themselves in the interests of indulgence and publicity – all in the best possible taste, of course!

And when they’re not swathed in peeled pelts, they’re snuggling up to miniature over-bred, canine handbag-fillers – all of which fuels an indiscriminate industry in ephemeral animate fashion accessories. The latest raid by the ‘style-setters’ on the Noah’s ark prop cupboard appears to be for cling-on piglets!

So, they’re only animals. But if animals could talk! Would it be mindless devotion or utter contempt for the way they are treated?

We forget that left to their own devices they play by strict instinctive rules which order their communal lives. So think again when you hear unruly humans accused of behaving like animals.

Alexandr the seemple meercat apart, those that have achieved superstar status such as Lassie in all her male collie incarnations, Flipper, Skippy, who in their time have rescued enough humans to fill a small town, may indeed have the last laugh. For, if the UK government gets its way, it’s not the animals, but their human ‘masters’ who soon will have to undergo expensive competence tests to prove they can handle their pets before they can exercise authority over them.

Another layer of institutional nannyism? I reckon it’s just the thing to inspire an intelligent, freedom-loving pooch to pick up its pet passport and emigrate!