Blood sport
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bloodsport or blood sport is any sport or entertainment that involves violence against animals.
Bloodsport includes coursing or beagling, combat sports such as cockfighting, or other activities. These usually involve blood being drawn, and often result in the death of one or more animals.
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[edit] Etymology
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest use of the term is in reference to mounted hunting, where the quarry would be actively chased, as in fox hunting or hare coursing. Before firearms a hunter using arrows or a spear might also wound an animal, which would then be chased and perhaps killed at close range, as in medieval boar hunting. The term was popularised by author Henry S. Salt (1851–1939).
Later, the term seems to have been applied to various kinds of baiting and forced combat: bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cockfighting and later developments such as dog fighting and rat-baiting. The animals were specially bred, confined and forced to fight. In the Victorian era, social reformers began a vocal opposition to such activities, claiming grounds of ethics, morality and animal welfare.
[edit] Current issues
Changes in usage of the term blood sport illustrate the depth of the linguistic and social complexities of social evolution.
[edit] Hunting
Animal rights and some animal welfare activists have sought to extend the term blood sport, especially as a pejorative, to a variety of activities not covered by the original use of the term[1]. Its usage to describe modern hunting is a matter of dispute.
[edit] Bull fighting and cock fighting
Today, under lobbying pressure, limitations on blood sports have been enacted in much of the world. Certain blood sports remain legal under varying degrees of control in certain locations (e.g., bull fighting and cockfighting) but have declined in popularity almost everywhere else.[2][3] Proponents of blood sports are widely cited to believe that they are traditional within the culture.[4] Bullfighting aficionados, for example, do not regard bullfighting as a sport but as a cultural activity. It is sometimes called a tragic spectacle, because in many forms of the sport the bull is invariably killed, and the bullfighter is always at risk of death. Both Barnaby Conrad's La Fiesta Brava and Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon offer opinion on this matter.
[edit] Online videos
The video-sharing website YouTube has been criticized by the RSPCA and other animal welfare organisations for allowing videos of animal conflict staged specifically to be shown on the site -- especially the feeding of one animal to another -- to remain there.[5][6]
[edit] List of blood sports
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[edit] Organizations opposed to bloodsports
- Irish Council Against Blood Sports (Ireland)
- League Against Cruel Sports (UK)
- World Society for the Protection of Animals (Global)
- Humane Society of the United States
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Irish Council Against Blood Sports
- YouTube footage of a captive deer being pursued by hounds and horsemen
- World Society for the Protection of Animals
[edit] References
- ^ Greenwood, George (1914). "Bloodsports". Stag Hunting pp. 1–33, in Killing for Sport: Essays by Various Writers, edited by Henry S. Salt. George Bell and Sons, Ltd, London. http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/index_old.html. Retrieved 2006-12-17.
- ^ Lewine, Edward (July 2005). Death and the Sun: A Matador's Season in the Heart of Spain. Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 061826325X. http://www.powells.com/biblio?show=061826325x#synopses_and_reviews.
- ^ Mitchell, Timothy (July 1991). Blood Sport: a social history of Spanish bullfighting. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 244. ISBN 0812231295. ISBN 9780812231298.
- ^ Cockfighting, Puerto Rico Herald, 2005.
- ^ Times Online article, August 19, 2007, retrieved August 25, 2007.
- ^ Practical Fishkeeping article, May 17, 2007, retrieved August 25, 2007.
