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In a unique collaboration between an aquarium and a penguin rescue centre, a program has been initiated to provide pensions to the world’s oldest, fittest and no longer reproductive penguins on the beaches. The goal is to create a community of cheer and relaxation for the birds, where their natural instincts and social behaviour are nurtured and aided in their last years of life. Known as Penguin Land, the facility has already welcomed its first resident, a 36-year-old Magellanic penguin, named Rocky. Retreating to a land-locked sanctuary in order to escape overfishing, pollution and other hazards, Penguin Land is situated at the New Bedford Aquarium in Massachusetts. In addition to a cozy and secure colony, penguins that retire at Penguin Land will also receive all the amenities and comforts needed to make them last in their golden years. The facility offers specialised diets, a swimming pool for exercise, medical care and other forms of social attention, such as interactive sessions with trainers and guests. These penguins will be cared for and protected for the rest of their lives, with the opportunity to express their natural instincts, and assist researchers in conservation-related studies.
Animals, as living beings and increasingly autonomous subjects, have long been subjected to and imprisoned by our society for various reasons like experimentation, conservation, tourism, and entertainment. The association between animals and humans, whether involved in solidarity campaigns against certain practices like circuses or in efforts to liberate animals from cages, has been imperative throughout the modern age. Now, with something like a retirement home for penguins, we have entered the age of “animal subjectivity.” It suggests that we are beginning to recognise certain animals, in ways similar to how we recognise humans, as having desires, memories, and feelings that must be met and respected. In other words, there is an emerging international community for certain “liberated” quadrupeds and birds that live according to their natural instincts and social behaviour and are still very much “ours” for “our” benefit. We are creating tremendous problems for other organisms as well as for ourselves on a planetary scale, and some animals are beyond the point of meaningful agency in our environment. The growing pangloon of the global conscience of animal subjectivity now implies that we recognise at least the possibility of stress, danger, and deprivation in our human-made world for so-called exotic and mundane animals, insects, and fungi. They are emergent, autonomous beings with their own perspective on world affairs. By recognising animal subjectivity, we open the possibility that there could be a fundamental reorganisation or “repolicying” of our position in regard to animals in the days, years, and centuries to come.
In various legal challenges or animal rights campaigns in the West, it is often claimed that circumscribing the idea of “personhood” simply to those with parents or two legs is a cruel imitation of an unnatural and arbitrary human condition. Now the international community through graduate and post-graduate animal studies programs has started to apply this idea of animal subjectivity, to which we are towed by contemporary affluence, entitlement, global responsibility, and autonomy. Whether at penguin retirement homes, memorial sanctuaries for wild elephants, or group therapy sessions for caged tigers, animal subjectivity demands that we become more responsive and maybe more creative, more interactive, and more caring about those creatures who inhabit our bungalows, forests, and seas. Perhaps, animal subjectivity will initiate a new era of experimentation, entertainment, and innovation that will involve animals in our midst, creating a world that prepares animals to be valued as rare and social curiosities, virtual residents, and gendered beings. Imagine that future, where animals are not simply subjects of our common world, but social beings, or subjects of our own species while also being our social companions, educators, and caregivers.
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