Dancing Bear

Dancing bears are captured as cubs, snatched from their mothers when they are just weeks old, they witness their mothers being brutally killed while trying to defend them. Before the age of 6 months, the cub's muzzle is pierced with a red-hot poker, without anesthetic. The poker is forced through the bone, cartilage and nerve membrane in the top of the muzzle. A coarse rope is then pulled through the wound, sometimes resulting in an infection. Before the cubs reach a year old, their teeth are knocked out with a hammer, with no anesthetic. The cubs suffer a punishing regime of beatings and starvation to make them submissive to their trainers. Cubs normally spend at least two years with their mothers, so it is not difficult to imagine their fear as they are subjected to an unnatural existence ridden with pain.

Dancing Bear
May 2009
25 x 37.38 cm

Genna Laban