How do you make a bear dance?

First, you have to get a cub. Bears are exceedingly shy animals—it is harder to sight a sloth bear in the wild than a tiger, wildlife conservationists will tell you. You have to lure the new mother away, kill it, and steal the cubs. If it’s a male cub, castrate it with a blade. Smash out the canines so it can’t attack you. Then the crucial bit; pierce the bear’s muzzle with a red- hot rod and then thread the hole with a rope. It is important not to let the muzzle heal. It’s the pain—when you tug at the rope—that makes the bear jump. You have a dancing bear.

For years, dancing bears have been a wretchedly common sight. In 1997, when a survey was done by a young, firebrand wildlife conservationist-in-training and a veteran animal welfare activist, there were 1,200 bears performing on the streets across the country, spending their lives tethered to a rope not more than 4ft in length. By December 2009, the young conservationist who had done the survey, Kartick Satyanarayan, had grown to become one of the leading animal rights activists in the country, and he could claim that the last of the dancing bears was off the streets. It was a remarkable story, the result of 15 years of single-minded dedication to a project............Read more

 

Source: livemint