Google Nabs PETA Proggy Award for 3-D Animal Feature
In the Wake of ‘Tiger King,’ Augmented Reality Technology Shows Irrelevance of Captive-Animal Exhibits
For Immediate Release:
April 14, 2020
Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382
As people who are self-isolating embrace technological entertainment—and as everyone watches Tiger King, which exposes the cruel underbelly of captive-animal displays—PETA is sending a Proggy Award (“Proggy” is for “progress”) to Google in honor of its game-changing augmented reality feature, which lets users view life-size, three-dimensional animals from the comfort of their own homes. The animals range from big cats and bears to sharks, snakes, wolves, and more—with no roadside zoos in sight.
“Captive animals are involuntarily confined for a lifetime with no hope of ever being free,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “That’s why PETA is recognizing Google for offering a way to view animals up close, without harming them—and we hope this will turn people away from ever visiting real captive-animal exhibits.”
In addition to causing sensitive animals immeasurable suffering, roadside zoos and marine mammal parks teach people that it’s acceptable to separate animals from their families and homes and confine them to inadequate enclosures and small tanks. Captive animals often exhibit stress-induced repetitive behavior from the intensive confinement, such as self-mutilation, pacing, and biting the bars of the cages. They are denied everything that’s natural and important to their well-being.
Tiger King pulls back the curtain on the shady practices of just some of the animal exhibitors who breed big cats for profit, separate babies from their mothers, and force vulnerable big-cat cubs into direct encounters with visitors. Many have criminal rap sheets and lengthy histories of animal welfare violations—but they still operate.
Google will receive a framed certificate and delicious vegan chocolate bars.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
