The beastly business of animal fights
Five-minute read
There was a time in history when it was commonplace for animals to be forced to fight each other for human entertainment. There was no TV or internet, so naturally people were desperate to spend their time watching animals rip one another apart.
We’ve forced countless animals to face combat, either with one another or human opponents. Alligator wresting, kangaroo and orangutan boxing, dog fighting and bullfighting are all still a thing in modern times. Look it up on Youtube if you don’t believe me.
We all have better things to do than read every detail of every kind of animal fight that’s ever gone on, and quite frankly I’m depressed enough as it is. I’m going to focus specifically on cockfighting, because it’s even crazier than I realised and you all need to know.
Cockfighting was a Roman invention (of course) and became massive in most of the world for hundreds of years. Specially bred birds called gamecocks would be put in an enclosed space. These birds can be very territorial and are likely to show aggression when confined together.
I can’t give you the details of every single global cockfighting culture, so I’m going to cover three. The first is my home country, the United Kingdom.
I went down some dark holes to research this, especially when I expanded my search into fights between other species. There was a bit of a trend for unequal pairings. The fight would be pegged as a dead cert, but sometimes the outcome was surprising.
In 1899 a zoo owner put one of his storks up against a lion (also belonging to him). You’d think the lion would snap the stork like a twig, but the the bird went beak-crazy in the big cat’s face. The lion quickly retreated, as did the second lion they put in with the stork. By the end of the week, it shared a cage with five lions who were too terrified to go anywhere near the bird.
It’s like a horrible mutation of rock paper scissors. Stork beats lion. Kangaroo beats Buffalo. Dog beats both lion and elephant. Gorilla beats dog. Hog and rattlesnake get mutual destruction. Thankfully, these matches were mostly stunts, and didn’t grip the nation in the same way cockfighting did.
In the middle ages, cockpits were a common sight in villages across the nation. Birds were trained by men called ‘feeders’ for months before a fight. The animals had to spar every day, and would only be fed and watered afterwards.
They had complicated and secret menu concoctions to fuel their birds. Ingredients included maggots, ‘sacred’ soil from beneath a church and urine. I’d probably be ready to fight if I was given that to eat.
When the gamecocks fought in the ring, they were fitted with sharp steel spurs. These were capable of delivering a fatal blow in a single strike. The fight went on until one bird was dead, or totally incapacitated.
Cockfights quickly became deeply entrenched in gambling. By Tudor times they’d sharpened up the rules and introduced weight classes. Historians posit these regulations became the foundation for the way Britain would structure sports fixtures in the future.
Cockfighting was banned outright in England and Wales and in 1835. It was outlawed in Scotland 60 years later in 1895. Sadly, where there’s money, there’s a shady underworld dedicated to that particular flow of cash.
This Express article reported the following in 2017 -
Cockfighting is at a five-year high in the UK and growing, particularly in the British-born Pakistani communities, according to a new report from the RSPCA.
The new RSPCA statistics show a leap from 45 recorded incidents or calls in 2012 to 60 last year, with raids uncovering fights taking place in people’s kitchens and garages - as well as in specialist pits.
Cool that they mentioned the ethnicity of the perpetrators. No agenda there, clearly.
The point is, cockfighting is still happening, be it legal or not. Not just in the UK either. Cockfighting was only banned for good in the USA in 2007. You read that right.
Seeing as 2007 is still in living memory for a huge chunk of the population, the sport still continues behind closed doors. It’s up to you to decide whether this is surprising or not, but it’s mostly a red state thing.
During my research for episode seven I got a bit obsessed with the American regulations on animal fighting from when it was still above board in a handful of states. It seemed to crazy to me how arbitrary the rules were when the end result was still a brutal animal fight to the death.
I found an amazing organisation called Showing Kindness and Respect to Animals (SHARK) who advocate for animals used in American sports. That includes legal acts, such as rodeos.
They’ve posted a YouTube video alleging an Oklahoma sheriff has been tipping off attendees of illegal cockfights in order to help them escape arrest. It’s equally disheartening to learn that cockfighting is still legal in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
But nothing could compare to the disappointment I have for the Philippines. Not only is it legal, it’s protected by law as an important cultural practice.
I learned this in a piece from the Manila Bulletin in 2022 -
Sabong (cockfighting) is considered a popular past-time in the Philippines, dating back to pre-colonial times. The game has, thus, been firmly embedded in Filipino culture for thousands of years to the extent of being considered as a culture and tradition.
In 1974, the Cockfighting Law was passed. It acknowledged sabong as “a popular, traditional, and customary form of recreation and entertainment among Filipinos” that should be “a vehicle for the preservation and perpetuation of native Filipino heritage and, thereby, enhance our national identity.
There are lots of justifications for sabong in the article. It supposedly brings different social classes together, gives poor gamblers or bird owners the chance to ‘win big’. This next one is my least favourite -
As a blood sport where game fowls fight to the death or inflict physical trauma – sabong emphasizes the Filipino culture of survival of the fittest.
The piece continues in a pretty chilling conclusion -
The yearly World Slasher Cup, regarded as the “Olympics of Cockfighting,” is to be held later this March 2022 at the Araneta Coliseum.
Clearly a tradition, arguably part of our national identity, sabong is deeply ingrained in the Filipino culture and would seem to continue to do so for thousands of years to come.
It’s high time we agreed as a planet that animals shouldn’t suffer for human entertainment. If anybody has any ideas on how to achieve that, get on my contact page and email me your plan. I’m serious, because I have no clue how to convince the world that animal cruelty has to end now. So let’s have some pitches, people!
