The music video for Amsterdam based rockband zZz’s track Running with the Beast has been pulled by Youtube, according to Omroep Brabant (Dutch). The video apparently shows two roosters fighting. The cocks were smeared with paint before being put into a tiny arena, and were made to fight on top of paper sheets which were later used to produced the artwork for the CD and for posters and so on.

In an elaborate statement (PDF), the band managed to claim that “no animals were injured.” Indeed, “for legal reasons the video was shot in Bangkok, Thailand.”

See also Dozens of hamsters freed from plastic balls for another tale of artists abusing animals for their own personal gain showing the inherent hypocrisy of people who don’t want to be confronted with the maltreatment of animals, but who will for instance gladly enjoy the fruits of factory farming.

Animals rights activists claim they have been sprayed with elephant urine by circus employees last Saturday in Hoogeveen. The activists said that employees of Circus Renz Berlin used water pistols to shoot at them. When the police arrived at the scene everything was quiet again, although a threatening atmosphere was still lingering in the air according to an unnamed police spokesperson. The police confiscated one water gun that contained a “foul smelling substance”.

Via nu.nl.

(Illustration by Monroe. Used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2.)

Last Thursday the Society for the Protection of Animals raided an Amsterdam art gallery in co-operation with the local police to free dozens of hamsters. The animals were part of an exhibition by artist Tinkebell (pseudonym of Katinka Simonse) called Empathy. In the exhibition hamsters were locked up in plastic, see-through play-balls, set in a recreated living room. With the exhibition Tinkebell wants to expose the “ambiguous morality of animal rights and environmental activists” by using the “often naïve ideas that people—activists—have about the concept of freedom in the animal world.” The balls she uses (so called “run-about balls”) are popular with pet owners, who use them to let their pets roam relatively free through the house “without the worry of escape or injury,” as one merchant calls it.

The artist is in the dark about the why of the raid. “Nobody told me anything,” she told Amsterdam TV channel AT5. According to AT5, Tinkebell and the galery owner will be questioned by the police next week.

Tinkebell caused an earlier uproar when she killed her three year old cat to turn it into a handbag. In the TV program De Wereld Draait Door she suggested that it was a mercy killing, claiming the cat was depressed.

Via Fok (Dutch). Source image: Empathy.