Malta is an animal farm

A man who has been charged with money laundering apparently used some of his over-abundance of ill-gotten funds to own exotic animals, including some six lions in one of his farmhouses.

There seems to be a fixation among people who want to flaunt their opulence by owning large cats and many kinds of animals that one normally finds in a zoo.

The government seems to have bowed to the pressure of these people and has never taken real serious measures to stop this nonsense in an overpopulated little island.

One normally attributes the breeding of dangerous dogs with the business of dog-fighting. However there is no law that prevents a person from keeping dangerous animals purely on the basis of their animals attacking someone. Even here the law is too lax with owners of dangerous animals; suffice to say that in one notorious case, a dog breeder was recently mauled by his own dogs in an attack that took place less than three years after his 95-year-old grandmother was killed by two of his pitbulls.

People have been allowed to keep and breed exotic animals such as lions, tigers and cheetahs have been allowed to practice their ‘hobby’ without too much hassle.

The law as it now stands and the government entity that is responsible for such matters are tempting the gods – some day we are going to have a tragedy involving one of these animals held in private captivity. In fact, according to a report on Lovin Malta, in December 2021 a tourist was treated at Mater Dei Hospital after being bitten by an exotic animal at one of Malta’s registered zoos.

In my opinion, considering the size and the population of Malta, no one should be allowed to privately own lions and tigers and other large cats, but the government is failing in its duty to put the interest of the people over the ‘interest’ of these large cat owners. It seems that the psychological needs of these pseudo-zookeepers are being given precedence over the general interest of the population.

I am convinced that the urge for some people to own large cats reflects a psychological need. They need to vaunt their money – many times obtained by tax evasion, money laundering or even the drug trade – by showing off, and owning exotic animals is one way of satisfying this need. The truth that some of these animals are dangerous carnivores makes their showing-off even more exciting. For themselves, of course.

The fact that the government never tackled this issue properly is indicative of the administration’s incapacity of reining in the excesses of those who need to assert their wealth – many times obtained illegally. They have friends among Cabinet members and spend their money not only on dangerous animals but also in buying political patronage.

I do not know how this phenomenon has evolved, but it seems that once one person started on this incredible way of flaunting his money, many others followed suit – not to be undone. Owning and breeding dangerous cats has become a hallmark of those who think they belong to a class that makes them a cut above everybody else.

I am sure that the responsible department does not even know how many of these animals actually live in Malta as the ‘hobby’ has spread like wildfire mostly among rich but uneducated contractors, some of whom venture also in illegal money-making ventures.

According to a reply to a Parliamentary Question given in February 2016, some 134 dangerous animals were registered in 15 localities in Malta. That was eight years ago. In December 2020 information given in a reply to another Parliamentary Question indicated that just under 400 wild animals are known to be kept in captivity in Malta. The Animal Rights Minister Anton Refalo then provided a list of 397 wild animals that included animals which are unregistered but known to authorities. Topping the list there were 64 tigers, 20 lions, 11 leopards and 24 pumas, pointing towards a marked preference for big cats.

Surely this list merited a psychological study of how and why in Malta there are so many individuals who feel ‘the need’ to own such animals.

Since then, the phenomenon continued to increase and I believe that the authorities have lost control with many animals that are not being registered; more so as they are being illegally bred in Malta.

The fact that this administration practically closes more than one eye to this phenomenon is worrying.

Anxiety about Artificial Intelligence

The debate about the effects of the use of artificial Intelligence (AI) and its dangers is currently raging in international fora.

For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now he worries it will cause serious harm. He has quit his job at Google so he can freely speak out about the risks of AI and has joined a growing chorus of critics who are wary about where AI will take mankind.

Last March, the Future of Life Institute, an NGO, called for a six-month ‘pause’ in the creation of the most advanced forms of AI in a document that was signed by tech luminaries after asking a number of questions in an open letter. These questions included: “Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop non-human minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart...and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilisation?”

In an intriguing article published recently in The Economist, historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari argues that AI has hacked the operating system of human civilisation because storytelling computers will change the course of human history.

In his words: “Fears of artificial intelligence have haunted humanity since the very beginning of the computer age. Hitherto these fears focused on machines using physical means to kill, enslave or replace people. But over the past couple of years new AI tools have emerged that threaten the survival of human civilisation from an unexpected direction. AI has gained some remarkable abilities to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images. AI has thereby hacked the operating system of our civilisation.”

He ends his interesting essay with the note: “This text has been generated by a human. Or has it?”