Italian circus says escaped lion posed no risk

The lion that escaped from a circus near Rome posed no threat to the public, his handler insisted Sunday, as campaigners called for Italy to ban wild animals in entertainment.

Residents of the seaside town of Ladispoli were told to stay indoors for more than five hours on Saturday evening while police, vets and circus staff tracked the lion, finally sedating and then capturing him.

Extraordinary videos published by Italian media, apparently taken by locals, showed the fully-grown lion with a shaggy mane walking through dark and deserted residential streets, padding past parked cars.

But Rony Vassallo, who is responsible for the animals in the Rony Roller Circus, said that while the thought of confronting a lion would make most people fearful, eight-year-old Kimba posed little danger.

Residents of the seaside town of Ladispoli were told to stay indoors for more than five hours on Saturday evening while police, vets and circus staff tracked the lion.

"He met with people in an environment he wasn't used to... and nothing happened, he didn't even for a second have the instinct to attack a person," he told AFP at the circus site.

He said his fear had been "that someone could have harm the animal, out of fear, or excess enthusiasm".

Nearby, not far from the red and white striped main tent where preparations were under way for the afternoon show, the newly captured lion paced inside his cage, occasionally roaring.

- Sabotage? -

Vassallo said Kimba was only lightly sedated and woke up almost immediately, while examinations by vets had concluded he bore no ill-effects from his excursion.

But the handler, whose family runs the travelling circus, said they were all "very shaken and very tense" after the escape, which he believed was not an accident.

Vassallo said he personally checked on the cage an hour before the lion went walkabout, and "everything was in order".

He declined to comment on reports of sabotage, including that the lock was forced, saying an investigation was underway.

But he said it had never happened before and "it's very strange".

He showed how the door to the metal cage opens inwards, secured with a sliding bolt and a lightweight chain with a small padlock.

- Forced into captivity -

Kimba was born and raised in captivity, alongside his two brothers -- Zeus and Ivan -- and sister Maya.

They are among nine big cats at the circus, including tigers, while acts also involve elephants, camels, horses and even bison.

The circus has drawn the ire of animal rights campaigners, who say keeping such wild creatures is cruel.

More than 20 European countries have banned or heavily restricted the use of animals in circuses -- but Italy is not yet among them

More than 20 European countries have banned or heavily restricted the use of animals in circuses -- but Italy is not yet among them.

A law has been drafted but was this year delayed to 2024, according to the LAV campaign group, which estimates that just under 2,000 animals are held in circuses across Italy.

What happened in Ladispoli "highlights the dangers of circuses with animals from the point of view of public security", said the animal rights group OIPA.

But it also highlighted "the discomfort of poor creatures forced into captivity for entertainment", it said.

Ladispoli mayor Alessandro Grando, who had warned residents to stay at home on Saturday, has also called for a change in the law.

"I hope that this episode can stir some consciences, and that we can finally put an end to the exploitation of animals in circuses," he said.

But Vassallo said critics "don't know the reality of the facts, how animals are treated in circuses, of the checks that are carried out".

In the surrounding neighbourhood, residents who spoke to AFP expressed support for the circus -- and seemed more concerned about the lion than public safety.

"I was a little bit scared but afterwards, from the images from the videos, you could see that he was so good," said Barbara Rosolino, 47.

"He wanted to go home anyway, you could see he was scared out of his mind.", Italian circus says escaped lion posed no risk

Read More........→October 06, 2024

Counting on Fingers Really Helps Kids Improve Their Math Skills–By 40% New Study Shows

By Yan Krukau via Public Domain on Pexels

Some teachers consider finger counting a signal that youngsters are struggling with math, while others associate its use as advanced numerical knowledge.

Now, new research is the first to show that children’s performance in arithmetic can show a “huge” improvement through the teaching of a finger-counting method.

Swiss and French teams explored whether finger counting can help primary-school-aged children to solve math problems. They said adults rarely use their fingers to calculate a small sum, because such behavior could be attributed to cognitive impairments or “pathological difficulties” in math.

But young children under age 8 who use their fingers to solve such problems may be seen as intelligent, probably because they have already reached a level that allows them to understand that a quantity can be represented by different means.

The research aimed to determine whether children who don’t count on their fingers can be trained to do so, and whether such training would result in enhanced arithmetic performance.

The study, published in the journal Child Development, focused on 328 five- and six-year-old children at kindergarten, mainly living in France, and tested their abilities to solve simple addition problems.

The kindergarteners were recruited through their teachers, who voluntarily took part in the experiment, which included a pre-test, training held over two weeks, a post-test closely after the training’s end, and a delayed post-test.

The results showed an “important increase” in performance between pre- and post-test for the trained children who did not count on their fingers originally—from 37% to 77% of correct responses—compared to non-finger users in the control group.

Whether children who use finger counting are using it as an arithmetic procedure or understand something deeper about numbers will still need to be determined with future research.

“Our findings are highly valuable because, for the first time, we provide a concrete answer to the long-standing question of whether teachers should explicitly teach children to use their fingers for solving addition problems,” said study leader Dr. Catherine Thevenot.

“Finger calculation training is effective for over 75% of kindergartners,” she added. “The next step is to explore how we can support the remaining 25% of children who didn’t respond as well to the intervention.”

Dr. Thevenot, of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, says the study came about as a result of conversations with primary school teachers.

“They often asked me whether they should encourage or discourage children from using their fingers to solve calculations.

“Surprisingly, the existing research didn’t offer a clear answer, which left teachers understandably frustrated with my frequent response of ‘I don’t know.’

“This recurring question, coupled with the lack of concrete evidence, inspired me to investigate the issue myself.

“When I first saw the results, I was amazed by the huge improvement in performance among children who didn’t initially use their fingers to solve the problems.

“Before our intervention, these children were only able to solve about one-third of the addition problems during a pre-test. After training, however, they were solving over three-quarters of them.

“This improvement truly exceeded my expectations,” said Dr. Thevenot. “The difference was striking, especially compared to the control groups, where gains were insignificant.

“An important question now is to determine whether what we taught to children goes beyond a mere procedure to solve the problems.

“In other words, we want to know whether our intervention led to a deeper conceptual understanding of numbers, specifically whether children better grasp how to manipulate the quantities represented by their fingers.

In fact, we have already started addressing this question and the initial results are very promising. However, we still need to carry out additional experiments to confirm that these improvements are indeed a direct result of our training program.”, Counting on Fingers Really Helps Kids Improve Their Math Skills–By 40% New Study Shows

Read More........→September 23, 2024