Spider fighting season almost here

I knew already about the national passion for cockfighting in the Philippines. In seemingly every available open space in Manila, including highway medians, there is a rooster tied to a rope or in a small cage. You see men carrying roosters around, pointing and grooming their roosters, and shops dedicated entirely to supplying feed, medicine, and equipment for cockfighting. But I just discovered yesterday that spider fighting is also a national sport. I really didn't believe it until I saw it. Apparently spider fighting occurs in the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and China.

In the Philippines, it seems to be mostly done by children, but adults also participate. Two female spiders of the genus Araneus are placed on a stick. The spiders are aggressive toward one another, so they will try to remove the challenger. The spider that falls to the ground first loses the round, and the first spider to win three rounds wins the match. People collect the spiders in the forest, so this activity is only conducted in the summer months. (March - September) It's also more popular in the summer because children are out of school. The best spiders can be sold for 100 pesos or more ($2), and people bet as much as they want on the matches.

Gambling is very popular in the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia. I've been told that people in the Philippines fight chickens, spiders, dogs, and even horses. In the U.S., fighting of animals is illegal and there is a big cultural stigma associated with it. The case of NFL football player Michael Vick, convicted of dog fighting in 2008, brought the issue of dog fighting into the national spotlight in the U.S.. I see many people lined up at OTBs and lottery ticket dealers on pay day here in the Philippines.

As easy as it is to label animal fighting as brutal and cruel, there are several legitimate arguments to made that it is no more cruel or brutal than modern animal husbandry. A for-profit industrialized agricultural model requires the disconnection of the process and the consumer. Large-scale industrial animal husbandry operations are arguably much more cruel and brutal than fighting, and have a vested interest in hiding this from the consumer. There is also the argument that the willingness to fight is in the genetics of these animals, and that animal fighting has occurred in the wild for millions of years outside of human control or observation. Arguably, the consumers and producers that participate in the for-profit industrialized agricultural model are no less guilty of cruelty to animals than people who fight animals.