Today as Wild Things Live - a touring display of penguins, squirrel monkeys and exotic reptiles - visits a shopping centre in Glasgow, I think back to my younger years and brief encounters with similarly captive wild animals exploited for human entertainment...

Amongst all the many family photos my parents keep stored away in our home up on the north coast of Scotland, my favourite, and most memorable, was one of me as a little girl sitting proudly on the back of Anne the elephant. I loved animals you see, I still do, but I didn’t realise then the deep sadness that must have been so blatantly obvious in Anne’s eyes.