Russian Circus Act Cruel to Fish, People as Well

Charlie Brewer/Flickr

Fish at Sydney Market

Restaurants can be circus acts. You know the type: massive, splashy, loud, with iffy, over-priced food and, more often than not, some off-putting, over-wrought theme. Still, even Ninja New York can't hold a candle to a real circus act, especially one involving eating, or at least something akin to it.

Reuters reports that the New South Wales Department of Industry and Investment has forced the Great Moscow Circus to abandon one of its favorite acts, an appetizing little bit in which a woman gobbles a live fish and subsequently regurgitates it.

Australian animal rights activists applauded the decision to crack down on the offensive act: most likely, in concert with anyone who'd attended the circus performances and hoped to accompany the evening's entertainment with, say, a bag of chips or some cotton candy. Nothing like a little live regurgitation to curb the appetite.

No word on the size of the fish. An anchovy? We'd have trouble seeing that from the cheap seats, even with our glasses on. Anything much bigger, and we'd be squirming as much as the fish. The regurgitation bothers us more than the fish's live-ness. We wonder how hard animal rights activists are going at Noma's René Redzepi over his jars of live shrimp.