Since the beginning of early civilizations human beings have captured majestic animals and locked them up for their own entertainment and desire to gain knowledge. Today there are over 1,000 zoos in the world that strive to lure people in to see the creatures from exotic places. Most people have visited a zoo at least once in their lifetime where they stood in awe of the elephant bobbing its head up and down and the tiger pacing back and forth in front of the glass wall separating him from numerous onlookers gawking at his strength and beauty.When the people are watching those animals most are not thinking about what measures were taken to relocate that animal from its habitat to captivity.
Most are not wondering what the zoo is doing to closely mirror the animal’s natural habitat. And most importantly, most people are not wondering about how the animal is faring in captivity and usually in solitude.What the observers do not understand is that the bobbing of the head and the pacing back and forth is not natural behavior for those animals, that the measures taken to get the animal there were typically inhumane, and that most animals in captivity suffer from behavioral issues due to their inability to behave according to their natural instincts with mates and hunting. Animals like zebras, giraffes, elephants and gazelles were designed to run across miles of open terrain not live out their lives in captivity.
In zoos these animals are deprived of privacy, confined to inadequate spaces and unable to engage in natural hunting and mating activity (Horton 1). Billy is an Asian Bull elephant living in the Los Angeles Zoo who spends his days alone in an enclosing of just under an acre of land, which is a generous amount compared to other zoos. Billy spends his day in one spot obviously uncomfortable and occasionally roaming to another part of his habitat to continue shifting his weight back and forth (Lemonick 1).According to Time Magazine, elephants spend their days walking up to 30 miles and socially interacting with others in groups of up to twenty (Lemonick 1). Billy’s consistent head bobbing is typical in elephants in zoos all over the world. The animals are reacting in distress from an inadequate physical environment (Lemonick 1).
According to people avidly against zoos due to their enclosures, “forcing animals to live in the zoo is like forcing a human to live in a fish tank”(Why Should Zoos be Banned 1). However, it is not only the lack of a natural environment causing the animals issues.Zebras at the national zoo in Washington D. C.
starved to death because of the insufficient amount of incorrect food and the same zoo’s Red Pandas died after ingesting rat poisoning (Horton 1). Ironic these incidents occurred in a zoo that claims to help with the reintroduction of endangered animals. Even worse, the Captive Animals’ Protection Society had to confiscate a monkey that was being fed cake and other junk food from Tweddle Zoo (Captive Animals Protection Society 1). The behavioral issue seen in most animals has a name. Zoochosis.
This is what experts are calling the saddening behavior of animals and what zookeepers are trying to cover up by administering Prozac, an unnatural mood-altering drug, to their animals (Carr 1). According to the Captive Animals’ Protection Society, “Lions spend 48% of their time pacing, a recognized sign of [zoochosis]. (Captive Animals Protection Society 1)” 48 % of their time! Imagine walking back and forth for almost half of your life because you were distressed. It is not right to submit these animals to that kind of life when zoos claim to be helping them.Wanda Embar tells her opinion that “zoos are not much more than a collection of sad and exploited animals giving a very bad example about how we should treat the fellow occupants of out Earth” (Embar 1). Zoos keep animals alive but they cannot maintain all of the behavioral or social aspects of the species in their current enclosures (Fravel 1).
Animals have no tasks to exercise their intelligent leaving them to become bored, depressed, and institutionalized becoming helplessly dependent on humans (Isacat 2).The old concrete-and-steel cages that resembled prisons for animals are mostly gone. In fact, the cages themselves are mostly gone. The barriers between people and animals today consist largely of moats and unobtrusive ramparts that give the exhibits the feel of miniature wild habitats. But the reform movement, say critics, didn't go far enough, and those natural-looking habitats are just an illusion created to enhance the visitors' experience. "From the animals' point of view," says Hancocks, a former zoo director, "they are not better than they were when they were in cages.
It's all done for theatrics (Lemonick 2). " The new habitats some zoos installed to attempt to better emulate the animal’s environment to stop the zoochosis were not successful because the new habitats are merely illusions for onlookers because they are more attractive. They are not actually improving the amount of space a certain animal has available to them. Many people are under the impression zoos are beneficial to society due to their abundance in educational growth for the zoo-goers.
This misconception could not be more wrong. The Captive Animals’ Protection Society ran a study of United Kingdom zoos and found 41% of the animals had no signs identifying their species which is the most basic of information necessary for increasing ones knowledge (Captive Animals Protection Society 2). Another study conducted by the same society found no evidence for the claim that zoos “promote attitude change, education, or interest in conservation in visitors (Captive Animals Protection Society 1).”Observers found most people only spend a few seconds at each display waiting for the animals to do something that excites the viewer and then quickly move on becoming bored with the socially depressed animal restricting them from gaining any real understanding of the animal (Carr 1).
It is only logical that research conducted on abnormally disturbed animals in barren condition will provide reliable information on abnormally disturbed animals kept in barren conditions (Isacat 1). Animals should be observed in their natural habitat where they are living the life they were created to live (Embar 1).Another common misconception among supporters of zoos is that they are beneficial to the conservation of nature and helping endangered species. People think zoos are not only saving wild animals from extinction but also returning the newly populated species back to their wild habitats (Captive Animals Protection Society 2). According to Animal Planet, “Of 145 reintroduction programs carried out by zoos in the last century, only 16 truly succeeded in restoring populations to the wild” (Horton 1).
In order to be able to reintroduce the animals back into their habitat the zoos would need to be keeping the animals in habitats that resembled their natural ones in climate and fauna. Also, the animals would need to be raised with minimal human contact in populations large enough to provide a suitable gene pool (Embar 2). Since the majority of zoos are meeting few to none of those above requirements, the feeble conservation efforts are failing. Captive animals are unable to choose whom they mate with and are sometimes artificially inseminated so their babies can be sold to other zoos.
This leads to mothers rejecting their young, stillbirth, and many miscarriages (Carr 1). In order to capture the endangered animal to attempt to help repopulate the species the capturers typically have to kill the parents of the animal and destroy the communities. Only a small amount of zoos breed animals effectively for conservation and are only able to release a few animals into the wild, which does not justify the captivation of millions (Isacat 1).The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria said “members of zoos were being actively encouraged to kill unwanted animals, including tigers, if other zoos did not want them and they were hybrids.
It was said that the animals take up too much space and keeper time”(Captive Animals Protection Society 3). It is a bit twisted that while zoos claim to be saving populations they are killing the ones that are inconvenient for them to keep. Michael Lemonick states, “ There are two Disney Parks, that’s enough for America’s children” (Lemonick 2).Similarly, fewer zoos would be enough for humans as well. I am not proposing we eliminate the thousands of zoos over the world down to two, but we should gradually eliminate the majority while leaving one zoo for each region.
Yes, people will have to travel to see the zoos, but if they cannot afford that the animals are easily learned about from National Geographic magazines or Animal Planet on television. There are associations spreading themselves too thin trying to increase the quality of habitats for animals in zoos and increase the animals’ quality of life.The main association in America is the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. This organization requires high standards of animal care, science, and conservation. Their website informs us that of the 2,400 licensed animal exhibitors only 212 are members of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) (Fravel 1). If we minimize the amount of zoos we can maximize their quality.
The AZA and WAZA (Worldwide Aquarium and Zoo Association) can choose a zoo in each region that would best assimilate the increase in animals and focus on increasing the quality and size of that one zoo.As animals in the zoos that the aquarium and zoo associations did not pick to assimilate lived out their lives the zoos would begin to combine the remaining animals into one large one that would better be able to meet the current philosophies of these associations. “The currently accredited WAZA zoos serve as conservation centers that are concerned about ecosystem healthy, take responsibility for species survival, contribute to research conservation, education, and provide society to the opportunity to develop personal connections with the animals in their care (Association of Zoos and Aquariums 1).”WAZA and AZA are practicing a new landscape ethic called “immersion” in which animals are given living conditions that replicate their natural habitats leading to dense jungles and natural-sized groupings of animals decreasing the behavioral problems in animals placed in these zoos (Blease 1). Last year, the AZA zoos carried out 2,230 successful research and conservation projects in over 80 countries (Fravel 2).Imagine what they could do for conservation if they could focus their attention to only a few well-assimilated zoos instead of worrying about the 2,200 zoos that are housing mentally insane animals due to lack of a natural habitat and feebly attempting to help them on the side.
Also, to aid conservation the WAZA and AZA could join forces with the Nature Conservancy. This is a non-profit organization that takes a scientific approach to conservation by selecting areas based on analysis that are in need of preservation of the ecosystems (Wikipedia 1).The Nature conservancy works to protect the endangered animals in their natural environment, but they do sometimes call on zoos for help. For example, a Nature Conservancy funded project worked with the Toledo Zoo to link the Karner blue butterfly-breeding program with the restoration of the butterflies’ habitat in Ohio (Fravel 1). This could become a more common occurrence with the conservation driven WAZA and AZA running all of the zoos.
All in all, zoos are not currently treating animals correctly. When we go to zoos we see the effects of inadequate nourishment and environment.Zoos are failing at their attempted reintroduction programs and at providing educational benefits, which are the main reasons people want to keep them. Together with the Worldwide Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums it would be possible to combine their efforts with the Nature Conservancy and help reduce the number of zoos and combine it into one per region so the WAZA and AZA could focus their efforts and produce better results while fixing their habitats and repopulating species.
