Nailchipper

I’ve never been a big fan of zoos. When I visit them I feel horrible for knowing what these animals must endure (like the polar bear I saw in Central Park licking a block of ice on a hot summer day) and then feel guilty for getting pleasure out of seeing these awesome creatures. But even then, I can’t shake the feeling that zoos are from a different time; a time when circuses and freak shows were key forms of entertainment. But things have changed, and it leaves me to wonder whether it’s time that we move away from zoos, focus on preservation, and come to accept that wild animals should not be confined.

The laws protecting animals are often well intentioned and the people working with them the most caring. So my issue is not with the laws, the people or great resource that zoos provide; they do what they can under the system we have in place. It is with the basic ethical issue of institutionally stripping animals from their natural habitat and creating an artificial world for them for our benifit. I am questioning the means, not the ends.

Modern ethics tell us that there is something intrinsically wrong with trapping someone, restricting their behavior and performing (physical or psychological) experiments on them. That’s why we don’t have humans in zoos. But even then, it wasn’t until 1974, with the creation of the IRB, that restrictions were applied to certain kinds behavioral experiment on humans…. so don’t count on laws, or even science, to be on par with ethics. We have to all realized it ourselves.

So why don’t our ethical revelations apply to animals? The old argument involved something about animals not having “souls.“ The modern argument morphed into something about animals not being “conscious”, giving us free reign over their lives under the guise that they don’t know what is happening to them anyway. But we don’t have a good idea of what consciousness is so we can’t use that as a fair argument. What we do know is that large animals, especially social ones, have natural behavior stifled by enclosures. The big cats, like lions, leopards and cheetahs often have territories that cover 50 square kilometers. Something zoos, especially urban zoos, cannot provide. So what happens to these animals? They go crazy. They pace. They pull out their hair. They ram into into things. They lash out. And often die.

I found the following quote in Wikipedia:

Historians Eric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier cite statistics showing that three-quarters of apes die in captivity within the first twenty months, with the overall “stock turnover“ of animals being one-fifth to one-fourth over the course of a year. They further note that this “extreme mortality of wild animals in zoos has always been the driving force behind the massive scale of importations.“

Additionally, many thousands of animals are placed on “surplus lists“ each year, where they are sold to, among other places, “circuses, animal merchants, auctions, individual pet owners, “game farms,“ “hunting ranches,“ and “trophy collectors.“

That system feels flawed.

I am not calling out for the abolishment of zoos, but I think that there needs to be a complete reconsidering of the role zoos play in our society that starts from the bottom and works its way up.

The basic conditions I would feel comfortable with a modern zoo meeting are: First, no “exotic“ animals in urban areas. Zoos should focus on the land’s indigenous creatures. The idea that I should be able to see, even study, a tiger locally unrealistic. If you want to see a tiger, it’s less risky for you to go to India than importing a tiger from India to every major city. Second: focus on preserving, expanding and creating national parks. Let the animals live free and study them at a distance - intervene only when necessary. And third: Limit human contact. Educate the public with films and documentaries, like March of the Penguin and Planet Earth, and tap into that sympathy to build support and expand protection. Modern media technologies, like high definition DVDs, allow us to learn more about our world, while leaving little or no impact on the environment.