Is It Wrong To Use Animals In The Zoo
Opinion
Modernistic Zoos Are Non Worth the Moral Cost
Ms. Marris is an environmental writer and the author of the forthcoming book "Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World."
Afterwards being captives of the pandemic for more than a yr, nosotros have begun experiencing the pleasures of simple outings: dining al fresco, shopping with a friend, taking a stroll through the zoo. As we snap a selfie by the body of water lions for the first fourth dimension in and then long, it seems worth asking, after our commonage ordeal, whether our pleasure in seeing wild animals upward shut is worth the toll of their captivity.
Throughout history, men have accumulated large and tearing animals to annunciate their might and prestige. Power-mad men from Henry Iii to Saddam Hussein's son Uday to the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar to Charlemagne all tried to underscore their strength by keeping terrifying beasts captive. William Randolph Hearst created his own individual zoo with lions, tigers, leopards and more at Hearst Castle. It is these exhibitionistic collections of animals, these autocratic menageries, from which the modern zoo, with its didactic plaques and $15 hot dogs, springs.
The forerunners of the mod zoo, open to the public and grounded in scientific discipline, took shape in the 19th century. Public zoos sprang up beyond Europe, many modeled on the London Zoo in Regent's Park. Ostensibly places for genteel entertainment and edification, zoos expanded across big and fearsome animals to include reptile houses, aviaries and insectariums. Living collections were often presented in taxonomic order, with various species of the same family grouped together, for comparative study.
The commencement zoos housed animals behind metal bars in spartan cages. But relatively early on in their evolution, a German exotic animal importer named Carl Hagenbeck changed the way wild fauna were exhibited. In his Animal Park, which opened in 1907 in Hamburg, he designed cages that didn't expect like cages, using moats and artfully arranged rock walls to invisibly pen animals. Past designing these enclosures so that many animals could be seen at once, without any bars or walls in the visitors' lines of sight, he created an immersive panorama, in which the fact of captivity was supplanted by the illusion of being in nature.
Mr. Hagenbeck'south model was widely influential. Increasingly, animals were presented with the distasteful fact of their imprisonment visually elided. Zoos shifted only slightly from overt demonstrations of mastery over beasts to a narrative of benevolent protection of individual animals. From there, information technology was an piece of cake leap to protecting animal species.
The "educational day out" model of zoos endured until the late 20th century, when zoos began actively rebranding themselves every bit serious contributors to conservation. Zoo animals, this new narrative went, office equally backup populations for wild animals under threat, also equally "ambassadors" for their species, teaching humans and motivating them to intendance about wildlife. This conservation focus "must be a key component" for institutions that want to exist accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a nonprofit organisation that sets standards and policies for facilities in the U.s. and 12 other countries.
This is the prototype of the zoo I grew up with: the unambiguously good borough institution that lovingly cared for animals both on its grounds and, somehow, vaguely, in their wild habitats. A few zoos are famous for their conservation work. Four of the zoos and the aquarium in New York Urban center, for instance, are managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is involved in conservation efforts effectually the world. Merely this is not the norm.
While researching my book on the ethics of human interactions with wild species, "Wild Souls," I examined how, exactly, zoos contribute to the conservation of wild animals.
A.Z.A. facilities report spending approximately $231 one thousand thousand annually on conservation projects. For comparison, in 2018, they spent $4.9 billion on operations and structure. I observe i statistic especially telling well-nigh their priorities: A 2018 analysis of the scientific papers produced by clan members between 1993 and 2013 showed that just most vii percent of them annually were classified as existence about "biodiversity conservation."
Zoos accredited by the A.Z.A. or the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria have studbooks and genetic pedigrees and carefully brood their animals as if they might be called upon at whatsoever moment to release them, similar Noah throwing open the doors to the ark, into a waiting wild habitat. But that day of release never quite seems to come.
There are a few exceptions. The Arabian oryx, an antelope native to the Arabian Peninsula, went extinct in the wild in the 1970s and then was reintroduced into the wild from zoo populations. The California condor breeding programme, which almost certainly saved the species from extinction, includes 5 zoos as active partners. Black-footed ferrets and cerise wolves in the Usa and aureate panthera leo tamarins in Brazil — all endangered, likewise — have been bred at zoos for reintroduction into the wild. An estimated twenty red wolves are all that remain in the wild.
The A.Z.A. says that its members host "more than than l reintroduction programs for species listed equally threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Deed." Nevertheless, a vast majority of zoo animals (there are 800,000 animals of 6,000 species in the A.Z.A.'due south zoos alone) will spend their whole lives in captivity, either dying of old age after a lifetime of display or by being culled as "surplus."
The practice of killing "surplus" animals is kept repose by zoos, merely it happens, especially in Europe. In 2014, the manager of the E.A.Z.A. at the fourth dimension estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 animals are euthanized in European zoos each year. (The alternative of mammals specifically in E.A.Z.A. zoos is "usually not more 200 animals per year," the organization said.) Early in the pandemic, the Neumünster Zoo in northern Germany coolly announced an emergency plan to cope with lost revenue by feeding some animals to other animals, compressing the food chain at the zoo like an accordion, until in the worst-case scenario, merely Vitus, a polar bear, would be left standing. The A.Z.A.'s policies allow for the euthanasia of animals, just the president of the association, Dan Ashe, told me, "it'south very rarely employed" by his member institutions.
Mr. Ashe, a onetime director of the U.S. Fish and Wild fauna Service, suggested that learning how to breed animals contributes to conservation in the long term, even if very few animals are beingness released at present. A day may come, he said, when we need to brood elephants or tigers or polar bears in captivity to relieve them from extinction. "If you don't take people that know how to care for them, know how to breed them successfully, know how to continue them in environments where their social and psychological needs can be met, and then yous won't be able to practice that," he said.
The other argument zoos commonly make is that they educate the public about animals and develop in people a conservation ethic. Having seen a regal leopard in the zoo, the visitor becomes more willing to pay for its conservation or vote for policies that will preserve it in the wild. What Mr. Ashe wants visitors to experience when they await at the animals is a "sense of empathy for the individual animal, equally well every bit the wild populations of that animal."
I exercise not doubtfulness that some people had their passion for a particular species, or wildlife in general, sparked by zoo experiences. I've heard and read some of their stories. I once overheard two schoolchildren at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington confess to each other that they had assumed that elephants were mythical animals similar unicorns before seeing them in the flesh. I remember well the awe and joy on their faces, 15 years later. I'd like to think these kids, now in their early on 20s, are working for a conservation organization somewhere. But at that place'southward no unambiguous evidence that zoos are making visitors care more most conservation or take any action to back up it. After all, more than than 700 1000000 people visit zoos and aquariums worldwide every year, and biodiversity is all the same in decline.
Epitome
In a 2011 study, researchers quizzed visitors at the Cleveland, Bronx, Prospect Park and Central Park zoos nigh their level of environmental business concern and what they thought about the animals. Those who reported "a sense of connectedness to the animals at the zoo" also correlated positively with general environmental concern. On the other manus, the researchers reported, "there were no significant differences in survey responses before entering an showroom compared with those obtained as visitors were exiting."
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A 2008 written report of 206 zoo visitors by some members of the aforementioned team showed that while 42 percent said that the "primary purpose" of the zoo was "to teach visitors most animals and conservation," 66 pct said that their principal reason for going was "to have an outing with friends or family," and just 12 pct said their intention was "to learn nearly animals."
The researchers also spied on hundreds of visitors' conversations at the Bronx Zoo, the Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago and the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. They constitute that only 27 pct of people bothered to read the signs at exhibits. More than than 6,000 comments fabricated by the visitors were recorded, almost half of which were "purely descriptive statements that asserted a fact about the showroom or the animal." The researchers wrote, "In all the statements nerveless, no i volunteered information that would lead the states to believe that they had an intention to advocate for protection of the animal or an intention to change their own behavior."
People don't go to zoos to learn nearly the biodiversity crunch or how they tin can help. They go to get out of the business firm, to become their children some fresh air, to see interesting animals. They get for the same reason people went to zoos in the 19th century: to exist entertained.
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A fine 24-hour interval out with the family unit might itself be justification plenty for the existence of zoos if the zoo animals are all happy to exist there. Alas, there'due south plenty of heartbreaking bear witness that many are not.
In many modernistic zoos, animals are well cared for, good for you and probably, for many species, content. Zookeepers are non mustache-twirling villains. They are kind people, bonded to their charges and immersed in the culture of the zoo, in which they are the good guys.
But many animals clearly bear witness united states that they practice not savor captivity. When confined they stone, pull their hair and appoint in other tics. Captive tigers pace back and forth, and in a 2014 written report, researchers found that "the time devoted to pacing by a species in captivity is best predicted by the daily distances traveled in nature by the wild specimens." Information technology is virtually as if they feel driven to patrol their territory, to hunt, to move, to walk a certain number of steps, equally if they take a Fitbit in their brains.
The researchers divided the odd behaviors of captive animals into ii categories: "impulsive/compulsive behaviors," including coprophagy (eating carrion), regurgitation, self-biting and mutilation, exaggerated aggressiveness and infanticide, and "stereotypies," which are endlessly repeated movements. Elephants bob their heads over and over. Chimps pull out their own hair. Giraffes incessantly flick their tongues. Bears and cats pace. Some studies have shown that as many as lxxx percent of zoo carnivores, 64 percent of zoo chimps and 85 pct of zoo elephants have displayed compulsive behaviors or stereotypies.
Elephants are particularly unhappy in zoos, given their great size, social nature and cognitive complexity. Many suffer from arthritis and other articulation bug from standing on hard surfaces; elephants kept lone become desperately lonely; and all zoo elephants suffer mentally from existence cooped upwards in tiny yards while their free-ranging cousins walk up to 50 miles a twenty-four hour period. Zoo elephants tend to dice young. At to the lowest degree 20 zoos in the United States accept already ended their elephant exhibits in office because of upstanding concerns about keeping the species captive.
Many zoos utilize Prozac and other psychoactive drugs on at least some of their animals to deal with the mental effects of captivity. The Los Angeles Zoo has used Celexa, an antidepressant, to control aggression in one of its chimps. Gus, a polar bear at the Central Park Zoo, was given Prozac as part of an attempt to terminate him from swimming countless figure-8 laps in his tiny puddle. The Toledo Zoo has dosed zebras and wildebeest with the antipsychotic haloperidol to keep them calm and has put an orangutan on Prozac. When a female gorilla named Johari kept fighting off the male she was placed with, the zoo dosed her with Prozac until she allowed him to mate with her. A 2000 survey of U.S. and Canadian zoos found that well-nigh half of respondents were giving their gorillas Haldol, Valium or another psychopharmaceutical drug.
Some zoo animals effort to escape. Jason Hribal'south 2010 book, "Fear of the Animal Planet," chronicles dozens of attempts. Elephants figure prominently in his book, in part considering they are so big that when they escape it generally makes the news.
Mr. Hribal documented many stories of elephants making a run for information technology — in one case repairing to a nearby forest with a pond for a mud bath. He also found many examples of zoo elephants hurting or killing their keepers and testify that zoos routinely downplayed or even lied nigh those incidents.
Elephants aren't the only species that attempt to flee a zoo life. Tatiana the tiger, kept in the San Francisco Zoo, snapped one day in 2007 after three teenage boys had been taunting her. She somehow got over the 12-foot wall surrounding her 1,000-square-human foot enclosure and attacked one of the teenagers, killing him. The others ran, and she pursued them, ignoring all other humans in her path. When she caught up with the boys at the buffet, she mauled them before she was shot to expiry by the constabulary. Investigators found sticks and pine cones within the showroom, most likely thrown by the boys.
Apes are excellent at escaping. Footling Joe, a gorilla, escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston twice in 2003. At the Los Angeles Zoo, a gorilla named Evelyn escaped vii times in 20 years. Apes are known for picking locks and keeping a beady eye on their captors, waiting for the 24-hour interval someone forgets to lock the door. An orangutan at the Omaha Zoo kept wire for lock-picking subconscious in his oral fissure. A gorilla named Togo at the Toledo Zoo used his incredible forcefulness to bend the bars of his cage. When the zoo replaced the confined with thick glass, he started methodically removing the putty holding information technology in. In the 1980s, a grouping of orangutans escaped several times at the San Diego Zoo. In ane escape, they worked together: One held a mop handle steady while her sister climbed it to freedom. Another fourth dimension, one of the orangutans, Kumang, learned how to use sticks to ground the current in the electric wire effectually her enclosure. She could and then climb the wire without beingness shocked. It is impossible to read these stories without final that these animals wanted out.
"I don't meet any problem with holding animals for brandish," Mr. Ashe told me. "People assume that because an animal can move great distances that they would cull to practise that." If they have everything they need nearby, he argued, they would be happy with smaller territories. And it is truthful that the territory size of an animal like a wolf depends greatly on the density of resource and other wolves. But so there'southward the pacing, the rocking. I pointed out that nosotros tin can't ask animals whether they are happy with their enclosure size. "That's truthful," he said. "There is always that element of choice that gets removed from them in a captive environment. That's undeniable." His justification was philosophical. In the end, he said, "we alive with our ain constraints." He added, "Nosotros are all captive in some regards to social and ethical and religious and other constraints on our life and our activities."
What if zoos stopped convenance all their animals, with the possible exception of any endangered species with a real chance of being released back into the wild? What if they sent all the animals that demand actually large areas or lots of freedom and socialization to refuges? With their apes, elephants, large cats, and other large and smart species gone, they could expand enclosures for the rest of the animals, concentrating on keeping them lavishly happy until their natural deaths. Somewhen, the only animals on display would be a few ancient holdovers from the sometime menageries, animals in active conservation breeding programs and possibly a few rescues.
Such zoos might even be merged with sanctuaries, places that take wild animals that considering of injury or a lifetime of captivity cannot live in the wild. Existing refuges often do permit visitors, just their facilities are really bundled for the animals, non for the people. These refuge-zoos could get places where animals live. Brandish would be incidental.
Such a transformation might free up some infinite. What could these zoos do with it, besides enlarging enclosures? Every bit an avid fan of botanical gardens, I humbly advise that as the convict animals retire and dice off without being replaced, these biodiversity-worshiping institutions devote more and more than space to the wonderful globe of plants. Properly curated and interpreted, a well-run garden tin can be a site for a rewarding "outing with friends or family," a source of instruction for the 27 percent of people who read signs and a indicate of civic pride.
I've spent many memorable days in botanical gardens, completely swept away past the beauty of the pattern as well as the unending wonder of evolution — and in that location's no uneasiness or guilt. When there's a surplus, you tin but have a plant sale.
Emma Marris is an environmental writer and the author of the forthcoming book "Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Homo Earth."
Photographs by Peter Fisher. Mr. Fisher is a photographer based in New York.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/zoos-animal-cruelty.html
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