Should Wiildlife Stay
W i l d?
The Reality of Zoos
The following article was written by Michelle Carr.
Confused Animal Lover from St. Louis writes, “I’m a huge animal lover, and I understand why the circus is bad for animals, but what about zoos?”
Great question! Many people aren’t aware of the cruelty behind zoos, so it’s good that you’re thinking about animals used for entertainment. When I was a kid, I went to the zoo all the time with my family. I loved pandas as a kid (still do!), and I thought being able to see them in person would be neat. But once I saw them “up close and personal,” I realized that the animals were miserable. It instantly became very clear to me that the animals imprisoned in zoos are sad and don’t want to be kept in artificial environments, have people gawk at them, listen to children who bang on the windows of their enclosures, or have cameras flashing in their faces. To put it simply, zoos are imprisoning animals who want to be free.
Captive animals are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them, and as a result, they become bored and lonely and many even suffer from a condition called “zoochosis.” If you’ve ever witnessed a captive animal rock and sway back and forth, you’ve seen the disease firsthand. This condition is so rampant in zoos that some zoos give animals a mood-altering drug, such as Prozac, because the public has started to catch on.
Some animals are so unhappy that they risk their lives in desperate attempts to free themselves. At the Dallas Zoo, a gorilla named Jabari tried to escape by jumping over the walls and moats of his enclosure, only to be fatally shot by police. A witness later confessed that teenagers were taunting him by throwing rocks.
Animals are unable to thrive in small enclosures, especially with unnatural weather and climates. For example, elephants typically walk up to 30 miles in just one day, but Lucy, the lone elephant at the Edmonton Zoo, is locked inside a barn when the zoo is closed and during Edmonton’s frigid winter months, which means she spends most of her time indoors, without much room to move. The near-constant confinement because of the harsh weather has caused Lucy to develop painful arthritis.
In reality, most people only spend a few seconds at each display, waiting for the animals to do something “exciting,” but they gain little, if any, true understanding of the animals. In addition, captive animals don’t get to choose their mates, and they are sometimes artificially inseminated so that their babies can be sold or traded to other zoos. This often results in miscarriages, death at birth, or the mother’s rejection of her young. The Chinese government “rents” pandas to zoos worldwide for fees of more than $1 million per year!
Traveling and roadside zoos are even crueler. Animals are often kept in barren cages, such as concrete pens, and in stressful environments, with nothing more than an old tire or a log to stimulate their minds and enrich their lives. People have also been sickened—and some have died—after contracting diseases from animals in petting zoos.
Instead of going to the zoo, you can learn about animals by watching nature documentaries or observing the animals in their own natural habitats instead. Now that I know the reality behind zoos, I don’t go to the zoo, and I encourage my friends and family to boycott them as well. I love animals, and I want to see them free, not held captive behind bars!
Our Mission Statement
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 3 million members and supporters.
PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in the clothing trade, in laboratories, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of rodents, birds, and other “pests” as well as cruelty to domesticated animals.
PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.
Animal Rights Uncompromised: Zoos
PETA opposes zoos because cages and cramped enclosures at zoos deprive animals of the opportunity to satisfy their most basic needs. The zoo community regards the animals it keeps as commodities, and animals are regularly bought, sold, borrowed, and traded without any regard for established relationships. Zoos breed animals because the presence of babies draws zoo visitors and boosts revenue. But the animals’ fate is often bleak once they outgrow their “cuteness.” And some zoos still import animals from the wild.
In general, zoos and wildlife parks preclude or severely restrict natural behavior, such as flying, swimming, running, hunting, climbing, scavenging, foraging, digging, exploring, and selecting a partner. The physical and mental frustrations of captivity often lead to abnormal, neurotic, and even self-destructive behavior, such as incessant pacing, swaying, head-bobbing, bar-biting, and self-mutilation.
Even large, well-known, and popular zoos engage in unscrupulous practices, such as dumping unwanted animals or taking animals from the wild. In 2003, the San Diego Zoo and Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo imported 11 African elephants from Swaziland. In 2006, accredited zoos in Denver; Houston; Litchfield Park, Arizona; San Antonio; San Diego; and Tampa, Florida, imported 33 monkeys who had been illegally trafficked by poachers in Africa, rather than working with wildlife rehabilitators to return the primates to their natural habitat.
Proponents of zoos like to claim that zoos protect species from extinction—seemingly a noble goal. However, wild-animal parks and zoos almost always favor large and charismatic animals who draw large crowds of visitors, but they neglect less popular species that also need to be protected. Most animals in zoos are not endangered, and while confining animals to zoos keeps them alive, it does nothing to protect wild populations and their habitats.
Returning captive-bred animals to the wild is, in most cases, impossible because animals who are reared in zoos are denied the opportunity to learn survival skills, can transmit diseases to their wild counterparts, and often have no natural habitat left to return to because of human encroachment. Breeding programs simply produce cute baby animals to attract zoo patrons and generate revenue, creating a surplus of unwanted adult animals. As a result, zoos often become extremely crowded, and older animals may be “warehoused” behind the scenes or shuffled off to shabby roadside zoos, animal dealers, or auctions.
According to a 2004 report by the World Conservation Union, the world’s biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate primarily because of human activities that cause pollution, climate change, and the destruction of animals’ habitats and because of the exploitation of animals for food, the pet trade, and medicine. Captive breeding does nothing to address these serious problems, which currently put more than 7,000 animal species in jeopardy of extinction. In fact, the many millions of dollars that zoos regularly squander—on redesigning enclosures that do little to nothing to improve animal welfare, erecting statues and amusement rides, and building gift shops and concession stands—would do far more to help animals if spent on habitat-preservation projects.
Warehousing animals for life is not the way to save them from extinction. Their salvation lies in protecting habitats, not in creating animal prisons. Instead of patronizing zoos, you can help animals by supporting organizations that work to protect captive animals from exploitation and preserve habitats