Should zoos be closed? A question that not many ask

When I think of Zoos, I have a vivid recollection of a holiday morning of my school.

It was early in the morning at about 8:00 am I believe, when I heard the Roar of a tiger.

More like a growl in the video below which I found while looking up what I really heard that day.

 

 

The sound of that tiger, which I never got to see, invigorated the morning with his electric roar.

As a 7th grader mostly, I was suddenly in the midst of an adventure right at home.

At about 3Kms from my house back then was the primary zoo in my city.

The most well-known and well-maintained.

A friend of mine, later in the day told me that the Zoo has brought in 2 new tigers, and the roar we heard this morning probably came from one them while they were being shifted.

While this fact could be an imaginative creation of a child, none of us can deny that we did hear the growls of tigers on a couple of occasions.

Another key attraction of the zoo I remember is that it had a huge T-rex statue between the short wooden bridges on either of its sides, dividing the incoming and outgoing traffic of the zoo.

Before it laid a couple of food stalls as they appear in carnivals.

Coupled with a mini-train that took you on a trip around the zoo, a small Air-India plane, which families used for photos ops, an Aquarium, and a huge expansive garden, bigger than the space offered to the animals, encapsulates by Zoo experience as a child.

A beautiful, wonder-filled, memorable, 90’s half-day family gateway from home.

 

The present near absences of Zoos in the family culture

 

So what I mentioned was then in the ’90s, now, however, I don’t see Zoos holding much prominence in comparison to amusement parks and water parks in the minds of school-goers and even modern-day parents.

Well, I could be inaccurate, because I am neither a teenager nor a parent.

However, estimates tell that globally 700 million people, which is 10% of the total world population visit Zoos every year.

That’s a lot of people and therefore we can assume Zoos are definitely not out of our culture, but on that note, let me know when was the last time you visited a zoo?

For me, zoos only came back in the picture when recently the news about two tigers infected by Covid-19 broke out from the New York Bronx Zoo.

Even then when I heard of the news, the question “Whether Zoos should be closed?” didn’t occur to me.

That’s a little strange for someone who cares about ecological and animal conservation.

That leaves out the people who don’t even believe in climate change immediately.

So I guess over the course of the next few days this question grew on my consciousness and while I was planning my content calendar, it suddenly struck that this could be an interesting and important topic to write or produce a podcast upon.

And so began my thorough and grueling research on the topic before I even wrote a word about it to get a complete and fair picture of the issue.

Because as outdated the concept of zoos could be in the present information age, so outdated could be the question of closing zoos because of the technological advances.

Let’s take a look at this endless debate between animal rights activists and Zoo runners and if our intervention as a third party is necessary.

 

The first Zoos

 

Urban or Sub-urban zoos as we know now didn’t come into existence until the beginning of the 18th Century.

Menagerie, a term first used in the 17th Century France, which roughly means a collection of animals kept in captivity for exhibition, was the closest thing to modern-day Zoos.

Evidence such as the cave paintings in Egypt and Mesopotamia suggest rulers and aristocrats created menageries in as early as 2500 BCE.

But far from being big spaces that accommodate the animals spaciously, these were mere minimal exhibits that served as the symbol of power and influence of the rulers.

In an excavation in the ancient cemetery of Hierakonpolis, a thriving town that existed long before the united kingdom of Egypt, the remains of two elephants, two crocodiles, a leopard, and of nine more exotic animals were found buried next to the tombs of influential citizens.

Renee Friedman, who is the director of the research at the Hierakonpolis Expedition, told National Geographic, “Different animals held different meanings for their owners.”

“Elite rulers would have wanted to emulate the strength of an elephant. The hippo, on the other hand, was a terrifying, destructive beast. To keep a hippo “means you’re controlling a really chaotic force in nature.”

In the article, “In Ancient Egypt, Life Wasn’t Easy for Elite Pets”, from which I am quoting, it also highlighted the dark side of this symbolism. The skeletons of these excavated animals have injuries that hint at fractures caused by punishing beatings and captivity.

Two baboons specifically seem to have parry fractures, broken arms, which are caused by shielding your head from a blow.

Broken legs were also noticed among other animals which were probably caused when they tried to free themselves by breaking their leg cuffs.

Wim Van Neer of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, who led a new analysis of the skeletons said, “Ancient zookeepers clearly had difficulty maintaining these animals.” “The practical means of keeping animals in captivity were not so sophisticated as nowadays.”

Van Neer points out, however, that later in the period, mummified baboons show fewer signs of violence and that probably says that ancient Egyptians had eventually learned to keep animals without beating or tethering them.

 

One notable menagerie

 

 

The Royal Menagerie at Versailles is as notable as it can get and I got to read about it in an extract from the Vintage Script magazine while researching for this article.

Versailles was the prime seat of the royal residence of France from 1682, under Louis XIV, until the breakout of the French revolution in 1789 under Louis XVI.

Over the course of the 3 kings who ruled from Versailles until the French Revolution, King Louis XIV established the menagerie, King Louis XV was a brazen ruler who loved hunting animals over observing them and King Louis XVI before falling prey to the French Revolution meekly tried to renovate the face of royal power on the backs of these exotic beasts from the far off lands.

Nothing spoke more clearly of Royal influence than the representatives in far off lands, who risked their lives to catch these animals, staying loyal throughout the journey, keeping these animals alive on long voyages, a mammoth task on its own and finally adding it to the king’s collection.

Over the course of Louis VI’s reign, it had become fashionable to study nature and so the menagerie rose in popularity.

As the upper class of the French society roamed the menagerie, as expressed by the author of “Strange Meetings: The Royal Menagerie at Versailles“ it wondered aloud, looking deep into the eyes of monkeys with pained expressions, “What is it to be human?” but “Nobody ever seemed to wonder what it is to be monkey.”

While people in our age do wonder what is it to be a tiger or a bird because we would like to roar or fly like one but nobody takes it into account when they see them enclosed, mostly caged in a zoo.

Later when the royal family fell to the French Revolution, the leaders of the revolution made a plan for a state menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris to introduce order and stability in the French populace who had gotten too used to violence over the course of the revolution.

This menagerie wanted to symbolize if wild animals can be made gentle with care, then the humans can adapt a similar temperament.

Far from it when the menagerie was fully open to the public, and a lion from Versailles was put there for display, the citizens of Paris crowded around it, abused it, spat at it, and pulled his fur while he tried to sleep and justified their behavior by saying that the lion used to be a king too.

Does this remind you of the zoo-goers who try every trick at their disposal to attract the attention of an animal at the zoo?

If not, then I found a perfect present-day video to closely resemble the scene above.

 

 

Even, one of the YouTube comments below the video says, “So sad..he stands in front of them like a king and roars to make them quiet but they are just laughing.. that’s no place for a king.”

So the menagerie was a small cramped space in the basement of the museum at the Jardins des Plantes, which in itself was just a museum of live animals, rather than the habitat replicas which today’s modern zoos claim to be.

There’s no trace of the menagerie beneath the exquisite lawns of the Versailles now.

However, the last trace of the royal menagerie, the Rhinoceros of Louis XV, who is now stuffed and preserved can be still seen behind a large glass case, in the Natural History Museum of Jardin des Plantes.

 

 

The first step in the evolution of modern Zoos

 

So as we saw, people kept exotic animals as a status symbol of power from thousands of years.

All these royal menageries were eventually converted to Zoos and opened to the public.

And although zoos were already present in Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, the establishment of the London Zoo in 1826 marked the first step in the evolution of the modern zoo, according to Dr. Nigel Rothfels, the author of Savages and Beasts; The Birth of the Modern Zoo.

It was a place for the fellows of the Zoological Society to observe and study.

 

 

As written in the article “The ethical evolution of zoos” The zoo had become very much a public space by the 1840s and offered a carnivore terrace that displayed lions in framed cages and gave people ample garden and lawn space to picnic upon.

This sounds like most urban and sub-urban zoos we have right now.

The animals were housed in small cages, no sight of any habitat, and just like the challenges faced by the ancient Egyptians, these zoos too struggled with keeping the animals alive long enough.

Most had minimal knowledge about their biology, diets, behavior, and group composition for reproduction.

Carl Hagenbeck, an influential figure in the history of modern zoos, opened his own zoo in 1907 and offered the first bar-less exhibits of the animals, separating them from the public by moats.

He wanted to display the animals as you would see them in the wild.

While the exhibits were bar-less they were far from the huge expansive habitats animals experienced in the wild. But for humans, it was a good enough, shallow reassurance.

Most of us have seen animals across the moat, I only as a kid, now it will be unbearable for me to see.

A few state of the art modern zoos right now, have only taken this model as the foundation and have built upon it with great detail, research, and intelligence, places, enclosures, that appear like a wonderland of animals, where animal rights are taken care of, where hardship is absent and death is only natural.

So as they say but let’s take a look at the ultra-modern zoos of our time now.

 

The Modern Zoos

 

With the passage of time, Zoo runners equipped with new research, technology, and mounting pressure from animal rights activists about animal captivity and various other issues, have started putting thought into making zoos a more habitable place for animals.

Zoos these days have guidelines issued either by their state policies or Zoo Accreditors like the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) or World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA).

Accreditors like the AZA have guidelines ranging from the animals’ ambient environment, habitat and containment design, social environment, nutrition, veterinary care, reproduction, and behavior management.

However, less than 10 percent of the 2,800 wildlife exhibitors licensed by the United States Department of Agriculture, under the Animal Welfare Act meet the more comprehensive standards of AZA accreditation.

These guidelines are meant to simulate their real-world healthy experiences within the confines of the zoo and allow the animals to live a healthy life.

Even the Central Zoo Authority of India, in its guideline document which lists the minimum standards for housing animals, says, that the animals should have adequate land space which allows the animal-free movement, exercise, ample space to rest in shade and bask in sun, and allows them to express their natural, social and reproductive behavior.

Initially for AZA-accredited zoos, the space recommendation to host a tiger was 1,600 sq ft or 144 sq m.

Now however in their tiger care manual of 2016 they recommend that new institutions planning for a tiger exhibit should exceed the minimum recommendation and state that as of 2012, the typical tiger exhibit size in AZA-accredited zoos is anywhere from 2,500 sq. ft. – 10, 000 sq. ft., averaging at 5,500 sq. ft.

For the zoos under the CZA of India, the state defines a straight-up guideline for the space recommendation of holding a tiger to be 1000. Sq. m. which is roughly 10, 000 sq. ft.

Both the AZA and CZA seem to meet at the 10, 000 sq. ft. mark which seems like a fairly big space considering most humans live in houses averaging at about 1000 sq. ft.

Taking this is a step beyond, The Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita Kansas with its elephant exhibit and the Philadelphia Zoo with its animal exploration trail called the Zoo360 are the forerunners of innovative change in Zoo design.

Vistors of the Sedgwick County Zoo can take a boat ride in a 5-acre elephant exhibit, where they can observe the elephants roam free from a distance, in the replica of their Zambezi river valley of Africa.

 

 

And the Zoo360 experience can only be best described as an enclosed walkaway bridge for different animals, from their containment zones, passing all over and around the zoo, allowing the animals to roam freely throughout the entire property.

 

 

In an article on the Time, “The Future of Zoos: Challenges Force Zoos to Change in Big ways”, images can be seen of visitors to the Philadelphia zoo, watching a tiger move above them in its big cat crossing trail, and a gorilla and a tiger can be seen standing one above the other in their own trail.

While the sight may however be majestic, isn’t it unnatural for a gorilla and a tiger to stand face to face?

What must be going on in their minds?

Another good example would be of the St. Louis Zoo’s polar bear exhibit, where they spent $16 million dollars on its captive facility to best accommodate the needs of the beast.

The 40,000-sq-ft exhibit has three distinct areas, replicating the sea, coast, and tundra environment native to the polar bear.

 

 

The facility can host up to 5 bears, to give the bear a social life, more like inmates, and leaving no stone unturned to let everyone know that the Zoo cares for the animal. It also has special 2,600-sq.ft animal care facility where vets can tend to the bears.

Having ample animal care facility space is also included in the welfare guidelines of zoo animals.

John Coe, the innovative zoo designer who invented the Zoo360 concept believes that the top zoos will evolve into something he calls the “Unzoo.”

Rather than keeping the animals confined and giving visitors the space to roam free, the Unzoo will confine the visitors and allow the animals to roam free.

Think of the Wichita zoo elephant exhibit.

Now, in spite of the guidelines, most zoos don’t have the required space and funds for the care of these animals, and zoos like the St. Louis, Wichita, and Philadelphia are an anomaly rather than the standard.

Also, no matter how big, welcoming, and accommodating zoos become, they cannot compare even remotely to their free life.

Zoos also under the pretense of even doubling and tripling animal life spans under the expert care of vets, good hygiene, absence of any predator, and regular food supply, claim zoos to be a great place.

John Coe designer of the Zoo360 adds, “Even the best zoos today are based on captivity and coercion,” “To me, that’s the fundamental flaw.”

To most people zoos are just plain wrong on the grounds of captivity.

Those people ask, who gives someone the right to take the freedom of these free animals?

But if not just on the moral grounds, why is captivity so bad? Aren’t animals safe, secured, and cared for in the confines of the zoo? Let’s find out.

 

The problem with captivity to begin with

 

In an article, “The Case for the End of the Modern Zoo” the writer Benjamin Wallace points to a long-term study of animal mortality in 1983 at the San Diego zoo, which found cannibalism, infanticide, widespread malnutrition, and frequent deaths from tranquilizer use in the lifecycle of a zoo.

“Administering a sedative meant using a dart gun; at the sight of it, the terrified animal would panic and run around the cage, peeing and pooping at the same time. And to get an animal to shift” — move between the barn and the exhibit — “a keeper would sometimes turn a hose on it.” Said Mark Reed, a previous executive director of the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas, in an interview with the New York Times Magazine.

In movies like The Wild and Madagascar, you can see the protagonist animals of the movies escaping the zoos to live a life full of freedom and adventure in their natural home.

In The Wild, Samson the lion, father of the protagonist Ryan is seen reminiscing about the good old days, telling his son the same old stories, in Ryan’s own words, “a billion times.” Samson then says, “All right, Mr. Smart Guy, here’s one I know you haven’t heard. It all started in a little place I like to call… the wild.

I as a kid back in 2006 definitely didn’t pick up any que about the problem with animals at the zoo.

Both these stories seemed like a good adventure and the idea of escaping the zoo, a brainchild of a few rebellious animals, penned by the writer.

So what Samson was expressing didn’t come out of a writer’s imagination but neurology research, behavioral studies, and animal psychologists have concluded that other mammals possess the same brain chemicals that give humans self-awareness.

These chemicals also help us experience social relations and so do for the animals as well, these also could lead to the animals experiencing the same mental-health ailments as us.

Having self-awareness simply means that the animals know that they are confined and if they have been taken from the wild rather than being zoo bred, they sure hold the memories of the wild.

So, Samson was in fact reminiscing.

5 acres for 7 elephants might seem ample at the Wichita zoo but not when compared to the home range of African elephants which extends up to 11,000 Square kilometers, measuring to more than 2.7 million acres.

In an in-depth article published in the PLOS One journal, it signified that elephants best thrive when they are challenged to gather their own food and have social connections.

Because of a lack of such circumstances in the zoos, elephants face impaired mental states and do not carry out functions like reproduction.

Elephants and Dolphins are smart animals, they have memory and they can recognize their mates and themselves in the mirror.

Zoos now have taken such needs into consideration based on such research and accordingly are working on enrichment and feeding programs based on it.

A newborn can attract crowds, could be sold, rented, or exhibited in partner zoos, and so whether these steps are in the favor of the elephants or the zoos themselves remains a question.

Even 40,000 sqft at St. Louis zoo also might seem like a big area but statistically, it’s 1 million times less space compared to the wild for a polar bear.

Even tigers and lions have 18,000 times less space in zoos.

Space isn’t the only problem at zoos, there are a few others let’s take a look at them.

 

Stereotypy and Tragic Incidents at the zoo

 

Stereotypy is an OCD like neurotic disorder that occurs in animals in captivity.

Stereotypic behavior is indicative of an artificial environment that does not allow animals to satisfy their natural behavioral needs.

Because of it animals can be seen behaving in a repetitive illogical manner, such as elephants can be seen swinging their trunks, big cats can be seen pacing in their enclosures and some animals can be seen chewing or licking the walls or objects in their surroundings.

Like we saw before, elephants love a challenge in the wild, a lack of that causes most animals, not just elephants weary and disturbed by boredom.

I personally remember seeing a leopard pacing back and forth in the same spot in a local zoo and at the time I and a friend of mine, joked about it that “this dude seems to be in some serious tension, maybe figuring out a plan to escape?”

Well after I got to know about stereotypy in my research for this article, it just struck me how relevant that joke was.

Captive Animals’ Protection Society concluded in a study that 90 percent of public aquariums in their study had animals who displayed stereotypic behavior.

Animals were seen repeatedly raising their heads above the water, rubbing themselves on the floor of the tank, and spinning around imaginary objects.

Another study indicates that 80% of the carnivores in captivity show stereotypic behavior.

Depression, stereotypy, and phobias are all disorders that are absent in the animals in the wild.

Dr. Vint Virga, an animal behaviorist told the New York Times Magazine in the article “Zoo Animals and Their Discontents” that he has treated severely depressed snow leopards, phobic zebras, and brown bears with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Irene Pepperberg a comparative psychologist at Harvard, in the same article, said, “An animal in the wild can’t afford to be depressed,”, “It will simply be killed or starve since its environment requires constant vigilance.”

In the documentary Black Fish, the makers showed the story of Tilikum the largest killer whale of Sea World Orlando, an AZA-accredited aquarium, where the whale killed one of its trainers immediately following a show, in front of children and other audience.

The documentary credited the violence to the conditions that Sea World kept Tilikum in.

He was kept alone in a pitch dark tank which was 20 feet across all dimensions and just 30 feet deep.

The documentary caused such a stir that state legislators in California and New York passed bills that made keeping an Orca in captivity illegal.

In a recent interview in 2019, a former trainer told CBS news that the Orcas are swimming in clinically treated water, are subjected to direct sunlight without shade protection, which is causing them to develop cataracts and disturbingly you can see them grinding down their own teeth on the pool walls and ledges.

Does this seem stereotypic to you?

In the official trailer of Black Fish, one of the news anchors questions, “If you were in a bathtub for 25 years, don’t you think you’d get a little psychotic?”

 

 

John the former trainer told CBS that when the whole Tilikum incident happened, Sea World downplayed the situation and called what happened just an unfortunate incident by saying that the whale unintentionally mauled the trainer while being playful.

According to him, SeaWorld did this to maintain its family-friendly image.

SeaWorld has continued to have Orcas even after all the controversy and legal bills and now In 2020, it had planned to introduce its new Orca show called “Orca Encounter” which according to them will be based on “education”, rather than spectacles like the previous “One Ocean” show which Tilikum and Orcas like it were a part of until December 2019.

The other two notable tragic incidents are the killing of the 17-year-old gorilla Harambe, who was shot dead to protect a child who had fallen into his enclosure, and the death of a 16-month gorilla, who was crushed to death when a hydraulic door closed on her.

Do you remember Harambe? It had trended quite a lot on social media at the time. In 2016.

 

 

Such tragic incidents are not an anomaly and an occurrence of modern times.

Right from the Egyptians as we saw and even to the elephant of Louis XV in 1782, who after putting up with the conditions of the crumbling walls of the menagerie as long as it could, broke out in 1782, rampaged the grounds of Versailles, only to be found dead in the 203 feet wide and approximately a mile long grand canal of the palace.

 

How zoos justify their existence or their argument in favor of their existence

 

The two top cards that zoos play in their favor are conservation and education.

Zoos take credit for reviving species like the golden lion tamarin monkey and Barbary lion subspecies of lions, which is said to be extinct in the wild since the 1960s.

Just about a week back a couple of media houses released a video of 3 Barbary cubs born in July in a Czech Zoo.

 

 

But except that, Will Travers OBE, President of Born Free told National Geographic in an article, that only 15% of the total species in zoos are considered threatened.

Which means rest 85% are simply there for entertainment purposes.

And in a 2014 study by the Society for Conservation Biology, it was found that among the 2800 children surveyed after visiting the London zoo, a whopping 62% showed no learning outcome.

Even If you recall your learning outcome after visiting a zoo, it must have been that the Giraffe was huge.

There is ample evidence suggesting that zoos are not really doing well in the conservation department.

It was noted that only 3% of a British zoo’s expenditure truly goes to conservation projects in the field.

Like the $16 million St. Louis polar bear exhibit and an $8.3 million gorilla enclosure in the London zoo, The CEO Roger Germann of the Florida Aquarium, told Washington Post in an article called “Zoos are closed because of coronavirus, but the animals still need care”, that staff members are stocking up on faux seawater, an alternative product which is called “Instant Ocean”, that creates Ocean Water in a tank, to safeguard the animals in case their pipeline to the open ocean water shuts down due to the pandemic.

In the same article, it’s mentioned that zoos are giving animals extra “enrichment” opportunities and exercise to make up for the lack of interaction with visitors.

In the video below do you see the lioness thrilled to see the visitors and does she look depressed or full of life?

 

 

As we saw earlier, enrichment is basically stimulating animals in a way that makes up for their lack of true enrichment in the wild. Helping them avoid stereotypy and those sorts of things.

However, in the video below from St. Louis zoo itself, titled “Zoos empty of humans make great playgrounds for animals”, a Sumatran Orangutan, Puteri, is shown scrubbing the zoo floor with detergent, with a fun quirky caption alongside a chirpy jingle saying, “Puteri helped keep things cleaned.”

And what I saw wasn’t fun but stereotypic.

The zoo might itself be aware of the true nature of the act but can’t help but amuse a gullible audience.

 

 

Some zoos are also proudly live streaming their animal exhibits to cheer people up who are stuck in the lockdown, who ironically, can watch documentaries of wild animals in their natural habitats.

Seriously, I wonder who in the world is watching a live stream of animals from the zoos when there are great documentaries such as “Our Planet” out there.

 

 

I mean such widespread efforts are being put to keep the animals alive in captivity but is similar dedication and conviction observed on the conservation front in the field?

We all know cute videos of Pandas surfacing from the zoos they are held in but according to a BBC Horizon documentary, “Should zoos be closed”, out of the 400 pandas which were bred in captivity, only 5 were released in the wild and only 3 of them survived.

One of the speakers in the documentary says, “If we peel it all back, and you look at say, London zoo in 1828, and all the other zoos throughout the 19th century, they all had big animals, showy animals, colorful animals, mainly from Africa or Asia, typical zoos today got exactly the same collections, they have not moved on from them.”

 

 

Captive-bred animals are not fit to be released in the proper wild, at most a wildlife sanctuary can help at times but animals bred in zoos just don’t know what to expect out there.

Now forget about releasing captive-bred animals in the wild, according to the data presented by the Freedom for Animals organization, it’s observed that in 2003, the UK government gave permission to capture 146 penguins from their territory in South Atlantic to be displayed in zoos.

It’s even noted that 70% of elephants in European zoos were taken from the wild.

In a similar display, Zimbabwe planned to capture two of every mammal species in the Hwange National Park and send it to North Korean Zoos in 2010.

We all know how well the North Korean regime is looking after its people and so we can be sure of the treatment the lions, zebras, rhinos, and cheetahs from the national park would have received.

However, luckily, the plan was put to a stop by the coalition of international organizations.

If you saw the Wichita zoo video above then you heard them say that they got their elephants from the wild and they are kind of training them to be domesticated, to perform tricks and flips on will.

Additionally, some zoos have also been linked to animal circuses and black markets.

 

The darkest face of zoos – Culling of surplus animals

 

Conservation is the number one goodwill garnering mascot of zoos around the world.

The same zoos however participate in a practice in which surplus animals are culled.

Culling is practiced on domestic animals, crops, and wildlife alike.

It’s the process of discarding or blatantly put, killing of animals based on their undesired characteristics or uselessness.

Considering that if animals are in captivity for conservation then why are the “undesired” ones being killed instead of being released in the wild.

The Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark is notorious for killing their surplus animals, at times in public, like in the case of an 18-month-old giraffe Marius, who was shot with a bolt gun in front of the visitors, adults and children alike, and dissected right in front of them, there and then in the name of education.

Post which Marius was fed to the zoo’s lions, tigers, and polar bears.

 

 

After just 4 weeks the zoo unapologetically killed 4 of its lions owing to its breeding program.

The zoo intended to introduce a new lion in the zoo to form a new lion pride with two young females from the 2012 litter.

In a statement, the Copenhagen Zoo said, “If the Zoo had not made the change in the pride now then we would have risked that the old male would mate with these two females—his own offspring—and thereby give rise to inbreeding.”

Continuing they added, “What’s more, the 14-year-old lioness was too old to give birth and raise another litter without complications.”

In the light of how lion prides work, the new male would have also killed the two younger lions of this old pair.

Saving the family this tragedy, the zoo just decided to bear the burden themselves and killed off the whole family.

 

 

Later next year, Odense Zoo, another Danish Zoo also put down a male lion, because the zoo had “too many” lions.

Michael Wallberg Sorensen, a zookeeper at the Odense zoo then, in central Denmark said to The Guardian “Although we are in contact with a lot of other zoos and try to relocate them, we can get a surplus”, this he said when he was explaining why the lion was put down.

So, this is not just Denmark but the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) themselves confirmed in 2007, that their member zoos are actively encouraged to kill unwanted animals.

This could be because of a lack of space and inbreeding problems.

Especially in the case of hybrid tigers, that make up the majority of the 10,000 captive tigers worldwide.

One executive said, if hybrid tigers cannot be rehomed elsewhere then euthanasia is a plausible solution.

Further, the executive said, the keeper time, zoo space, and food they take up can be invested in truly endangered species.

In a statement issued by the EAZA, it said, “Culling of animals is one of a range of scientifically valid solutions to the long term genetic and demographic sustainability of animal populations in human care.” This was said in support of the public dissection of the animals and they thought it’s a valid choice for educational purposes.

All of these incidents and reports are at least 6 years old and I think no one really cares about this issue anymore.

That’s why there’s no more coverage but in another incident at the Highland Wildlife Park, in Kincraig, UK, the zoo killed off a whole pack of wolves because the social structure of the pack had broken down and the zoo feared the animals would have killed each other anytime soon.

In an article on “The Scotsman”, it said one other reason was, the wolves no longer displayed natural behavior.

Was it stereotypy?

People in the profession argue that scientific evidence over feelings should be considered when it comes to true conservation and culling sometimes is necessary.

Yet again, I would like to prose this question, “Where is the conservation in the killing of surplus animals and why are they not released in the wild?” and if you are incapable of administering a successful release then why are you housing them in the first place?

To the Layman people like us, we give animals anthropomorphic traits like feelings, emotions, and thoughts just like us.

We always wonder why such cruelty befalls on these animals and why no one’s putting a stop to it.

And when the scientific community is in denial of animals having any consciousness, people like us still believe that animals feel.

Ask any pet owner for that matter.

But do the animals really feel?

 

The Ethical question – Do any animals feel and should free animals be caged in the first place

 

In the Ethics guide of BBC.CO.Uk, we see a prominent question in the Animal Ethics, which asks,

“There is more to treating animals in an appropriate way than keeping them healthy. Are we right to use animals as objects of entertainment?”

Animal rights activists, don’t want to see animals being treated as a means to achieve some human end.

Captivity fails to respect the animal by reducing it to an object for display and woefully violates its liberty to live free.

Common folk who don’t like animal captivity feel that even though zoos help them live longer, they don’t get to experience their fuller lives and natural habitats.

Zoos for conservation is also a topic we saw fall flat with the points we discussed above.

Most zoo runners seem to believe that animals are dumb creatures that don’t understand the nature of their existence.

Chimpanzees our closest genetic relatives have been seen to understand that even though their enclosures look natural, they are not and they know they are being held captive.

On the 7th of July 2012 a prominent group of international researchers who study neuroscience, neuroanatomy, and fields like that came together to sign a groundbreaking document that published their new observations on consciousness in human and non-human animals.

They gathered at the Cambridge University and signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in-front of Stephen Hawking who was the guest of honor for the event.

 

 

The declaration clearly states that the absences of a neocortex, the part of the brain which is the enabler of conscious thought and language in humans, does not appear to prevent other non-human organisms from experiencing its affective states.

Concluding, the study says, all mammals and birds and many other creatures like the octopuses, are capable of feeling emotions and having self-awareness.

If that is the case, then it’s unlawful to keep another life like ours imprisoned without any criminal charges.

It isn’t a crime if you are not human or smart enough.

 

If not Zoos then what?

 

Not one word of this article is against zoo runners or the people who work there.

We do not question their goodwill towards animals or the dedication they put into keeping animals alive and healthy in the confines of a zoo.

Some zookeepers have even built strong bonds with these wild animals.

Thousands of years of research, learning, and development have gone into creating and sustaining the zoos that we see now.

Asking them to close off their hard made establishments is like asking them to throw away their legacy.

So not one thing we said is against them but these are the questions we have and all they need to do is take a hard look at what they are doing and if it’s relevant in the digital age now.

An age where animals can be seen in VR and AR and any wildlife documentary is just a few taps away.

In my opinion, if not zoos, then they should create human well-being parks where their trained staff is retrained into caring for the people and help them achieve a greater sense of well-being through proper support and training.

This will solve two problems, one it will give a city even more greenery coverage and two it will help the zoo runners stay in business in an alternate model.

The well-being of the city’s population will also experience a boost and zoo runners can display virtual museums in a classroom format in the park itself. It will be a place where people can go and truly learn about these animals and their lives.

This solution will also safeguard the knowledge and expertise zoos have accumulated over the years.

Some, truly endangered animals can still be hosted in the park, even populations of birds and animals like it can thrive, who can freely roam out of the park and come back into their secure shelter.

Now business people know how to do business and so they can figure out how to make these parks profitable.

In my mind, I can see them offering a monthly or annual subscription for various services in the park and the type of services they can offer are endless.

One of Jhon Coe’s Unzoo model, sees multi-story zoos on buildings, for birds and small animals. From there the birds can freely roam in the city and come to the park as needed.

There are two more models, I have linked to their visual representation you can look at them any time.

Overall such an arrangement, will decorate the skyline of the city naturally, make it greener, give people a huge opportunity to truly reconnect with nature, and vitalize themselves.

 

Conclusion

 

As democratic nations and not kingdoms, we as the people should base our status and prestige on the safety, conservation, and upliftment of those who are underprivileged, underserved, and under-represented.

Our pride shouldn’t be based on exploitation but rather rejuvenation.

These natural wonders are a beautiful part of our Earth family. We as the higher beings become caretakers by the virtue of our power, and as we all know that with great power comes great responsibility.

So as we ought to conserve the lesser served parts of our society we also need to protect our fellow life forms on Earth.

When we uplift the weakest and the most helpless parts of our world, we will see a better tomorrow.

I hope you have got to learn a great deal about zoos and their relevance or irrelevance in our society.

Took me great pain to write this whole piece and bring everything there is about zoos in one place.

The reason for writing it is to make people aware of the various realities of a zoo, as because of our cognitive scope limitation we attach importance to only those things that we have seen, felt, experienced, and got attached to.

Everything else remains unreal.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments about everything you got to know here and if you think zoos should be closed or continue to function.

I have created a poll below where you cast your vote in favor or against of zoos.

As of now, this is just to understand the consensus and nothing else.