Throughout most our our lives, many of us have been to the zoo. Whether on school trips or as family fun, we saw zoos as a positive experience. Recently, questions have arisen on whether or not zoos are a fun experience. Centering around the shooting of Harambe after a child fell into his cage, many people have been changing their thoughts about zoos.
Though endangerment of a child’s welfare is a big issue in zoos, it isn’t the most important. Throughout many zoos, the animals do not have enough space as they would in their natural habitats. They are constantly in a loud environment which includes harassment by children and if the zoo is in a climate that doesn’t stay consistent, most of the animals have to get shipped off every year in winter.
The fact is that zoos are, first and foremost, businesses. Whether or not they can afford appropriate housing and maintenance for each animals is not a top priority.
Schools often endorse the use of zoos for an educational purpose. However, learning the nature of an animal from an institutionalized version of it seems pretty contradictory if you think about it. A much better option to learn about how certain animals live and survive is by watching a wildlife documentary that can display the species within their natural habitat, doing what they do best.
The very concept of zoos is to force animals to stay in captivity away from their original families all for human entertainment and education. If they are supposed to be educational, what are we teaching our children exactly? That animals are ours to use because, by some way of evolution, we have more intellect? In reality, zoos do a lot more to miseducate people than to educate them on the true nature of animals.
Animals kept within the zoo environment act extremely different from animals that live in their natural habitat year round. They display different behaviors within their exhibits, due to the stress their bodies face from being out of what is right to them. More often than not, these animals don't live in their natural family units due to space constraints. Also, because of few variations among a species, they are often inbred. While some zoos promote the idea of saving endangered species with their breeding practices, inbreeding species has a lot more risks than if we kept the animals where they were meant to be.
If your idea of family fun is being apart of a larger corporation that is based upon breaking up entire families from their homes for entertainment, I suggest looking into your values.
Within the past 500 years alone, over 322 species of birds, mammals and reptiles all went extinct due to humans. Whether by destruction of habitat, hunting or entertainment, humans alone have managed to cause this much damage. Within the small time we have been on the earth (200,000 years compared to the 4.5 million years Earth has existed), we have caused the most change to our planet, both the living and nonliving parts, than any other animals groups on Earth. Next time you want to choose an activity for family fun day, think about the other choices rather than zoos.
