Proof That Zoos Are Worse Than Prisons

Elise

Sep 10, 2020

"Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it’s faced."
-James Baldwin

Definitions

Prison: A place in which people are confined as punishment for breaking a law

Cell: In prison, a room in which a person is locked for the duration of their sentence

Zoo: A place that keeps animals, generally wild or exotic animals, for public display

Sanctuary: A refuge; a place of safety and protection

Understanding the Excuses

Education is, by far, the most common excuse to continue patronizing zoos and aquariums, particularly as a justification to bring children to these institutions. However, as anyone that visited a zoo or aquarium as a child or has been to one when there were groups of kids there on a field trip would know, children don't learn anything there. They run around and press their faces up to the glass, ogling the animals like specimens under a microscope. The little we learn at zoos is about how wild animals behave in captivity, not in the wild, as the animals can't exhibit natural behaviors, or we read about how they would act in the wild off the little plaques beside their cages.

Conservation

There are so many flaws with this argument that it's akin to the humane myth with farmed animals. For one, you can devote so much more time and money to conservation when you're not constantly spending millions of dollars on caring for incarcerated animals; there are many conservation organizations that don't use zoos as a front for their work and instead focus all of their energy on conservation.

For another, if zoos genuinely cared about protecting habitats and endangered species, they wouldn't be importing tigers and elephants and breeding them. Captive animals stand nearly no chance of ever being successfully released into the wild, especially if they were born in captivity, so there's no actual end-game for animals in zoos. They are there until they die because that's the purpose of them being there: to be an attraction to entice paying customers. And if all these excessively-profitable zoos were genuinely supporting conservation efforts, there should be more to show for it than dwindling populations of wild animals in their care; and local conservation efforts are generally left up to hunters and fishers to artificially maintain some sort of balance in the ecosystem that is in danger because of human interference.

According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, there are more than 2,800 "animal exhibitors" in the US holding over 800,000 animals of 6,000 species (just 1,000 of which are endangered).[1, 2] Out of the only 217 accredited zoos and aquariums in the States, they collectively spend only about $231 million on conservation projects out of a total economic output of $17.2 billion.[2, 3] Former zoo director David Hancocks estimates that about 3 percent of zoos' budgets are designated for conservation efforts, while "they point to the billions of dollars spent every year on hi-tech exhibits and marketing efforts to lure visitors." The other 2,600 non-accredited institutions spend little to none of their budgets on conservation efforts.[4]

Endangered Species

As far as endangered animals, we reach a point where speciesism intersects with tokenism and animal rights. The hope with keeping endangered species in captivity is to keep them alive through breeding -- though forcing animals to copulate is never ethical -- but captive animals are notoriously difficult to breed because of the stress and unhappiness in their unnatural environment.[5]

Additionally, though captive animals may live longer lives than they do, on average, in the wild -- though that evidence is predominantly for animals that are born in captivity and live shorter lives both in and out of captivity -- that means they are suffering far longer; after all, they live a lifetime in pain whereas wild animals usually suffer most at their time of death.[6, 7] But at the end of the day, is it really worth it to keep certain animals alive simply because of their species, particularly when their quality of life is so poor?

Ideally, we would be protecting these animals in the wild, but even if we did breed them in captivity, they would have to be released into the wild to have any impact, not be kept in zoos forever. The true danger with species extinction is not losing the species but disrupting the ecosystem. Natural ecosystems are in flux because so many species are being lost today, and instead of bringing all those animals into captivity and letting their native environments wither away, the best alternative would be to stop the root cause of extinctions, which will be discussed in the Alternatives section later on.

Veterinarians

Veterinarians today are generally specialists in caring for companion animals, not for species other than dogs and cats, but zoo veterinarians are trained to handle and treat wild animals. When I came across an injured tortoise last year, the only vets that could care for him were at the nearest zoo. However, it is only because we keep animals in zoos that vets receive this kind of important education. After all, there isn't much of a market for treating wild animals' injuries. A better option would be to train all vets in how to care for wild animals, particularly native species, so we aren't reliant on zoos for this service.

Hypocrisy

Very few zoo and aquarium advocates would defend organizations like SeaWorld or animal circuses because they have fallen out of favor with the general public. But what's so different? The animals are all confined. Is it just performances that are the problem? If so, there wouldn't be such outrage over SeaWorld's consistent mistreatment of animals and calls for them to get all cetaceans out of tanks.

No, it's most likely because zoos and aquariums are much more ingrained in our lives than marine parks; we have many fond memories of going to the zoo with our family or getting out of school for an entire day to visit an aquarium. Just like eating animals, keeping animals in zoos is something we view as too valuable or important to reject.

Acknowledging the Reality

No matter the welfare, no matter the education, no matter the conservation, the most important thing is the animals within the walls of the zoo. Because they are the ones paying the ultimate price, we have to recognize that it is not our choice to determine how and where they live their lives. Really, when we argue that zoos are positive because of their conservation efforts, we sound foolish because we're admitting our own hypocrisy: How can we care about the animals on the outside by imprisoning animals on the inside?

Prisons are, as stated in the definition above, places where criminals are placed to serve a sentence as punishment for breaking the law. Probably the biggest difference between zoos and prisons is that human inmates have committed some crime and are capable of understanding why they are incarcerated, but when it comes to zoos, the animals are trapped there against their will, just like prisoners, but they committed no crime. As darkly humorous as it sounds, their only crime was being beautiful and desirable.

Zoochosis

All day, these animals simply languish in their cells, unable to roam freely and traverse vast distances as they would in the wild; as long as they are imprisoned, they only know the walls around them and must walk the same ground over and over and over. Many animals develop zoochosis, a pattern of abnormal, repetitive behaviors due to living in a captive, unnatural environment. Similar to animals in marine parks as discussed in my review of Long Gone Wild, some of these behaviors include circling and pacing, biting bars and other objects, swaying and rocking, and self-mutilation.[8]

Animals that would naturally hunt or forage cannot do so because their food is delivered to them as if they were domestic dogs and cats. To us as sedentary humans, this almost sounds pleasant, having to do so little to acquire all we need for basic survival, but remember that these animals also receive little mental or physical stimulation. Sure, maybe they get a ball to bat around or another companion in their enclosure or some pumpkins to eat on Halloween so they can go viral on Instagram, but nothing can compare to the wild.

Carnism

One of the most hypocritical and disturbing aspects of zoos is the food that is served. You'd think a zoo would be the best place to serve plant-based food, but as usual, the dishes are animal-centric. The speciesism is so blatant that it's nearly unfathomable that more people don't realize it. How can we claim to love all these animals in the zoo but eat all those other farmed animals at the same time?

Alternatives

The easiest thing you as an individual can do is not go to zoos and aquariums. It's unlikely that it was already a major part of your life, so it shouldn't be such a sacrifice that you couldn't possibly live without it. (Remember who the real victims are here.) Instead, visit animal sanctuaries, and encourage zoos in your area to release some of the animals to places where they can live peacefully in a more natural environment without being leered at by customers and handlers incessantly.

But an even better step to take would be to not consume other animal products, as animal agriculture is one of the top contributors to rainforest deforestation, ocean acidification, water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and species extinction.[9, 10] If we care about conservation and the preservation of endangered species, we would all stop eating and wearing animals.

The real reason we go to zoos, behind all the justifications we try to make, is because we just want to see these glorious creatures up close. We want to be in their presence. But with all the technology available to us today, there's no need to keep animals in captivity to do that. You can watch live animal cams on explore.org or wildlife documentaries -- where, let's face it, you'll see things much more interesting than you'd ever see in a zoo -- or cute videos on YouTube. In the future, we may even be able to visit virtual zoos and aquariums! The most important thing now is to get the live animals out of their prisons and replace as many of them as possible back into the wild or, at least, into sanctuaries to live out their days in peace.