There's No Salvation In A Warehouse
Samm Sack
Co-Editor
I once watched a movie depicting a zebra willing to risk his life in the middle of New York City to try and escape imprisonment and make it to the wild. Although the animated movie Madagascar isn’t exactly accurate in their representation, it was fairly close in representing one thing:
Animals weren’t born to be locked up.
In my time visiting zoos, or driving my younger sister to work in the Zoo Crew, I’ve cringed at the rusting fences and solid walls. There’s something unnatural about placing animals in artificial environments and turning them into a source of entertainment or education. I gaze at them and realize that all these captive animals are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them.
The animals recognize their incarceration and attempt to flee, jumping fences and putting their own lives in danger because teenagers were throwing rocks at them.
That’s not the only self-destructive behavior animals develop in zoos. “Zoochosis” incubates in many species’ systems when physical and mental frustrations overlap. Animals begin to sway back and forth, and when the audience notices, zoos pack the animals full of mood-altering drugs like Prozac.
There’s no way animals can thrive in such conditions. For example, elephants are supposed to walk up to 30 miles a day, but most are kept in sheds with little space to roam about, thus causing the onset of arthritis. Zoos severely restrict natural behaviors like flying, running, hunting, scavenging, digging, exploring and even finding a mate!
Instead, species are bred to produce cute little babies that spectators pay to come gawk at. But when that adorableness of infanthood wears off, some zoos shuffle them to shabby roadside zoos, murder them or dump them into the wild. Trying to return a captive-bred animal is basically impossible though. These animals grew up in a zoo with artificial trees and no sense of dangers. There’s no way they learned survival skills in a concrete cage with a cut out for food to be delivered from safe distances.
Yet, for some reason, good-hearted people assume that zoos are the best option for animals and that human interaction is the most adequate cure for extinction.
Although our sympathetic side is less likely to view the situation in this way, Darwin theorized natural selection not based on whether or not an animal was attractive or entertaining. If certain breeds are unable to live in the wild, is it really better to lock them up in order for humans to admire them a little longer? Is enslaving an animal in order for our grandchildren to admire a panda 30 years from now humane?
If that’s the case, my grandchildren won’t even have the opportunity to adore a real panda. They’ll be gazing at an animal that has never lived as it’s supposed to and instead is a mutilated version of itself.
We are very quick to claim ourselves as heroes, when in reality warehousing animals for life is not the way to save them from extinction. Their salvation lies in diminishing human activities that cause pollution, climate changes and the destruction of animals’ habitats, not building up animal prisons.
Zoos claim to spend their revenue to protect animals and keep them from extinction, but putting up Zoofari rides, erecting statues and building shops doesn’t sound like a very effective use of the money. I would think it would be better spent preserving habitats and projects such as that.
I have a strong belief in supporting projects that keep animals from exploitation and that preserve habitats rather than maintaining the jails which have a knack of incarcerating innocent animals without first proving them guilty or upholding their rights against cruel or unusual punishment.
Facts taken from PETA, People for Ethical Treatment of Animals
For Connor Strange's point-counterpoint click here.
