Zoos are popular places for people to have fun and learn about animals. With zoos, people can encounter wildlife up close. Indeed, according to Zoosmedia, over seven million people visit zoos worldwide per year. Even though zoos seem to be great places for entertainment and education, these animal prisons are problematic, and people should find alternatives to them.
Here are three reasons why all zoos should close:
Zoos makes animals suffer in captivity
Zoo animals suffer in captivity. In zoos, everything animals do is determined by zookeepers. Animals are kept in fences or cages, and they are separated from their original families. Animals cannot choose who to live or mate with, and keepers control what their animals eat every day.
Even though keepers try their best to ensure their animals are living well, their actions reduce the quality of life for animals. Because zoos make animals live in small spaces, many of them experience chronic stress, boredom, and depression. Possible symptoms of these mental health problems include walking continuously, turning in circles, and playing with their tongues. Think back to your visits to the zoo, and you probably can remember animals behaving in this way.
Zoos create unnatural habitats
Another reason why zoos should close is because they lack natural spaces and room for animals. This is especially traumatizing for animals that are supposed to live in large habitats. The better the species is suited to open spaces, the worse they live in captivity.
For instance, wild elephants roam up to 50 miles per day. However, elephants that are confined tend to suffer from physical inactivity. As a result, their mental health deteriorates. In fact, because of being trapped, 85 percent of zoo elephants have compulsive behaviors. Overall, because zoos produce small and unnatural habitats for animals, animals suffer both physically and mentally.
Zoos teach unethical lessons
Zoos convey the idea that displaying animals in captivity is an effective way to educate the public about animals. However, the real reason zoos exist is only for entertaining people and making profit.
In zoos, visitors see how animals act in captivity, not how they act in nature. Even though many zoos put up description banners about each animals’ behaviors, visitors gain insufficient knowledge because they cannot see these traits presented in front of them. Moreover, visitors cannot observe how multifaceted each animals’ lives are. Thus, zoos are immoral enterprises that convey wrong messages to visitors.
There are many problems regarding zoos, so people should find potential alternatives for them. These alternatives can include:
Watch Documentaries
For people who want to learn about animals, they can watch wildlife documentaries. These documentaries offer scientific information about an array of species and their habitats. Moreover, documentaries display footage and pictures of animals. Therefore, animal documentaries are able to engage the audience in a vivid way. With documentaries, people can understand how animals behave in nature more than when they visit zoos.
Support conservation programs
Instead of keeping animals in zoos, people should support conservation programs to protect wildlife. The root cause for declining animal populations is habitat destruction due to urbanization, pollution, and deforestation.
By donating money, conservation programs earn the funding to conduct research. These programs can thus pinpoint why certain species experience decline in population and in turn devise conservation strategies. In the long term, conservation programs help bring back animal populations and further promote biodiversity, which is crucial for sustainable development.
—
Zoos are animal prisons. They make animals suffer in captivity, produce unnatural habitats for animals, and convey immoral lessons to visitors. Instead of visiting zoos, people should watch documentaries and sponsor conservation programs. If people apply these strategies, they can gain valuable insights about animals and preserve wildlife as a whole. In conclusion, zoos worldwide should be shut down.
The article should not have such a prejudice on the negative effects of news. Some of these prospectives convey a fact that has long passed because of animal rights groups advocating for the better living conditions of animals. This article is already outdated in one or more places, and should bring about a more neutral approach on this issue.