Argument Essay
Comp I
April 16, 2014
Zoos are Prisons When I was a child I loved going to the oversized Fort Worth Zoo, but now I am older and more aware of the truth about zoos. To the general public, zoos give the impression that they are there to educate and preserve endangered animals while performing beneficial research, but that is not entirely true. The actual truth behind the scenes of most zoos, not all zoos, is very sad and ugly. I will never visit or support another zoo now that I am aware of how those animals have to live when kept in captivity. Zoos are prisons for wild and exotic animals that deserve to be free. The first reason I am against zoos is because of the fact that they are not fully committed to the well-being of the wild and exotic animals they inhabit. I agree with the “Last Chance for Animals Organization” when they said, “While zoos claim to provide conservation, education, and entertainment, their primary goal is to sustain public support in order to increase profits” (“Zoos”). It is a fact that many zoos are aware that baby animals attract crowds so they breed their animals frequently for the sole purpose of making more money (“Animal”). Once these cute babies start to grow up, zoos very sadly begin to discard of them in various ways (“Zoos”). This only shows that zoos are in fact putting profit, entertainment, and the creation of new attractions above the well-being of their animals. Zoos are also guilty of choosing big animals that are charming and appealing over the smaller and less favored ones in hopes of drawing larger crowds (“Animal”). According to PETA, “The zoo community regards the animals it keeps as commodities, and animals are regularly bought, sold, borrowed, and traded without any regard for established relationships” (“Animal”). Zoos are not concerned about their animal’s happiness, well-being, or even their babies and families. The second reason I am against zoos and believe they should be banned is because of the living conditions they force their animals to live in. The living conditions for zoo animals can be compared to prisons for humans, but some breeds are forced to live in conditions worse than a prison. It is almost impossible for a zoo to completely reproduce the environments these wild and exotic animals are accustomed to and designed for (“Zoos: Pitiful”). When zoos take an animal from the wild and place them in captivity, they are committing a crime in my opinion. These wild animals are placed in cramped living quarters with unnatural environments (“Reality”). Zoo animals kept in captivity are deprived of engaging in natural and instinctual activities that are vital to their own kind (“Zoos: Pitiful”). Some zoos are guilty of clipping their bird’s wings so they can’t fly or isolating wild animals who are naturally used to living in herds or large groups. The living conditions for these animals do not provide privacy nor allow them to engage in instinctual behavior such as hunting or mating. Zoos keep their animals on strict schedules for every aspect of their life with feeding, breeding, and exercising schedules (“Zoos: Pitiful”). These animals are not prisoners or criminals and they deserve to be left in their own natural habitats where they can socialize with their own kind and roam free. I am also against zoos because of the negative mental problems they cause animals to suffer by placing them in captivity. The mental results of placing a wild animal in captivity for long periods of time is not good. When these wild animals have all that is vital and normal to them taken away, they often begin to show signs of a mental condition called Zoochosis (“Reality”). Zoo animals become lonely and frustrated with life in captivity and as a result they begin to display irrational and damaging behaviors (“Animal”). According to PETA, “The physical and mental frustrations of captivity often lead to abnormal, neurotic, and even self-destructive behavior, such as incessant pacing, swaying, head-bobbing, bar-biting, and self-mutilation” (“Animal”). These behaviors are the signs of Zoochosis and zoos are responsible for causing these animals to become this way (“Zoos”). These abnormal behaviors can be very dangerous to the animals themselves, zoo employees, and to the visitors. There have been many reports from zoos of large animals trying to escape and endangering themselves because they are miserable with their current living conditions (“Reality”). Zoo visitors will often throw things at the animals or yell at them in an attempt to make them move or do something interesting. According to PETA, “At the Dallas Zoo, a gorilla named Jabari tried to escape by jumping over the walls and moats of his enclosure, only to be fatally shot by police” (“Reality”). This particular incident was a result of this animal being kept in captivity under unhappy conditions and also a direct result of teenage visitors teasing him with rocks. Since people have begun to notice these abnormal behaviors, many zoos have actually started medicating their animals with psychotic drugs such as Prozac (“Reality”). Most zoos have created their own breeding programs and this is another reason why I am completely against zoos. These breeding programs do not allow the animals to seek out their own mating partners and not to mention the fact that many of them are too depressed to mate on their own anyway (“Reality”). As a result, many animals are bred by artificially inseminating the females. Nothing good seems to come from these artificial breeding programs because often the mother will reject her own baby and if she does accept it, the baby is destined for a life in captivity. There are even more problems with these programs such as miscarriages and even babies being born dead (“Reality”). The even sadder part of this is that most zoos only breed their animals to have more babies to put on display because they know cute babies will attract more visitors (“Animal”). On the other hand, some animals mate regularly on their own such as deer, lions, and tigers (“Zoos”). Their regular breeding creates an unwanted number of adult animals for zoos. Zoos sometimes discard their unwanted animals by selling them to hunting and game buyers (“Zoos”). According to the research done by the “Last Chance for Animals Organization,” “Other ‘surplus’ animals are sometimes sold to roadside zoos (which are typically very poorly run), private individuals, animal dealers, or to laboratories for experimental purposes” (“Zoos”). This is just one more fact about zoos that proves they are not helping all these wild animals like they claim to be. Many zoos claim they are helping to preserve endangered species, but the truth is that most animals living in zoos are not endangered at all (“Zoos”). Also, most animals they capture from the wild are not even sick, wounded, or abandoned. Zoos are not preserving these species because once they are captured from their perfectly good homes and placed in captivity, they have a slim chance of surviving in the wild ever again. Zoos also like to claim that they are helping these animals by performing research on them to help their kind survive in the wild, but that is not true either. Investigation of the research zoos are doing shows that most are not performing any research that is actually beneficial to preserving and helping the animals in the wild (“Zoos”). Most of the research done by zoos is based on discovering more ways to improve their breeding programs or how to keep a larger number of animals (“Zoos: Pitiful”). Many people claim that zoos have an educational value to them and are needed to engage children and adults. This is not true because zoos are only portraying wild and exotic animals in a captive environment which does not accurately show how they live in the wild (“Zoos”). In today’s world, people can get a more accurate idea of how these animals live in the wild by watching educational documentaries found on cable television and the internet (“Zoos: Pitiful”). According to the “Humane Society of the United States,” “Instead of being focused only on entertainment and profits, zoos and other facilities housing captive wild animals should be organized around a core mission that educates the public about the needs of the animals and the threats they face” (“Zoos: Working”). Instead of visiting a zoo, people should visit and support nonprofit sanctuaries and other nonprofit organizations that rescue and nurse wild animals while always striving to prepare them for their release back into the wild (“Animal”). Now that I know the truth about zoos, I will never support or visit another zoo. Instead I know I can visit a sanctuary or nonprofit rescue center that provides kindhearted care to their animals until they can be introduced back into the wild, or until the day they die of old age (“Zoos”). Zoos should be banned or shut down because of their lack of commitment to the wild and exotic animals they have taken from the wild to supposedly help and preserve. Zoos are internment camps for wild and exotic animals that should and deserve to be free.
Works Cited
“Animal Rights Uncompromised: Zoos.” Peta.org. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 2014. Web. 6 Apr. 2014
“Reality of Zoos, The.” Peta.org. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 2014. Web. 6 Apr. 2014
“Zoos: Pitiful Prisons.” Peta.org. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 2014. Web. 6 Apr. 2014
“Zoos: Working to Improve Zoo Conditions and Promote Natural Habitats.” Humanesociety.org. The Humane Society of the United States, 2014. Web. 6 Apr. 2014
“Zoos.” Lcanimal.org. Last Chance for Animals, 2014. Web. 6 Apr. 2014