Zoos Are the Problem People often find themselves looking at and talking to their pets, but all too often their little friend doesn’t talk back, or at least not in a comprehendible manner. They could be full of joy or in deep depression caused by their captivity. In all reality, one can never truly understand these animals and what they feel and think; one can only guess. In the poem “Panther,” Rainer Rilke makes her guess pertaining to what an animal feels in captivity in his piece about a panther that is going through tough times in his cage. She begins the poem with, His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world. (1-4)
Even though Rilke’s introductory thought may only be a guess, her idea that such an amazing animal can be, for all intensive purposes, in clinical depression is worth taking another look at. What if he is right, and all the zoos and parks in the world are just prison cells for these innocent creatures to just sit and rot? To even come close to a solution, one must go to the very basics of the issue. What gives humans the right to imprison these animals; animals who deserve better than to sit in a small enclosure with thousands of eyes staring at them on a daily basis? It is said that these so called wildlife parks or zoos and aquariums serve multiple purpose; that they are helping making groundbreaking discoveries on the understanding of the animals, educating those who come to visit, and the supposed conservation of animals. But for some reason, those objectives and the manner of achieving them are not up to par. How long one animal last with constant experimentation before the next of kin can is selected? Why are there zoos providing incorrect information and 41% of the individual animals on display had no signs identifying their species” (Sad Eyes 3)? And why are the very animals that are trying to be conserved receiving inadequate conditions and hurting their chance of survival in the wild?
More often than not, these animals are receiving unsatisfactory care and living conditions. According to Captive Animal Protection Society, or CAPS, “Formal inspections should be carried out once every two or three years by qualified government inspectors” (License). But those inspections are seemingly not enough based on some finding in England. Actually, in England alone, between 2005 and 2011, reports found that “at least 380 inspections have been missed all together[,] 75% of most recent inspections found unsatisfactory issues that were not subsequently addressed[, and] 95% of zoos for which inspections reports were provided should have had legal enforcement action taken against them at some time between 2005 and 2011. Only two instances of the correct enforcement action were identified” (License). For all we know, those number could be worse because most “zoos are given advance notice of inspections” (Sad Eyes 4). Even still, there is something obviously wrong that when the law stated conditions unsatisfactory, almost all of those zoos were not persecuted and allowed to continue their mistreatment of their animals. And though these conditions may not be intentional, there should at least be an effort to try for improvement.
Alongside the treatment of the animals are there actual living conditions. Though it may not be hard to properly house and satisfy the basic needs of a human being, the same is not true for zoo animals. The exhibits for these animals are most often not in concurrence with their natural habitat. The biggest problem with the exhibits is simply spacing. Though it is impossible to fully replicate the Plains of Africa, the animals from which they originate there, should at least get close to their natural habitats. Yet again, this is not the case. A study in the UK found that their zoos and parks are “on average 100 times smaller than the minimum home range for the animals they contain” (Sad Eyes 1). And “another study of zoos worldwide found that lions and other big cats have 18000 times less space in zoos than in the wild (Sad Eyes 2). No matter how big something is 1/18000 of it is going to be pretty small. Imagine living in a mansion with no wants in the world and then being ripped away from that and put into a tiny room with no freedoms. What does that resemble? It resembles a prison, and that is exactly what these zoo animals are going through. Such small living quarters leads the animals to “obsessive behaviors in the form of pacing, swaying, and even self-mutilation. This is known as stereotypic behavior and such pointless, repetitive movements have also been noted in people with mental illnesses” (Sad Eyes 1). Could zoos, which are supposed to be beneficial to these animals, actually just be a place to put animals and watch them looses their minds? Rilke, in her very next line draws this scene As [the panther] paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. (5-8) She paints the image of a powerful and "mighty" animal that deserves respect is actually nothing to fear. A panther is a very dangerous animal in the wild, but when captive it is nothing more than a spectacle to look at on the weekend. Not only are these animals bored to death but because of such small quarters is not getting their necessary exercise. Nikia Fico of the University of Arizona states that when animals "don't move, that's when they have physical problems" (qtd. in Cohn).
CAPS also states that this “is not just a matter a space, but also the quality of the environment,” and there are cases where “it is so common for big cats to constantly pace up and down their enclosures that zoos put concrete paths along the fence to stop the ground wearing down” (Sad Eyes 2). There is no sense in people that when they see these animals struggling they basically just throw a blanket down to cover it up let the animals keep struggling instead of actually fixing the problem and changing the exhibit. Pacing is only one of many side effects of captivity, some radical and dangerous. Some animals are actually so affected by their captivity that they are “given anti-depressants, tranquillizers and anti-psychotic drugs to control their behaviors” (Sad Eyes 1). Since when and why have animals been prescribed drugs to control their behavior? If these animals simply received the conditions they deserve, then these animals would surely return to their natural behavior.
On the topic of keeping things natural, captive breeding is far from the natural orders of things. Captive breeding extremely limits a species chance of survival because of the small gene pool available to mates. In fact, “captive-bred animals often lack survival skills, especially those normally learned from a parent” (Sad Eyes 2). With the animals not having to hunt or find food as they would in the wild, they have no need to learn the skill set necessary to survive in the wild, leaving the release of captive animals backing into the wild a glaring death threat to the entire species. Studies have shown that “if the trait distribution in a wild population is at a optimum that has been shaped by selection in the wild environment, releasing individuals into the population that have a different distribution as a result of selection in captivity will result in a reduction in the mean fitness of the population” (Ford 816). Even if the breeding was halted, the reintegration of the animals would prove a difficult task in itself. Because of the unsatisfactory conditions and lack of survival skills, a zoo animal in the wild would have to settle for scraps for the remainder of its life and would be a social outcast from the rest of the species. There certainly are some promising opportunities in zoos if they could truly accommodate the animals. For instance, life expectancy can be potentially higher in captivity than in the wild. In fact, "Zoo elephants average 44 years," while hazards in nature bring "the life expectancy to 40" (Cohn). Another plus zoos had going for them is actually educating their visitors, but a study found that "four months after their visit, 39 percent of respondents were able to state some new knowledge or understanding they had gain and still retained" (Packer). If less than half of the visitors don't learn or can't remember anything, is it really worth put the animals through the shows day-in and day-out? There has been and will always be a chance that zoos are actually good for the animals, but in today's world, the conditions and hardships these animals go through is not worth it and can actually be harmful to them. Until there is a suitable replacement for captivity, the animals need to be free in their natural habitat. Word Count: 1,521
Works Cited
“‘A License to Suffer’: Zoo report highlights how the law is failing animals in English zoos.” Captive Animals Protection Society. CAPS, 8 April 2012. Web. 5 December 2012.
Cohn, Jeffrey P. "Do Elephants Belong In Zoos?." Bioscience 56.9 (2006): 714- 717. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 8 Dec. 2012.
Ford, Michael. "Selection In Captivity During Supportive Breeding May Reduce Fitness In The Wild." Conservation Biology 16.3 (2002): 815-825. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 5 Dec. 2012.
Packer, Jan, and Roy Ballantyne. "The Role Of Zoos And Aquariums In Education For A Sustainable Future." New Directions For Adult & Continuing Education 127 (2010): 25-34. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Rilke, Rainer. “Panther.” Reading Literature and Writing Argument. Ed. Missy James and Alan P. Merickel. 4th ed. Boston: Longman, 2011. 328. Print.
“Sad Eyes & Empty Lives.” Captive Animals Protection Society. CAPS, n.d. Web. 5 December 2012.