I'm reading a book about research into animal mental illness. It's mediocre but the author is doing an OK job summarizing current research and case histories.
Halfway through the book she goes on a bleeding heart rant about how zoos are inheriently immoral. She completely dismisses their educational value and role in conservation because captive animals all suffer and she thinks it's just life sacrificed for human entertainment.
It irritated me enough to set the book down. I'm wondering now how widespread is this belief that all zoos are evil? Even the annoying vegans I know don't hate the zoo.
>zoo has giraffes.
>giraffes breed easily.
>zoo now has lots of giraffes.
>zoo contacts other zoos to see if anybody wants the giraffes (for free).
>any zoo capable of supporting giraffes also have many giraffes.
>zoo has no place to unload giraffes
.....
>zoo kills giraffes, cuts them up and feeds the chunks to their lions
Yes it happened. They even recorded it.
Not only that, they did it in front of guests and young children, with no warning about what was going on
People who had no interest in seeing meat butchering, much less possibly their favorite animal getting carved up, just walked into seeing that shit.
And the homosexuals at the zoo defended it as, and I quote, "an educational experience".
You know what, fine, dissect the giraffe and let people watch if your zoo is so shitty you can't stop over population. But for frick's sake warn people and do it out of public view.
depends on the zoo but most don't have the resources to ethically keep large mammals. Like elephants and big cats. Dolphins and whales are impossible to keep ethically if it's not in some fenced in lagoon.
The poorer the country and city the shittier the zoos. I love zoos and most animals don't give a frick if they are having an easy life in captivity but the big crowd pleasures are usually not one of them.
After playing Zoo Tycoon and learning all about their conservation programs and how much effort goes into keeping the animals happy, I can say I'm strongly for zoos. Those animals live better than I do.
Zoos are there to make money. The whole conservation thing is a scam. Your average normie isn't going to the zoo to be educated or to have a close animal experience. They want to be entertained. Even if you wanted to have a captive population of endangered animals for species security reasons, which is in itself moronic because that money would be better spent conserving habitat and protecting wild animals from anthropogenic threats, constantly being watched by hundreds of humans daily in confinement can't be good for individual, or genetic, health. Keeping most megafauna is unhealthy and unethical, and since zoos need those megafauna to attract visitors, a zoo that doesn't exploit animals is an unviable business.
I genuinely like zoos with a single caveat: they need to do right by the animals.
Be it through enrichment that keeps their minds engaged and interested in things, or by making sure their environment is large enough.
I have a local zoo that has African wild dogs.
Their enclosure is so small that I've been in restaurants with dining rooms bigger than what they have to move around in. AZA recommends a minimum of 5000ft2 for a non breeding pair, and this is a hell of a lot smaller than that with a pack of 3.
On the other end of the scale, I love zoos that go above and beyond; like the ones that have lure coursing setups for their cheetahs.
I also support private ownership of exotic animals with the same stipulations: if you want to keep it you damn well better be able to take care of it.
But then again, most people can't even do right by a fricking dog.
>have a current pushing in water at current speeds from edge of enclosure
>like enclosure law with high def LEDs and show image of open ocean
>occasionally change environment for enrichment purposes
literally just need to make an aquatic matrix and then you can ethically keep whales and dolphins, even in enclosed spaces
Zoo's are a wonderful childhood experience, but it definitely antiquated on the same column as circuses and probably won't be viewed fondly in posterity. Reserves are ideal for conservation since its their natural habitat. It would be a shame if the only way to see an exotic animal was to go to their natural habitat, but that's also just how things used to be. I think aquariums are fantastic though, not so much the ones with whales or the ones that do "shows" i just want an aquarium like Hey Arnold, big glass exhibits with cool fish hanging out.
Research shows few to none zoo visitors leave the zoo having learned anything about animals. I mean, have you ever listened to them talk about the animals while there? Nobody reads the plaques, they just go "See Timmy, this is Simba king of the jungle. Now let's see the snakes. Look Timmy it's green"
Zoos with adequate space + conservation contacts/programs are moral; restrictions but breeding is far preferable to extinctions. But if a Zoo is just a 'stare at the animals' box, better to close it down.
Zoos are cool and I enjoy visiting them. Only ones that really care about their animals' welfare though. In the UK I'm thinking Chester, Whipsnade, London etc
I don't really see the point in them unless they're being used to conserve vulnerable species. The enclosures never seem big enough for something that lives there its whole life. Any time I went to my state's zoo the animals were mostly just laying down and looking around. I didn't feel any magic watching that in 100 degree heat.
>100 degree heat
That's your problem, nothing wants to be active in those temps, not even African animals.
Head there sometime when it's in the high 70s to low 80s and you'll see a lot more activity. Usually. Probably.
How old is the book? Neurotic behaviors of zoo animals and what to do about them is a large part of the history of the field of animal mental illness. It’s why most modern zoos have extensive animal enrichment programs specifically to prevent or mitigate that. Depending on the species, zoo, or decade, lives being cruelly sacrificed for human entertainment may have been a far more valid point (like when tigers constantly paced a tiny cage and chewed at themselves, and the zoo had nothing like modern AZA-accreditation or conservation value). Modern stuff that sucks is usually like improper housing causing the animal to be constantly physically ill, or something like not dealing the source of an animal’s mental illness because it costs too much.
>How old is the book?
It's from frickin 2014. The author is just a sanctimonious b***h I think.
All animals can thrive in captivity in theory and the animals that 'cant' just need more money throwing at the problem.
>All animals can thrive in captivity in theory and the animals that 'cant' just need more money throwing at the problem.
Nah. Zoos have tried multiple times to keep army ants even building frickhuge enclosures for them but the colonies died every time after a couple of weeks.
There are also deep sea animals that can't be kept because they need moronic amounts of pressure to exist.
>There are also deep sea animals that can't be kept because they need moronic amounts of pressure to exist
Which, ironically, means they're the ones we need in zoos the most, so people can finally see and relate to things.
>Thoughts on zoos
Some species like polar bears and orcas shouldn't be kept in Zoos but lions and shit sure why not.
lions are smarter than polar bears and probably orcas too
>inb4 nooo orcas are heckin people
show me one instance of orca tool use so they can at least be heckin sea monkeys
>lions are smarter than orcas
okay buddy
Relative to their body mass, this is actually very few cortical neurons. White humans have 21,000,000,000 neurons per 180lbs. Orca have 43,100,000,000 per...8800lbs. Chimp for reference: 7,400,000,000 / 130lbs.
While the orca has a little over twice as many neurons in its cerebral cortex, it has over 48 times the body mass to control and manage sensory input from.
And in addition to that, they have an advanced 3d sonar mapping system which is a whole other sense few other animal brains have to process. And proportionally, the closest thing they have to a prefrontal cortex is very small - smaller in proportion to the rest of their brain than the cognitive center of a chimp, and the spindle cells in their brain are more loosely organized and concentrated in their enlarged limbic system (which might have more to do with sonar than special never-before-felt fish emotions).
There is also no evidence that orcas are capable of a higher form of culture than any other social predator. Wolves, too, teach their young specific hunting methods and have calls specific to lineages of packs. Like the orcas. There is even a culture of wolves that has developed a specific method of fishing - we just didn't know how universal this "NONHUMAN PERSON OMG SMART ANIMUL" behavior was because we were too busy killing the animals with the most motivation to behave like us (other social apex predators). This echoes the split between resident and transient orcas.
orca are just a standard mammal with additional calculation power and encoding-recall skills to deal with long distance migration and 3d navigation but they haven't displayed more creative problem solving than animals westoids consider automatons relative to le heckin flipperinos
the real reason they haven't killed humans yet is because they're dumb and haven't figured it out.
heh, finlets
Nice try, homosexual.
Orcas can be NEETS, anon. They are more like us than any animal
The article actually says that the mother's instinctive bond is so strong she will continue to follow around and care for adult children.
I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo in May, and I saw the polar bears fighting. It was so rad, they definitely belong in zoos
>want to visit an aquarium
>do a bit of research on its background
>owner has a half dozen or so aquariums around the country
>has multiple convictions for rare and endangered animal trafficking
i just want to see cool fishies without spending $10k on a scuba trip to australia.
You haven't lived until you hear a guy bargain for birds of paradise traded for a flock of 400 turkeys.
there are just some animals that shouldnt really be kept in zoos, great apes and elephants being a couple of them because theyre smart enough to understand the situation, reptiles are more or less content to laze about getting food for free, rodents are fine since theyre garbage animals anyways
aquariums are fine, but its really hard to keep pelagic fish because they end up accidentally killing themselves just because theres not enough space sometimes to move
because on the base level people equate zoos to kidnapping and imprisonment
I've heard the occasional person spout this nonsense but not often, especially not among people that really care about animals.
That said, zoos do need to make sure their animals have appropriate enclosures. Obviously we can't give them the space many larger animals would have in the wild but you don't want their enclosures to be too small and we should make an effort to provide stimulation of some kind to make up for the reduced space/inability to hunt/etc.
This view is quite widespread outside of the scientific community (like in the 'environmental' and 'activist' realms). The Audubon Society sued the San Diego Zoo trying to stop their California Condor breeding program. They said it was better for the species to die out with dignity. I have heard that a lot, that it is better for a species to die out rather than exist only in captivity. They ignore the fact that, as the case of the Condor shows, captive breeding can make wild populations possible - from 20-something in the 80s to 500+ now.
>Animal that don't live in zoo
>Get fricked over at every moment in life, dies brutality and without a mate And Doesn't even socialize
>Animal that live in zoo
>Live a long chad-like life with constant mating and happiness, Dies peacefully
>live free and die
>live forever in prison
It's the story of the leashed guard dog and the starving wolf all over again
they're animals
Animals also go insane in zoos. Don't forget to add that to the trade-off
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0020101
>Educacional value
We have internet now. And you can go study animals in their own country.
>zoomer thinks he can live through the internet
Shameful.
This is what results in people walking up to wild animals and treating them like pets. You need to actually see real wild animals in order to develop a respect for them. The solution is building better zoos, not throwing all the progress we've made with exhibits away.
When you study an animal in captivity, you do exactly that, watch an animal in a state that's not the one is made to live in. That's why even now people repeat misconception about wolves, because initial research was done in captivity.
This isn't about research, it's about civilians observing wild animals. You need to have a concept of "wild-ness", otherwise you just assume everything is tame.
Also it would be a disaster if people only learn about animals through pop media. What's commercially viable and delivered on your screen is always a warped vision of reality. Some bullshit discovery doc about DANGEROUS BIRDS or whatever the frick is much different than visiting an aviary, seeing the real creatures, and talking to people who care for them all day.
Good point. It's one thing to see a documentary about sharks and come away thinking "horrible gluttonous predator", then go see a shark exhibit at an aquarium and realize they are just normal animals. It goes both ways.
Oh yes, looking at an animal at the zoo is going to "educate" people. No it wont, it just make them think they can have one in captivity and that's how you get people with pet chimps and tigers.
Anon rich buttholes are always gonna be rich buttholes, do you really think the people buying tigers are the ones going to the zoo?
Jokes on you. I learned from going to the Baltimore Zoo that tigers can piss over 20 feet and there were warning signs to that effect.
very beta male post
>We have internet now.
Digital brainrot. We have a whole generation of dunning-krueger morons who get all of their education from the internet, so their knowledge base is closed off to exclusively what is on the internet. Reading factoids and looking at pictures on a Wikipedia article is not and never will be remotely the same as seeing an animal in person. No amount of "le combined knowledge of all humanity" cope will fix that.