Persuasive Essay Zoos

Animal cruelty is the abuse or failure to care for an animal. Before the past couple of years, people did not have to worry about how the animals in zoos were treated. For centuries, families have gone to zoos to be educated on the different species of animals. As years have gone by, zoos have become a trending topic of animal cruelty. While zoos do not physically abuse the animals, they have been known to not properly care for them. “According to the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA), there are over 10,000 zoos worldwide” (Fravel 2). Of these 10,000 zoos, only some of them actually care about their animals. Caring for wild animals is extremely hard because zoos have to recreate the animals’ natural habitat. Zoos believe that they are protecting the animals’, yet; they tend to forget how it affects the animals. In reality, the animals are depressed and bored. These wild animals are being taken out of their natural habitats and are enclosed in small cages and habitats. Wild animals should live in their natural habitats, the wild, not in a zoo for the entertainment of zoo visitors. Therefore, banning zoos will end the horrible cycle of animal cruelty.

According to the National Geographic Society, “The model of the modern, public zoo

became popular in 18th century, during the Age of Enlightenment” (Teng et al. 5). During the Age of Enlightenment, zoology, the study of animals, became a trending topic, sparking the opening of many zoos that are known about today. Today, zoos are said to serve as educational institutions. However, encaging wild animals for long periods of time does not teach visitors anything about the actual animal. When a wild animal is encaged, they do not behave the way that they would if they were in their natural habitats’. According to PETA’s “Zoos: Pitiful Prisons” article, “Zoos teach people that it is acceptable to interfere with animals and keep them locked up in captivity, where they are bored, cramped, lonely, deprived of all control over their lives, and far from their natural homes” (1). Keeping an animal locked up only shows humans do not care about the wildlife. From experience, when people go to the zoo, they generally only look at an exhibit for about one minute, which is enough time to entertain, not educate yourself.
The main goal for zoos has always been animal conservation, however, zoos typically only house animals who are popular, such as lions, elephants, and gorillas. Zoos think that they are protecting these animals, but most of them are not endangered or even going into extinction. The only reason that zoos keep these animals is for entertainment purposes. Visitors love seeing cute and familiar animals, so zoos house them to make profit. According to the article “Captivity for Conservation? Zoos at a Crossroads”, “Even if these zoos do occasionally preserve an endangered species, ‘‘what is the point of preserving animals if they are having miserable lives?” (Keulartz 19). In other words, while visitors enjoy seeing these animals, the animals are suffering and are unhappy. If zoos cared about the animals as much as they care about making a profit, they would see that remaining open is hurting the animals.
Along with the zoos goal of animal conservation, zoos claim that they release the animals back into the wild after they are ready to survive in the wild. According to “Don’t Zoos Help To Preserve Endangered Species”, “… it is nearly impossible to release captive-bred animals, including threatened species like elephants, polar bears, gorillas, tigers and chimpanzees into the wild” (PETA 1). Zoos are unable to release most of these animals back into their natural environments because most these animals have become so used to their lifestyle at the zoo. The zoo animal has only interacted with their own species, so these animals could and would not possibly be able to physically survive out in the wild with all of the other animals.
The second reason why zoos need to be banned is because animals should not live in small and limited spaces.

Animals, particularly the larger ones, are unable to live comfortably in small enclosures. Zoos tend to forget that larger animals have the hardest times getting used to the spaces that they are forced to live in. According to James Nolan’s article, “All the Reasons Why Zoos Should Be Banned”, “…the average lion or tiger has 18,000 times less [space] in captivity than it does in the wild; polar bears a million times less [space]” (7). Although zoos try to recreate their natural habitats, they cannot possibly succeed. The animals, if not born at the zoo, lived in large areas and had all of the freedom that they

needed.
“Measuring space in zoo elephant environments is complicated by the fact that zoo exhibits rarely function as contiguous units, but rather are subdivided with the individual spaces used separately or in combination to house groups of elephants for varying amounts of time throughout the day and night” (Meehan et al. 20). While this quote refers to elephants, living space in zoos is always limited to both large and small animals. Zoos vary in size, so the animal enclosures sizes vary as well.
The third reason why zoos should be banned is because of the effect they have on the animals that are housed. When in captivity, animals tend to not behave as they should. Animals are meant to have freedom, so when they are captured they become depressed. The word used to describe this depression is zoochosis. According to Sasha Ingber, “One of the core symptoms of depression is anhedonia, the decrease and loss of interest in pleasurable activities” (“Do Animals Get Depressed?” 6). This depression puts a large amount of stress on the animal and sometimes causes death. Some other signs of depression/ zoochosis are pacing and rocking. According to Paul Koene’s article “Behavioral Ecology Of Captive Species: Using Behavioral Adaptations To Assess And Enhance Welfare Of Nonhuman Zoo Animals), “…there are many types of behavior that are particularly important zoo animal welfare indicators, such as avoidance behavior, fear, flight, aggression, self-injurious, or repetitive (stereotypic) behavior” (Zoos Forum, 2004)(15). Zoos use these indicators to measure how the animal is dealing with living at the zoo.
Although pacing is mainly seen in large cats such as lions and tigers, many of the other animals exhibit this behavior while at the zoo. According to Di Lamont’s article “Beyond the Zoo: How Captivity Affects the Mental Well-Being of All Animals”, “When the animal initially begins the pacing, they may be easily distracted by sights or sounds. However, after some period of time, the animal may appear in a “trance,” unable to break their pace or gaze” (4). This pacing manner is a major factor of depression. The animal does not want to be in captivity, but has no other choice.
When animals are depressed, they rock back and forth. Most commonly seen in monkeys, the act of rocking back and forth allows them to deal with the depression that is taking over them. In the wild, monkeys are able to be free, but in the zoo they are not in charge of their own lives. According to “How Abnormal Is the Behaviour of Captive, Zoo-Living Chimpanzees?”, “… zoo-living chimpanzees have little opportunity to adjust association patterns, occupy restricted and barren spaces compared to the natural habitat, and have large parts of their lives substantially managed by humans” (Birkett and Newton-Fisher 20). By rocking back and forth, the monkeys are trying to cope with the fact that they are no longer in control.
Last of all, zoos should be banned for the reason that the lifespan of an animal is shorter while in captivity. While many believe that zoo animals live longer, this is not the case. Animals in captivity tend to become depressed and lonely, which in return causes them to eventually die. Animals in the wild do die, but not because of depression. Although not all animals die as fast in zoos, animals such as elephants do. According to Hannah Sentenac, “In their natural habitats, they [elephants] can live up to 60 or 70 years/…elephants in captivity die before the age of 40” (“Empty the Cages” 4 and 5). Compared to their lifespan of 70 years, a lifespan of less than 40 years is pretty short. If zoos were banned, all elephants would live long lives.
In conclusion, zoos should be banned because it is not a good environment for animals to be in. Wild animals are taken out of their natural habitats to be used as entertainment for humans and that is just not moral. Zoos claim to serve as centers of education, but all they do is show children that keeping animals in captivity is a good thing. While some zoos goal is animal conservation, other zoos ruin it by capturing animals that are not in danger. It is clear that most zoos only care about making a profit off of these animals. If zoos want to do well by the animals, the best thing to do is to let them back into the wild. Zoo animals are wild animals and wild animals deserve to live in their natural environments. As shown in this paper, wild animals cannot thrive while being caged up in zoos. Wild animals need more freedom and being at zoos will not give that to them.