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Zoos:Pros or Cons
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Recommended: Zoos:Pros or Cons
Zoo Essay Outline Keeping animals in zoos does them more harm than it benefits them.
People that are with zoos and not against them say that animals are taken out of the wild to save them from becoming extinct, but according to an article named “Don’t zoos help to preserve endangered species?” on www.PETA.org, zoos sometimes take animals that aren’t endangered out of the wild. To justify this, they say that animals are taken out of the wild so we could learn more about them, but why take animals out of the wild to learn about them when you can simply watch a documentary on them? Or read a book or an article online?
You might also be asking yourself, “How is putting animals into zoos harming them?” According to the book Reality Central, there is an article named “Two Views of the Zoo” which says that in zoos, animals are fed every day and therefore have very little to do. Meanwhile in the wild, animals spend most of the day either hunting or looking for food. If animals are kept in zoos for too long, they might lose their natural instincts and not be able to survive when they get released back into the wild, if they get released.
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Research from the same article mentioned in the last paragraph also let me know that sometimes the breeding programs struggle or fail, and cannot help out certain animals. For example, in the article, it says that pandas will not breed in zoos. It also states that zoos take more giant pandas from their natural habitat than are born through breeding
Have you ever seen an animal sitting in a cage all alone with nothing to do. Well, zoos are trying to change that fact. They will allow the animals to live in an environment that is like their home. Many people don't realize this, but zoo are keeping and breeding these animals because they would not survive in the wild alone. In the three passages, ¨The Stripes Will Survive,¨ ¨The Zood Go Wild from No More Dodos,¨ ¨Our Beautiful Macaws and Why They Need Enrichment.¨ All of these articles present one claim, that is that the role of zoos is no longer to keep animal, but to protect them.
Considering the many challenges animals face in the wild, it is understandable that people may be eager to support zoos and may feel that they are protective facilities necessary for animal life. In the article “ Zoos Are Not Prisons. They Improve the Lives of Animals”, Author Robin Ganzert argues that Zoos are ethical institutions that enrich the lives of animals and ultimately protect them. Statistics have shown that animals held in captivity have limited utilitarian function resulting in cramped quarters, poor diets, depression, and early death for the animals thus, proving that Zoos are not ethical institutions that support and better the lives of animals as author Robin Ganzert stated (Cokal 491). Ganzert exposes the false premise in stating
When people go on a trip to the zoo, it can be assumed that they do not think about much more than what they can see. Signals that make zoos unfair and sometimes unbearable for the captive animals are not visible to most spectators. This essay will explain how zoos are unjust and should not be supported. Animals should not be held captive due their negative behavioral changes, lack of natural habitat and the zoos failure to effectively preserve endangered species.
Thousands of zoos worldwide are visited by citizens yearly to admire and satisfy their curiosity of the beautiful wild animals that mother nature has to offer. Zoos have been around for hundreds of years and have become a known tradition for numerous school field trips and family outings. The ongoing debate between animal rights activists and zoo officials remains, should wild animals be taken from their natural habitats to live in city zoos for education and entertainment purposes?
There are many places where people can go to see live animals such as aquariums, zoos, and safari parks. A pleasant way to define a Zoo is to call it “an establishment that maintains a collection of wild animals”. (Google def) Another way to say that is a facility in which animals are “enclosed in cages for public exhibition”. I believe zoos are ethical; however, changes need to be made to eliminate problems I have discovered. In this argumentative essay, I will be arguing the ethics of zoos and certain problems that need to be addressed that people are not aware of. Zoos are great places to take the family out for the day to have entertainment; however, problems such as captive breeding, length of life, and animal stress need to improve.
... danger too. A good reason for captivity is rehabilitation for an animal that is hurt or wounded and could be treated. Then having a second chance back out into the wild. Also by keeping endangered species from going completely instinct by figuring out genetics of an animal. So having zoos and farms do help animals but does put them at risk.
Zoos display fascinating animals from all over the world for human entertainment, research, conservation, and education. Many scientists conduct studies on animals in captivity that they may not have been able to in the wild. Zoos educate all the visitors that come; they let people know everything that they know about the animals on display. We do learn a lot from these animals, but not all of the animals in the zoo are behaving like they normally would in the wild. Larger animals, such as elephants and orcas (commonly known as killer whales), have trouble with being confined in such a small area. However, many smaller animals benefit from zoos because they provide protection from predators, natural disasters, and poachers. They also benefit from conservation efforts; the babies being born get all the care they could ever need. Some animal rights activists are concerned that the conservation efforts are limiting the gene pool of the species. They argue that the small number of animals able to breed in captivity limits biodiversity and leads to weaknesses in the species overall. Zoos are wonderful places to study and learn about animals, but we need to improve the living standards for animals that struggle with captivity.
Animals that are kept in zoos are often mated with an animal they don not want to mate with. Animals were not meant to be kept in zoos. They were meant to be free in their own natural habitats. In zoos animals are put in small spaces, it has a negative impact on their behavior and health. If animals are kept in zoos they won’t know how to live on their own in the wild and can be killed by predators.
As stated previously, some zoos have breeding programs that help animals repopulate their species, like the Przewalski horse, where only 31 horses in 2 separate zoos, one in Munich and one in Prague, repopulated the species to where in fifty years over, 1500 Przewalski horses were alive in 1995, as stated in “10 things… about the Przewalski horse”, by Jason G. Goldman. Another example is the California Condor, which the San Diego Zoo helped rehabilitate and repopulate, according to “San Diego Zoo’s California Condor breeding program to continue”, KPBS.org. Breeding programs around the world have been helpful for numerous species, and have even saved some of them from going extinct. Although sometimes breeding programs aren’t successful, it’s better to give a species a chance to repopulate and survive, than let them die out because of humans in the first place, at least
Such as, animals that are hunted for their fur or meat. Animals are also treated with medical care in the zoos, where was if they were living in their natural habitat they would not have immediate medical care. However, argument against having zoos think by capturing the animals out of their natural habitat it disturbs the way they live. Once you put animals in a cage, it changes the atmosphere and the behavior. It also changed the way the animals mate, a specific species may start decreasing in size because they are being put into zoos all around the world.
Over the years, the role of the zoo has changed dramatically, starting thousands of years ago as a display of wealth and power, morphing into places for entertainment, then education, and now incorporating aspects of conservation as well (“History”). What their priorities should be is something that is up for debate however. Do the animals take precedence over the visitors? Should the main objective of the zoo be to entertain and educate the public, or support and fund as many conservation projects as possible? Much has been written on the subject, and depending on who is asked, the answer may be very different.
Supporters of zoos argue that they help to conserve endangered species, but in fact they are not very good at this. Even the world famous panda-breeding programme has been very costly and unsuccessful. Also, zoo life does not prepare animals for the challenges of life in the wild. For example, two rare lynxes released into the wild in Colorado died from starvation even though the area was full of hares, which are a lynx’s natural prey.
Most of us have had the opportunity to visit a zoo before, whether it be in your home town, out of state, or maybe even out of the country. Well I think a lot of us may look at visiting a zoo simply as something fun to do with your family or friends, but today I would like to inform everyone on the other benefits of having these zoo’s. The main focus of Zoos are to help endangered animals, provide animal research, and educate the public about the animals living there. Some may disagree, but there is more to zoos than having them on display for viewer’s entertainment.
Through the years, humans have constructed roads, build cities, and cut down trees for wood, all of these activities have destroyed and changed habitats of animals to an extent where the animals can no longer survive in these environments. As a result, some people have found a way to create new homes for these animals and preserve them and keep them safe by establishing nature parks and sanctuaries. People are not allowed to build or hunt in these areas, and they have rangers who watch over the animals. Keeping endangered animals in these reserves and protected has proven to be beneficial and increase populations of endangered animals to keep them from going extinct. Some may compare a zoo to a prison and ay that animals need room to roam and be free in nature, but zoos today focus of animal welfare and spend millions of dollars to create larger and better animal enclosures to improve the living conditions of the animals.
An intruder enters someone’s house, the intruder kidnaps them, rips them from their family and jails them for life. Zoos should be banned because they do not have the right to kidnap the animals and jail them for life even if they are endangered. Stealing the animals from their home for our entertainment, shameful. The crazy thing is we are so entertained by it so much they make $175 million a year (1). The animals and people are equal none have less of an importance we are both living beings.