The Animal Welfare Act

At one point or another everyone has visited a zoo and felt the magic of seeing exotic animals like the massive elephants, towering giraffes, adorable penguins, ferocious lion and the intelligent chimpanzees that you would never have the chance to encounter in nature. But, have you stopped to think about what we are doing to these animals. As humans, we believe that we have the right to capture, breed and put on display whatever animal we choose because we are the dominant species, right? We go as far as saying that we are saving endangered animals from poachers (whom are human) and putting them in cages for their own ‘safety’ to justify the inhumane treatment of these marvelous creatures. In 1966 the Animal Welfare Act was started to “regulate the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers” (U.S. Department of Agriculture) but, does this law really do anything to protect animals who cannot protect themselves? The USDA only inspects zoos once a year and while many of them have passed they have later been found to have numerous violations. (Zoos: pitiful prisons peta.org)

Inside a cage a predatory animal are not allowed to hunt and will eventually lose their natural survival instincts, preventing them from every being able to be released back into the wild; nocturnal animals find it difficult to maintain normal sleeping hours and routines because of zoos operational hours; and temperatures and fauna from the animals native home cannot be easily replicated leading to zoo employees feeding animals alternative forms of nutrients disrupting the natural order of