#animals in captivity

[araaaarchive]

[acti-veg]

do you have any advice for someone (me) who spent most of her life as the world's #1 zoo defender but is now majorly questioning them? i now aim to be a field conservationist, but for years on end i wanted to be a zookeeper, and i fully believed in the educational benefits zoo proponents are always touting. but after doing a ton of research into how harmful captivity is on animals, the horrific captures required to bring them into captivity, the compelling evidence for nonhuman personhood for vertebrates, and the educational failures of zoos (as well as reading the excellent essay by derrick jenson you've posted about in the past), i'm now super conflicted. i can't deny the big impact zoos had on me as a child, though. sorry to just dump in your inbox like this but this issue is driving me nuts so i figured i'd ask someone who is also passionate about it

For many people, the hardest thing to give up in their journey to going vegan is something like cheese, or eggs. For me it was zoos. Even when I was eating fully plant-based, getting rid of my animal fabrics slowly and avoing anything animal-tested, it took some time for me to do the research and really see this place where so many of my happiest childhood memories occured was actually pretty harmful. I was right where you are now.

That essay encouraged me to reframe my thinking in terms of who is actually benefiting from the arrangement. Conservation of animals in captivity who will never realistically be released - what are we conserving exactly, and for who? Education, but for who? What do we actually learn from zoos, really? I looked at the most notable achievements of zoos, and wondered if they could have been achieved without putting animals in captivity for public viewing. I found that some of the most significant conservation stories came not from zoos, but charities, private breeding programs, rewilding and land conservation

. Similarly, documentaries educate just as well as zoos do, if not far better, because the animals we are seeing are exhibiting their natural behaviour, as opposed to their atypical, stressed and often depressive captive counterparts. There just isn't a great deal we can learn from observing animals in wholly unnatural surroundings, they develop completely abnormal social structures, often zoochosis, and we have built several fundamental misunderstandings of wild animal behaviour on assumptions made by exhibiting behaviour that exclusively occurs in captive animals.

There is just no reason why conserving animals and educating the public should need animals to be on display for our amusement, and for the profit of their owners. What good zoos do can be done far better by institutions who do not have the vested interest of profiting from their incarceration, and can conserve and learn from animals in their natural environment.

[jbfly46]

How are “animals refuse to mate in captivity”, and the declining birth rate in the U.S. related to each other?

[devoted1989]

Image with kind permission from Vegan for the Animals.

[voiceofthewild]

[severelynerdysheep]

Hiya @yellow-lemon-lime I absolutely respect that you blocked me form replied to the Zoos post, but since I did spend a fair bit of time responding to your last response I do want to post it anyway since it does include answers to some questions you asked pre block. I’m just gonna paste it down below and feel free to pop into my inbox anytime if you want to discuss the issue anymore.

I do tend to try and include information relating to the US when I talk about these issues since the majority on Tumblr are from the US. But no, ive only ever been their once myself.

“ And ZOOs do need to make sure their animals are being treated well. I definitely agree with anyone on that.”

The problem is that simply living captive in a Zoo is actively detrimental to the animals, no matter how “high welfare” the Zoo it. And since there is no reason why Zoos need to be in existence, far from it. There is no justification for these places to still be in existence no matter how “high welfare” they claim to be. You only have to look at Zoochosis which is a standard condition faced by animals captive in the worst to the “best” Zoos.

“Any zoo that has its main focus on entertainment rather than conservation and education is not a good place for animals to be. Animals should be able to thrive.”

Again, this simply is not a reality of Zoos. Zoos usually raise money in three ways: taxes/government support, wealthy individuals and organizations, and earned revenue from ticket and merchandise sales. As a result, amusement is a vital function of zoos because people want to be entertained sand If a zoo wishes to remain financially sound it must cater to the people, which always comes to the detriment of the animals. A zoo is nothing more than a business in the sense that it that must remain profitable to remain open. And like all business based on animal exploitation, the animals always suffer. And we cannot forget that the reality is that if conservation is the goal, more effective methods include tackling habitat loss and climate change, investing in conservation programs in the wild, education, working with local communities, seriously addressing poaching etc. Zoos are not necessary for conservation, far from it the money could be so much better used helping conserve animals without exploiting them to the detriment of their mental and physical wellbeing.

In regards to the link to a response to the great article form @acti-veg​. First I think its important to note that almost all of the the sources used to defend the existence of Zoos are from Zoos themselves. Its also important to recognise that the response doesn't actually dispute many of the claims made in the article (the issue of surplus animals being one example) but attempts to defend the issues by accusing any concern over these issues as being the anthropomorphising of these animals rather than just the recognition of them as sentient beings who shouldn't be exploited/murdered.

“An animal can be a city’s shared pet, or it can be a quasi-agricultural team member whose work is to be seen and to breed and, perhaps, to die young.”

This is disturbing stuff.

And when trying to defend Zoos on the basic of education, which isn't a justification for keeping these animals captive. The sources used to back up this defence are either sources saying that visitors are simply more likely to visit again, use very unreliable methods of reporting the educational effects of Zoo presentations on visitors, or are from Zoos themselves. Yes, this person is right that most people in studies generally will give the opinion when asked that Zoos teach people (children especially) how to protect animals and their habitats and a great places of education, this is not the case. And in reality, viewing captive animals in zoos only teaches people how animals react to boredom, depression, and stress in captive situations. Heck the sources themselves used in the response to the @acti-veg article admits that the most effective methods of education in zoos come via presenting videos, documentaries, interactive modules, graphic displays, and computer simulations. which all show animals in their natural environments and do not require any animals to be kept in zoos.

And I’m very happy to talk in more depth about the response to this article of you want though. Its a pretty iffy response.

“ Small question I forgot to ask. What’s wrong with some of the animals being fed to other animals? “

Do you mean animals that were never exploited (i.e. kept captive) and died of natural causes, say a bird you find in the woods. Or do you mean exploited animal who are murdered for the purpose of feeding them to other exploited animals? Its a pretty broad question with different answers depending on what you mean specifically by the question.

Also always agree with the no hate request.

[captiveape]

Jestah;

Jestah (born 1981) moved to Monkey World in ’93 with his half-brother Buxom, after their home at Windsor Safari Park closed down. Allies ever since, their close bond has allowed them both to sustain a high rank within the Bachelor Group. Jestah is known to suffer from an eczema-type condition, from time to time.

Day 453 of Chimp A Day. (photo credit Flickr)

[wildlife-conservationist]

Deceased adult female lined seahorse awaiting necropsy