Positive And Negative Aspects Of Keeping Animals In Zoos

I remember when I was 10 years old, I have a fun memory of going to the zoo with my family during the school holiday. The magnificent species in the zoo had surprised my view of the world. The birds, Orangutan, even the elephants, and camel are all my impressions about the zoo. A zoo is an interesting place. Since 2,500 B.C.E in Ancient Egypt, a wild animal has been captive by king and conquerors used as a status symbol. (Marc Alain, 2014) Nowadays, the zoo becomes a place where keeping animals as a display with the purpose of education, conservation, and scientific research. (National Geography, 2019) Zoo also can be a place with distortion reason. In the world is capital is particular about the goods and benefits. Zoo, then cannot escape from degraded as a tool for lawless person’s hands barely of their selfishness. With the rising of the people with the awareness of morality, the zoo has become a place that being argue of both Pros and Cons sides. Next, I will take you through some of the questions on this issue, and not let the truth continue to be covered under the name of excuses.

You will not believe that the king of the jungle, the tiger, can be so obedience to the zoo. It just like a cat in the house, cute and delightful. This scene is totally made my mind upside down as it is not the same as what I am thinking about the tiger when I went to visit back the zoo in high school. The wild behavior of the tiger has been changed entirely after it sent to the zoo as an animal that captive for displaying to the public and amusing the people over there. With curiosity, I search on the web and I found something incredible. They trained the tiger with bamboo sticks if the tiger behaved badly, this training will repeat every day before the tourist come to visit. As time passes, this big cat has been trained to be cute and they lost their brutish nature eventually. Somebody might say, the tiger will kill the people with their brutish nature. If we are not going to train as soon as possible, who will take full responsibility once the case happened? Well, the tiger is always belonging to the jungle, so, it brutish nature is what it has born to be. Whereas, captive tiger as a pet is not what humans should do at the beginning.

Another case happens in Taiwan. In the year 2013, the 10th of July, a whale shark captive in the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium was already set it free from the aquarium to the natural sea. In just six hours, the whale shark, which had been kept in captivity for eight years, was stranded twice before finally sinking to the bottom of the sea with its innocent life to be a pet whale shark for humans. 11th the next day, the company unexpectedly giving a falsely claim stated that the whale shark has already been swimming to the ocean successfully. The whale shark made hundreds of millions of dollars for the company and was treated rudely. This is no longer an isolated case, and the public has been saddened by the company's response. The distrust of the company has once again raised the issue of animal rights in the eyes of the world. In fact, when the animal already gets used to an environment for a long time, it will lose its surviving ability and finally become a strong dependant animal that only can live under the captivity of humans. What so the shame of human behavior made one supposed to be free become contrary.

One of the missions of the zoo is for scientific research. Well, I have a big question on this point. Look, zoologists usually doing scientific research is according to the natural behavior of the animal. Take up the argument above, the behavior of animals will be so much change after living in the zoo. Then, how the zoologist or whoever wants to do behavioral research on an animal can have a correct research report for it. On the contrary, the wrong report will not bring any benefits for humans even all the living creatures living in the world. This statement is not true even it does not hold the water at all. Moreover, many funds that support zoologist to do research is based on field research, this is no bond with the zoo. (Morality’s Progress, 2002) There are two common ways the scientist does the research in the zoo, anatomy, and pathology. The research usually for two purposes: to improve the health of animals in the zoo and serves human health experiments. (Morality’s Progress, 2002) Once again, this is another excuse for nothing to do with the zoo. If there is no zoo, there is no needs to establish an experiment for improving the animals in the zoo. Furthermore, human DNA is not the same as animal DNA, there are no reasons to do a human experiment on the animal. I believe with the latest technology, the human is no longer to solve calculation in that such a wrong statement.

Even though I have a fun zoo experience when I am still a primary school kid, but I do not have to learn any knowledge about zoology. I have fun because the circus event has a performance by the animals. I have fun because I did not realize those funny, silly, dumpty actions performed by animals is not their natural behavior. They trained the animals can perform a show to attract even more visitors who can provide them a big amount of income. Information contributed by the Reid Park Zoo in Tucson, Arizona showed the ratio within the expenses at the zoo. It is only 1.2% for animal medicines and 6.7% for animal food in perhaps every ten or thousands of million dollars. (Zoos Through the Ages)

The data was amazed me that the animals in the zoo were always just a money-making tool. The purpose of education is no longer exists. And another thing based on my experience I found that the board shows up the information in each animal only stated out the common information about the animal. In this information explosion era, I can check the information on the website is better than I go to the zoo. Although this behavior is not enough to experience to touch the real animal, the situation of the zoo today is tending to amusement and given a wrong reason and doing the failed action about the purpose of education.