Role Of Zoos In Preservation Of Animal Species

Have you ever been to a place where a variety of animals are separated into different areas and having their own little spaces? People captured animals from different parts of the world and confined them to narrow places in order to create a place called the zoo where people can have the entertainment. Most of the children and teenagers even the elders tend to have an interest of visiting zoos, thus making zoos earn the profits from the entrance tickets and the souvenirs being sold in zoos.

According to “Zootopia- animal welfare, species preservation and the ethics of captivity”, Taylor argued that modern zoos are established for accomplish four missions that are scientific research, public education, endangered species conservation, and personal recreation (2014). While the establishment of zoos is meant for improving the wild life, there are three points, including animal welfare, the function as entertainment over the education and the failure of conservation and recreation that counter the claims for providing a better future for wild animals. Due to the three points mentioned above, zoos are not necessary for animals and should be eliminated.

First, let us talk about animal welfare. As stated in “Zootopia- animal welfare, species preservation and the ethics of captivity”, animal welfare can be defined as “a concern for the physical and psychological well-being of the individual animal” (Taylor, 2014). Animals’ lives should be valued and humans do not possess the right to capture and confine the animals. In the past, animals were “kept in small cages with metal bars and have no way to hide from people’s view or retain their natural behaviors” (Freed, n.d.). The act is considered cruel and won’t be accept in nowadays. Although the environment zoos set for animals has changed and improved compared to the past, as the places where animals live had enlarged and be more like their natural habitats, they are still confined to limited lands and cannot live as freely as wild animals. Try to imagine the life of animals lived in the wild.

They are free to any extent that they can move without the limitation of the “broader” human set in the zoo, search for food and drink water whenever they want to without waiting for the feeding time, and participate in the food chain to maintain the balance of nature. If animals can live in the wild which is the best habitat for them, why should people capture and put them into the man-made environment? Not to mention that there are not enough laws and regulations to protect the animals in the zoos and not all zoos will make sure that every animal reside in their place is treated right, as stated in “The captivity industry” that “very little real legal protection exists for animals residing in zoos and aquariums. Zoos, circuses and marine mammal parks are regulated under the Animal Welfare Act and its regulations” (Marino, Bradshaw, and Malamud, 2009). As a result, let the animals live in the wild is the best option to protect animal welfare.

One of the most promoted advantages of establishing the zoo is that zoos can offer public education. Zoos in the past did not provide the information of the animals as “early zoos rarely displayed the information about animals’ places of origin or natural habitats. Most interested visitors learned only the animals’ names and feeding times” (Freed, n.d.) while zoos nowadays provide such information as they set up a board in front of the displaying area. However, the act did not achieve the goal of educating public successfully especially about the information on the board.

As for children, their desire of visiting zoos tend to be solely for seeing and observing animals instead of looking for animals’ information and observing them at the same time. The desire of eager to see animals that cannot be seen in life regularly may seem a good way for children to explore the world; however, observing animals without understanding some background information may lose the opportunity of arousing their interest to learn. Even teenagers and adults, who’s surely capable of reading words on those boards won’t put too much attention on the information given on the board, and many of them tend to ignore directly or walk away soon they reach the boards.

With the study of visitors to the specific house of a zoo shows that “the average time recorded for people visiting the entire house was 9.7 minutes, with an average of only 26 seconds spent in front of each enclosure” (Marino et al., 2009), it is hard for us to persuade ourselves that people will learn from zoos. Zoos indeed “give people who can’t afford to travel a chance to see the animals” (Phippen, 2016), but the goal of educating people through visiting zoos fails. To sum up, most visitors came to zoo for their own entertainment rather than preparing to be educated.

Last, let us take a look at the failure of conservation and recreation. As human society grown much bigger day by day, the proportion of natural habitats destroyed by human is raising continually. In order to gain more food, construct more buildings to supply the needs from growing population, human chose to sacrifice the nature and obtain more lands from animals. As a result, many animals had become endangered or extinct. To save those endangered animals from extinct, human try their best to conserve and recreate the animals and zoos are the place where these practices happened.

Nevertheless, the truth is that “most animals in zoos are not members of endangered species” and one study found out that “only 18 percent of land animals in zoo collections are threatened or endangered” (PETA, n.d.). If the zoos aim for protecting animals from endangered and extinct, why are there a large amount of animals that are not in the dangerous state being captivated and confined in the zoo? Even if the zoo breed the endangered animals successfully, those baby animals won’t be able to survive in the wild since the environment they grown up is different from the wild, and they won’t own the ability to take care of themselves without the cautious caring received from the staffs.

Then, if the baby animals cannot be released into the wild, the zoo fails to achieve the goal of conserving and recreating endangered animals. Moreover, some zoos participate in Species Survival Plans (SSPs) (Freed, n.d.) which “do everything in their power to maintain genetic diversity” (Freed, n.d.). Different species have different genes and the result is made from nature. Animals become endangered or extinct is because they are no longer suitable for the environment that the nature provides so there is no need that human should try to violate the laws of nature. Furthermore, if human let the animals evolve naturally without the interference, weak genes will be eliminate and the stronger one will remain which can sustain the balance of genetic diversity.

There may be people who support the establishment of zoos because the animals can receive veterinary care, extra food, and they won’t have to face the harm from their predators. Although I grant that human can offer sufficient cares for the animals, I still maintain that the zoos should be eliminated. No matter how human upgrades and improves the equipments that offered in the zoo, the truth of the animals’s lifes be restricted cannot be altered. Since the life started emerged on the earth, the animals have lived in the environment that provided by the nature for a long time. With different kinds of abilities, the animals survived by themselves without any help from human long time ago; they search for food, face the threat caused by their predators, and try their best to breed and preotect their next generation. Unfortunately, not all animals can survive through the threat from predators or the unfavorable situations come from the nature. But the loss of some animals is the natural process of renewing and refreshing biosystem as those weaker genes are eliminated by the nature. Due to the need of refreshing the life-circle of the nature, human should let the laws of the nature work without any interverence.

Because of the animal welfare, human’s selfishness, and the natural process, zoos are not a necessary element for animals and should be eliminated. Humans should value animals’ lives and let them live freely in the wild instead of confining them to restricted places. Besides, the situation of some people visiting the zoo only to satisfy their own need, which means to gain entertainment from those animals, is a display of selfishness and should be discouraged. Inaddition, human should pay respect to the natural process of renewing and refreshing the nature, and stop the interference which may violate the balance of the nature. To prevent animals from the potential harm that caused by humans and show the respect to the mechanism of the functioning of the nature, it is the best that the zoos can be eliminated and returned the animals to their original habitats.