Zoos Should Be Abolished: Animals Should Not Be Kept In Zoos

Animals are a beauty of nature. They have their own personalities, feelings, and interests, yet we still take them prisoner, throw them into tiny cages that are nothing like their natural habitat and leave them there to suffer just to make money. These horrific “tiny cages” are found in zoos. Zoos offer no benefits to humans or animals alike and must end now.

Being taken away from home, family, friends, and their way of life, animals in zoos tend to suffer. Zoo animals are isolated, stressed and bored. Most zoo animals develop “zoochosis”, repetitive behaviour or actions that have no meaning when taken from their natural habitats and placed into their new enclosures. Also, these enclosures are only a fraction of the size of their natural habitats and are not enough for the animals’ needs. Typically, polar bears are very active animals and are always on the hunt for a meal, but only getting an enclosure a million times smaller than their natural habitat can drive them insane. Tiny enclosures can also cause big animals like the elephant, who walk around 25 km a day, to become obese and die earlier.

Zoo animals not only suffer miserable lives in enclosures, but once they become surplus animals and useless to zoos, they are cruelly handled with. Surplus animals can include any unwanted animals that can no longer profit the zoo. Some include animals that can no longer produce offspring for the zoo, or babies that have grown up and are replaced by newer, cuter animals. To get rid of these unwanted animals, zoos sometimes trade or sell them to other zoos, pet owners or even hunting ranches. The new owners of these animals can do anything they want with them. If zoos can’t get rid of the animal, they may even kill it without batting an eye.

The existence of zoos endanger the lives of both humans and animals. Any kind of incident in a zoo can cause either humans or animals to be harmed. If there were an escape of a predatory animal the nearby residence would start a huge panic and people may get injured. The situation may even result the animal to be gunned down and killed. Zoos also leave animals with no way to defend themselves. If there were hunters in the zoo, the animals would be easy targets. Also, if there were some kind of natural disaster in the area, the animals have no way to escape from the danger. During Hurricane Katrina, most aquatic animals at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans died without any help evacuating from workers.

Animals are valuable treasures that make Earth precious. Just like how we don’t deserve to be put into tiny cages for the rest of our lives, animals don’t deserve to be put into the terrible excuse for money called “zoos” either. Zoos are abusive, heartless, dangerous, and money hungry. If we want to protect our treasures, we need to end zoos, or at the very least, change them.