Zoos - Ethical or not?

zoe 3619 · 15-10-2016 09:47PM

Have never been to Dublin zoo,but have visited the Cotswold Wildlife Park in the uk a few times.Great space for all the animals,and doing a huge amount for conservation and raising awareness.
Some species are only kept going by raising animals in captivity,and hoping for their native conditions to improve enough to re-release them.
Have also visited a monkey forest in the u.k a few times.80 or so acres enclosed,and keeping macaques living freely with the hopes of re releasing them when there's less unrest in the area they originate from.
Have seen some bad zoos around europe,with unhappy looking animals in unsuitable conditions,but some zoos are great,and many species would be extinct without them and they're protection and breeding programmes.

Grandeeod · 15-10-2016 10:05PM

If the animals are born in zoo's, bred in zoo's and live in zoo's, is that not some kind of evolution from the days of victorian zoo's where wild animals were captured, plonked in cages and put on view to an innocently ignorant population??

AvBBrother · 15-10-2016 10:06PM

Not ethical.

Tilikum · 15-10-2016 10:13PM

fergiesfolly wrote: »

Prefer to see them in places like Fota or other parkland than a zoo. In Dublin a few years ago and there was a gorilla in there that looked so depressed, I would've left had it not been for the kids with us. I couldn't wait to get to the exit. Still saddens me to think of him stuck in there.

Yeah, unlike the cheetahs in fota. Trapped in tiny patches of land for gob****es to look at.

All zoos, circus' & sea parks should be outlawed.

mohawk · 15-10-2016 10:27PM

Widdershins wrote: »

Oh jesus, I remember him as well

Harry was his name. He died a few months ago. The new ape enclosures are so much better then they used to be. The animals can hide away alot more now. I always hated the old gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutang enclosures as the animals looked depressed.

Dublin Zoo is improving a lot of its enclosures. I imagine money dictates how fast they can do this. Historically zoos were in no way ethical. Nowadays zoo animals tend to be born and bred in zoos. They would struggle in the wild.
Sadly for some animals it looks like they will become extinct in the wild. So I guess nowadays there is a place for wildlife parks and zoos.

ThinkProgress · 16-10-2016 06:34AM

Watching the wolves and tigers at Dublin zoo always would make me sad... Such majestic creatures, penned in like that.

A wolf in a zoo enclosure is cruelty... Not a shadow of doubt about that. They are an animal designed to roam for hundreds of miles...

They live much longer lives in captivity, but they are incredibly frustrated - even carving out huge tunnel networks underground... Some people believe they are trying to find an escape route out of their enclosure!

My dogs live a life that is closer to their natural lifestyle. I would not subject domesticated dogs to 24hrs penned in like those wolves... Very sad.

Richard Hillman · 16-10-2016 07:37AM

Only for ones protecting endangered animals. There is absolutely no reason why a lion or an elephant should be in a zoo. They should be phased out.

I also do not buy into this whole theory or if they released them into the wild, they would die. That's the circle of life, it's a leap of fortune.

Pickpocket · 16-10-2016 09:22AM

ThinkProgress wrote: »

My dogs live a life that is closer to their natural lifestyle.

What exactly is the 'natural lifestyle' of a dog given that the species has been domesticated for the best part of 20,000 years?

Stigura · 16-10-2016 11:11AM

mohawk wrote: »

Harry was his name. He died a few months ago. .......... I always hated the old gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutang enclosures as the animals looked depressed.

This, and the gorilla getting out at London, the other day ..... I read he'd been on a diet? Good god, do they Never learn?!

Remember " Guy "? Probably the best known inmate of London Zoo, Ever.

When the poor sod finally found his own way out, they offered him to the Natural History Museum. Museum basically said; ' WTF would we want That for?! We're a Natural History place. There's nothing Natural in That great bucket of lard!

He's not, in any way, representative of a Mountain Gorilla. It's a bloated carcass! Get rid of it!'

And now, a generation later ....? Having to put their new one on a bloody diet :rolleyes:

Now, That's gotta be wrong.

darlett · 16-10-2016 12:13PM

A decent question but I think Zoos are a source of wonderment and inspiration especially for children and that the potential good of this outweighs the hopefully lessening bad of the captivity of relatively few specimens of each species contained in zoos. Who knows how much more is raised for animals in the wild by having animals in the captivity so by restricting the latter you might further limit the former. It's great that maybe most of us adults feel we're happy to never see animals in the flesh again and to get our fix watching Wildlife on One etc, for they are indeed beautifully made shows, but then most of us have already been to the zoo.

As a meat eater I'm aware that my choice to be a meat eater makes a lot more animals suffer than Harry the Gorilla. Do the lives of pigs, cows, sheep, chickens matter not a jot because they don't get names? Everytime we butter our bread do we spare a thought for Caroline the Cow who twice a day has to make the long walk to the milking parlour to have a machine suck her teats dry? Ya know if we're so concerned with unnatural existences.

As a nation of pet owners is it ok to keep rabbits in a cage or a dog yapping on a chain or in the confines of maybe a 10m x 10m back yard with maybe a 20 minute walk if the weather is nice? Clearly not.

And as mentioned by previous posters I think putting a bird in the cage is a cruel blastard act. At least more people can 'enjoy' that if its in a zoo which will at least have a relatively massive cage. But then maybe Peter the Pensioner has no other form of companionship from one end of the day til the next.

Zoos are very much the thin edge of the widest wedge.

R.D. aka MR.D · 16-10-2016 12:27PM

I think that if a zoo is doing good work towards conservation and education then it's not so bad. But those zoos are few and far between.

I went to Dublin zoo as a child and I don't remember learning anything about the welfare of the animals. Maybe that is my parents fault but I'd imagine a lot of parents are the same. They take the children to the zoo and do nothing to help them understand the importance/significance of conservation. It's just a spectacle, people gawking at animals. Which people can do on the internet if they really want these days.

A lot of people try to justify supporting these places by saying the animals were born in captivity but do they really think that their natural instincts don't exist because of that? It took 1000s of years to domesticate dogs so how can the offspring of a wild animal still not be a wild animal and have all the natural instincts that come with that?

Some people don't care for animals and that's fair enough but I have more respect for people who admit that than try to justify the zoo's existence as a place for children to learn about animals. Or people who say it's to keep endangered species. But what about all the animals that they have in there that aren't endangered, what's their purpose? At the end of the day, it comes down to entertainment.

In the future, I hope we'll progress to see the error of our ways. Just like animals in a circus or whales at seaworld. Slowly, attitudes will change for the better.

Widdershins · 16-10-2016 01:31PM

mohawk wrote: »

Harry was his name. He died a few months ago. The new ape enclosures are so much better then they used to be. The animals can hide away alot more now. I always hated the old gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutang enclosures as the animals looked depressed.

Dublin Zoo is improving a lot of its enclosures. I imagine money dictates how fast they can do this. Historically zoos were in no way ethical. Nowadays zoo animals tend to be born and bred in zoos. They would struggle in the wild.
Sadly for some animals it looks like they will become extinct in the wild. So I guess nowadays there is a place for wildlife parks and zoos.

if they didn't have three or four new, fancy play areas I would believe they were doing their best with what money they have.All of those play areas should be given over to the animals who need extra space. They should come first.

Widdershins · 16-10-2016 01:34PM

entropi wrote: »

I'm not overly fond of zoos, but the knowledge that many of the species will still be around, and be out of the reach of scumbag poachers, helps.

They could be protected in Africa. Plenty of anti poaching rangers out there who need the support which might cost a lot less than keeping one or two of a species in captivity far from its natural environment..

conorhal · 16-10-2016 01:43PM

fergiesfolly wrote: »

Prefer to see them in places like Fota or other parkland than a zoo. In Dublin a few years ago and there was a gorilla in there that looked so depressed, I would've left had it not been for the kids with us. I couldn't wait to get to the exit. Still saddens me to think of him stuck in there.

And yet no protesters gather to free me from my depressed state in a tiny cubicle at work!

Zoos - Ethical or not?

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