Captive World Animals in Zoo - Term Paper Example

Captive World Animals in Zoo Most people are amazed watching and observing wild animals, and the zoo is a quick and cheap option. Curiosity is the greatest driver towards visiting zoos unlike watching them on the television. However, great controversy regarding animals in the Zoo includes the animal rights activists and the public. While animal rights activists believe that world animals deserve freedom because zoos hold them captive, yet they should live freely in the wild, the public, particularly those who study animals, believes that animal welfare can easily be managed when living within zoos unlike when in the wild. Proponents also argue that, for all the endangered species in the world, the Zoo offers an environment that encourages love in the zoo, thus preventing the extinction of such animals. Additionally, in the zoo, animals are guaranteed of safety and secured breeding. The animals first came into to the zoo as a gift to the government and their increase in numbers led to a reluctant acceptance. According to Mann (2), the animal gifts were from different United States army officers in the US National Museum’s department of living animals curated by William Hornday. However, the gifts exceeded the space provided and they were overcrowded and steam-heated temporarily, and the condition worsened with overcrowding from site-seers. In order to reduce the congestion, some animals were sent to zoological gardens that had been established in New York, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia among other places. As congestion increased in the parks, expansion was done. However, the animals brought to the zoos did not adapt to the zoo life immediately, and remained wild to the extent of attacking visitors. With the presence of zoos, the government sought to increase the number of animals, but could not buy them for lack of funds, hence resulted in collecting them from different parts of the world. The zoos were to be used as places where people could visit to see the animals that were both in America and those from other continents as a way of learning and familiarizing themselves (Mann 354). Some of the collected animals included vultures, kangaroos, elephants, bears, warthogs, leopards, and antelopes among others. Beside been provided as gifts, animals had to live in zoos that reflect their natural surroundings especially for the birds. For instance, the Penguins were used to the Antarctic climate and had to be kept in refrigerated quarters, while eagles had to live in surroundings characterized by numerous trees. In the end, zoos contained a representative collection of reptiles, birds, and mammals with exhibits of both birds and reptiles. Today, zoos offer protection for endangered animals whose presence in the wild translates to miserable deaths with no room for survival. Wilken & Fifield (1) highlights that a Siamang named Iwani that had been violently rejected by its mother at a young age only survived because of the care of his keepers. When in the wild, the Siamang by itself did not know how to be and suffered severe damage that affected its development. With age, the Siamang grew more distressed and after much consultation and evidence of no prospect of a good life, Siamang was euthanized. For effective care of animals, Zoo attendants in places like Auckland and Wellington developed the science of animal care and adopted the most recent animal welfare through the approach of holistically offering animals their physical needs as well as emotional contentment. For this reason, criticizing zoos for not being able to, exactly replicate the circumstances in the wild is wrong because doing so would mean that zoos replicate even the hunger, fear, suffering, injury, cruelty, and diseases in the wild. Truthfully, the wild is fearful and when placed in good zoos, animals receive care that goes beyond the wild sufferings and offer an interesting and satisfying life for the animals. The zoo also offers a rich situation, social settings, and thought-provoking circumstances that is suitable with their biology. Besides protection, zoos offer a way of people connecting with wild animals outside the natural settings, while the animals are assisted from getting into extinction. Additionally, advocacy for people to change their attitudes and re-establish an emotional connection to wildlife through experimental learning in the zoo is possible. Zoos go a long way in preserving rare species, while the decision towards such preservation is guided by unquestionable and presents no ethical, and animal rights concerns. Cohn (654) admits that although Cincinnati zoo provides beautiful white tigers to visitors, and protects them from extinction as would have been the case while living in the wild, the practice of mating fathers with daughters and granddaughters raise ethical concerns that zoos decided to stop. This is the case in most other zoos where zoo attendants wish to preserve rare animals the animal kingdom. However, the conservation objectives in the zoos may also conflict with concerns of animal welfare in cases where these animals are surplus or overpopulation that causes habitat destruction. Today, stopping the unethical breeding of fathers with daughters and granddaughters, zoo attendants also prevent the inbred white tigers from genetic defects that affect their survival. For instance, inbred white tigers are subjected to defects such as elongated genetic heads and eyes that are crossed. Stopping inbreeding of white tigers would mean that the animal become extinct and this would mean few or no visits to the zoos as most people attracted to the animal would not visit the zoos or visit them in the wild. Furthermore, zoo attendants must take care of hybrids of the white tiger with other tiger species as this would mean bringing out a totally different subspecies. Zoos are also limited in their role of preservation through captive breeding since they fail to secure natural habitations, a full variety of endangered species, and complete ecosystems. This is the case with elephants as critiques believe that zoos lack sufficient space to offer a home to elephants (Cohn 23). However, when in the zoos, elephants are subjected to environments that prevent them from drought, conflict with humans, poaching, and loss of habitats. For some zoos, their decision on elephants in captivity has prompted them to consider expanding their enclosures such that they can accommodate elephants. However, some critics believe that keeping elephants in zoos causes separation between baby elephants and their mothers while those that live longer with their parents end up being separated to different zoos. To avoid such accusations, some zoos have decided to phase out their elephant programs. Although, the debate over elephants in zoos is complex, the truth is that in the wild, elephants are subjected to poaching for their ivory, human-elephant conflicts, and habitat loss. Furthermore, it has to be acknowledged that elephants are always on the move and can walk up to 50 miles a day which means setting apart extensive land to house them. To effectively house elephant kinship groups, zoos should provide sufficient space, a variety of things to do, and companions. As for the growing number of researchers with great interest in history, significance, and meaning of cultural institutions such as zoos and museums, elephants in the zoo are relevant to their learning. According to Rothfels (481), elephants in zoos cannot be so easily dismissed as being uninteresting. On the contrary, zoos offer learners and researchers an authentic way to interact with animals or non-humans, thus providing more understanding of conceiving human history. Like the view of other critics that zoos subject elephants into captivity in exhibits framed by bars, Rothels believe that not even the relationship between animals with their keepers determines the quality of the life of animals in zoos as presented by zoo designers. In this case, whether the animal is exhibited in frames of bars, moat, or glass; there is a complete replication of the natural habitat; sufficient educational tools, or survival plans, is of considerable significance in determining the animals’ quality of life. Time has come for animals to be provided with a life free of bars and distress. Unlike humans who express their distress through ways that are understood, distressed animals in zoos become upset for being subjected to life surrounded by bars, and one where the sheer number of visitors makes them uncomfortable (Carter). While remaining in enclosures from day to day, animals in zoos deserve to be in open space where they are subjected to a wide range of stimuli within their natural habitat and this is never present in zoos. As a result, they end up experiencing loneliness, social frustration, and boredom since their rights to free movement, as in the wild, is taken away from them. Zoos designers and attendants must understand that the lives of wild animals are never meaningful in environments that prevent them from free hunting, choosing companions, and mating. It is for this reason that most zoo’s conservation efforts harbour very poor outcomes for individual animals since most of the species whose lives are not endangered are only kept for profit and public pleasure, while subjecting them to depreciation. With the threats that keeping wild animals in zoos present captivity, the increasingly worrisome question is whether zoos will become extinct. Based on the findings by Clark (2), animals in zoos are unfairly and arbitrarily denied their freedom when held up in zoos, water parks, circuses, and scientific laboratories. Through a case presented in Argentina, the judgment will provide a landmark that could see wild animals held in zoos set parking and released back into the wild. This judgment will demonstrate positive development towards the recognition of the personhood and sentience of animals that is fundamental for all animals regardless of their sizes. However, for all released animals, appropriate assessment should be carried out to establish whether the site to which animals will be relocated has conditions to support their lives. In this case, carrying out animal release into the world will require adapting phases such that zoos are not automatic, but gradually phased out. In the wild, animals are left to nonhuman rights to freedom that humans cannot offer to them through zoos. In summary, the paper presents the debate presented by holding animals in zoos. Critics argue that zoo management strategies involving prevention of inbreeding and avoidance of overpopulation are insufficient in ensuring that caged wild animals are fairly and satisfactorily treated. Additionally, zoos are restricted to defined carrying capacities which mean that zoo animals can only live in the zoo with numbers below the upper limit for different individual animals, more so the elephant. The carrying capacity in the wild is unlike that in the zoo as it has not limits and this means access to sufficient water and food. Again at the zoo, the main limitations are time to care for the animals, and space. However, proponents believe that the best way to conserve wild animals is subjecting them to zoos and not leaving them to the wild environment where they are subject to all forms of cruelty involving poaching. Works Cited Carter, Mandy. Animals Deservr a Life free of bars. New Zealand: The New Zealand Herald, 2015. Clark, Neil. Will Zoos Soon Become History? New Zealand: The Express, 2014. Cohn, Jeffrey. "Decision at the Zoo." BioScience 42.3 (1992): 654-659. —. "Do Elephants Belong in Zoos?" Oxford Journals 56.9 (2006): 714-717. Mann, William. "The History of the Zoo." The Scientific Monthly 63.5 (2015): 350-358. Rothfels, Nigel. "Zoos, the Academy and Captivity." PMLA 124.2 (2009): 480-486. Wilken, Jonathan and Karen Fifield. Zoos in it for Good of the Animals. New Zealand: New Zealand Herald, 2015. Read More