It Is Cruel to Keep Animals in Zoos Essay

Zoo’s all around the world are seen as a great adventure to take kids to enjoy the outdoors seeing animals. It might be a great opportunity to see all different kinds of animals but people that go have no idea what it makes the animals feel. There are so many negative things about having animals stuck in cages. They need to be free and in the wild and be able to run and hunt on their own. There are over 3,000 to 5,000 animals in zoo’s who are perfectly healthy being killed just in Europe.

The zoo workers may have done research on the animals that they take care of but will never know how they feel or what they really want, animals are just all forced to be entertainment for people. Here’s an example of zoo workers thinking they were doing something right just because they saw good signs. In the London zoo they were introducing two tigers to mate with each other. They had them separated for a while but still were next to each other in different cages. They were always close to get use to their smells and get to know each other before putting them together. Melati, the female tiger has been at the zoo, while Asim, the male tiger was new to the zoo. They wanted them to get use to each other so they can breed. They’ve been seeing good signs between them for about ten days. So, they decided to put them together. When they had put them together things were going as planned but within a second things escalated quickly.

The workers were making loud noises with flares and alarms to make them stop and to separate but it was to late. Asim, the male had killed Melati, the female. So now the male tiger is known as the strapping Sumatran tiger and is well known with the press. The organization of tigers in crisis say that there is an estimate about 500 to 600 Sumatran tigers now in the wild, so the numbers are getting lower and lower.

All animals get in fights at times, but they are stuck with each other in one cage with little space that can cause danger. If they had met in the wild Melati would have more of a chance to survive because she would have places to run too instead of being stop from a cage. This is not all about tigers its about every animal this is just one example out of many.

Animals have no freedom to do everyday activities that they are use too like roaming, climbing, flying, or finding their own partners they are always assigned and if they have problems, they assign another. The faces they express is boredom and loneliness. They are cramped and not able to control their own life, they live off a schedule that are created for them. Some zoos have had things go on like One day in Dallas Texas there was a Gorilla named Jabari who had tried to escape because some kids were messing around and throwing rocks at him, he had gotten shot and killed.

Also, in the year 2005 two polar bears had arrived at the Saint Louis Zoo one named Churchill an the other named penny. They had had died within five weeks of living at the zoo by eating something that has been thrown at them and the other die of an infection in her uterus. Another zoo in Virginia had 10 Prairie dogs die from a collapsed tunnel that wasn’t built strong enough, a drowning rhino in the rhino exhibit. This is only the beginning and it is already sad and depressing to see so many animals die and live in these bad conditions.

The visits from all kinds of people with all different kinds of noises are unfamiliar to all the animals and it can stress them out and scare them and make them feel uncomfortable. Animals are similar to humans they like to be left alone and not uncomfortable or have pictures taken of them. If animals had a voice every would be different in so many ways. Something that is heard all the time is that zoos are good to help decrease the extinctions of animals, it does not help at all.

The zoos should not be an excuse to help animals, a thing that should be more out there is to stop hunting in total, so animals can live life in peace without needing to hide and be scared of hunters. Its understanding that people think its entertaining to see the live animals, but they can see them in videos or on television enjoying life free instead of caged up and depressed.

As mentioned before animals are always sad and miserable. “If you don’t believe me, visit a park. Its likely as not that you will see a goat, pleading with its eyes to be euthanized, while a sign on the enclosure says: Gerry the goat is quite the character- he often plays a game in which he looks like he has been crying for many, many hours!” (Ranganathan 1). Animals are being used for entertainment and that’s not right zoos need to be seen as a prison for the animals instead of seeing the zoo as a great amusement park to go too. It is not fun knowing that the animals are not happy and are trapped. They are not able to do anything about it, because the workers have control.

Animals should have control of their own lives. kids remember going to the zoo when they were younger and seeing all the fish and sea animals going around and around over and over and just being happy to always see them. But what people don’t acknowledge is that the sea animals are being seen over and over, that means they are all cramped in a small tank everyday that they are at the zoo. Sea animals are always moving and need the non-stopping ocean, but they are stuck in a little fish tank that they now called home.

They are technically a live television. People could do the same thing at home but decide to watch them go around and round over and over. People need to realize what the zoos are really about, and that’s trapped animals that want to be free but are forced to be here for the people’s entertainment.

References

1. Ranganathan, Romesh. “Zoos Are Prisons for Animals – No One Needs to See a Depressed Penguin in the Flesh.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Mar. 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2017/mar/13/zoos-are-prisons-for-animals-no-one-needs-to-see-a-depressed-penguin-in-the-flesh.
2. User, Super. “Visitor Effect on Zoo Animals.” Concept of Animal Welfare, ZAWEC (Zoo Animal Welfare Education Centre), www.zawec.org/en/fact-sheets/111-visitor-effect-on-zoo-animals.
3. White, Josh, et al. “Tiger Mauled to Death by Potential Mate at London Zoo.” Http://Www.fox19.Com, 11 Feb. 2019, www.fox19.com/2019/02/11/tiger-mauled-death-by-potential-mate-london-zoo/.
4. “Zoos: Pitiful Prisons.” PETA, 17 Nov. 2016, www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-entertainment/animals-used-entertainment-factsheets/zoos-pitiful-prisons/.

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