This is possibly, fantastic news! I just read that the San Francisco Zoo, under pressure since the tiger attack in December, might become a rescue zoo. Apparently it means that the animals would likely get more space and bigger habitats more closely resembling their natural ones. I won't take credit for this development, ha ha ha, BUT I will say that I think blogging is a powerful tool. Public opinion matters and the easiest and most visible way to track public opinion these days is on the Internet. If hundreds of people blog that they're upset and hundreds of people (or dozens in my case) read that blog, it adds up. This is still one of my favorite videos (Nick Park is a genius).
I met a guy who works at Yelp this weekend. Actually, another 24-year old who wanted to "date" me. It's bizarre how young this town is. I guess it's the dot com thing, and actually, this is a cool place to be. Young people graduating from college want to live in San Francisco or New York. He said that the CEO and founder of Yelp is 28 and came to a meeting the other day in a "hoodie and sneaks." This guy, at 24, was flabbergasted that his millionaire boss is basically a slightly older version of himself. Imagine how I feel! Anyway, he told me that doctor recommendations are HUGE on Yelp and that some doctors have had to stop taking patients for six months or more because of the demand. It's very interesting, when recommendation works, it really works!
As it turns out, I wasn't the first person to think of a virtual concert (I know, amazing!) A friend of mine went to the 3D U2 show and said it was really cool. He heard a guy comment on the way out that it was better than a live concert for all the reasons that I specified. It was in a movie theater which is not conducive to the concert vibe though as people were self-conscious about singing along, shouting, etc. I maintain that this kind of thing should be shown at a dark, loud club just like a real concert, except better. Miley Cyrus' concert movie has already made ten times what it cost to make and parents don't have to let their teenagers drive into the city to see her in real life. A friend wrote me that now you can now see your opera in HD at the local movie theater. I love this idea that culture comes to you.
I got such a delightful number of comments on my post about starting a village. I seem to have struck a nerve! I had a little bit of anxiety after that because I thought "what if someone actually expects me to do this?" My biggest concern was how I was going to find a boyfriend. All of my friends who are up for it are already married or coupled, so it's great for them I guess, but what about me? I can't date three guys in our community of 150 at the same time (awkward!) And then it wouldn't work out with any of them and they'd all have to leave. You know? But that book about my North Node said that I have an enormous amount of love to give and that the receptacle, if it's a person, isn't big enough. I'm supposed to pour that love into a philanthropic venture, something that will make life better for other people. Once I focus on that, love will come to me and it will be easier for the other person to deal with me if I'm already in love with my "work." There's a lot of buzz right now about eco-villages: building with green materials, using renewable energy and aiming to be carbon neutral. I totally support that but my village would be communal in that "it takes a village to raise a child" way; everyone could have a role but wouldn't spend their whole life working a job they hate, and we'd all have land to grow our own food! I'm starting to wonder, however, if maybe we can make that change right where we are? There's a growing movement to plant food instead of grass in lawns (here's a fun article in the NYT Magazine about it). One step at a time, we can transform our world.
I thought this op-ed in the NYTimes today was interesting. The author criticizes the abduction of Generation 9/11 by Obama's campaign, calling them "Generation Obama." He goes on to say:
The more you learn about him, the more Obama seems to be a conventionally opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. But there’s not much audacity of hope there. There’s the calculation of ambition, and the construction of artifice, mixed in with a dash of deceit — all covered over with the great conceit that this campaign, and this candidate, are different.
After watching his speech today, addressing the comments of his pastor, I have to say that he is an amazingly composed and grounded orator. He speaks plainly so the masses can understand, everything he says makes sense and as I've said before, if all he does is inspire us it's more than most have done. The accusation of a politician being a politician is pretty weak. The Republicans haven't had someone this inspirational in office in years, if ever.
It's wise to be wary, perhaps especially of politicians, but instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater we should instead remind ourselves that we have to bring our revolution to Washington as much as we expect our leaders to bring it to us. Right on, right on!
Showing posts with label zoos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zoos. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Kingo the lowland gorilla
Last week I had to make a trip to L.A. I took my National Geographic on the plane and I was reading an article about the Western Lowland Gorilla, a truly magnificent beast. Kingo has a family of ten, four “wives” and their children. He spends a lot of time to himself, sitting in a swamp sometimes for hours eating the tiny green roots of a water plant. His kids rough house while their mothers nap and together and independently they roam an area about 6 miles in diameter, looking for fruit to eat or a good place to nap and play, traveling over a mile a day. One morning the research team found them 100 feet up in a tree having their breakfast!
The article said we didn’t know much about them because it takes years for a human to gain their confidence enough to observe them. Despite their size, it took a team of four local trackers to find Kingo and his family but it took six years for Diane Doran-Sheehy (responsible for saving this piece of the forest that Kingo and his family live in) to originally find and name them.
Then I came across this sentence, “Even though all gorillas found in zoos around the world are western gorillas, little is known about their behavior in the wild.” I just started weeping, right there on the plane. The image of this complex and incredible animal in a concrete cage, without his family, without his swamp and trees, without his six miles to roam and wander, without the peace and privacy to take his daily nap, just broke my heart. We don't even know enough about his behavior in the wild to even ATTEMPT to replicate his environment. How, I ask myself, how do we justify that? I had to force myself to try to think of something else, anything that would keep me from crying.
A few days later I was reading an article about the natural science museum finally opening this year in Golden Gate park. It's an impressive and beautiful building with a living green roof and solar panels, it's being touted as a highly responsible ecological building and yet, they are going to feature 38,000 animals in their aquariums. Granted they're growing coral and using local seawater but still, a space the size of this building must surely be much smaller than their complex and vast natural habitat, the ocean. I understand that we want to educate people about animals but I just haven't seen the data to support the theory that animals in captivity on display have helped any in the wild. By my count, the wild animals of this world are vanishing at an extremely alarming rate.
Then I was in Berkeley with a friend of mine. We passed an older hippie guy on the street with a clipboard. He was wearing the kind of socks that have toes in different colors, and Birkenstocks. He was collecting signatures for a farm bill; I know the one because I’ve already signed it and because I’m a Humane Society member. I thanked him and walked on. Another guy passed him and I heard the hippie ask him to sign a petition for a bill that would allow farm animals to move around in their cages. The guy just shook his head and moved on.
About an hour later, we were in a furniture store while my friend was looking for a bed. I heard the hippie in my head asking for help so the animals could “move around in their cages.” It made me sick, I thought it’s like asking for less torture, more humane captivity, the irony is ridiculous. I can’t believe we have to fight for this, that we have to try to convince people to care enough to not torture their animals before they kill them. I was overwhelmed with grief and had to leave the store. I couldn’t stop crying and my friend didn’t even believe me when I said it was because of the animals.
A few weekends ago, I almost volunteered to be that person collecting signatures. Can you imagine? What would someone do if they didn’t sign the petition and I started crying? I wonder. So today I was reading an interesting article in The New York Times Magazine about morality. The author says that we are genetically moral creatures. That we universally believe in certain principles that are possibly biologically motivated to keep us alive. Universally, we feel that it is wrong to harm others, we believe in fairness, we value community and loyalty, we respect authority and we revere purity. Where it gets tricky, however, is in the ranking and weight of those morals.
There are instances, for example, where certain cultures allow harm to those who are considered impure. Or where fairness is denied to those who disrespect authority. The upholding of these morals can be wildly divergent even if the basic motivation is the same. Liberals, for example, tend to rank fairness much higher than purity or loyalty. Also very interesting, was the fact that certain behaviors cycle in and out of morality.
Smoking has become morally bad since the emphasis on second-hand smoke whereas getting a divorce is more or less accepted as a fact of life. And certainly we have widened the net of who deserves humane treatment as time goes on. Slavery, once an acceptable economic practice, is now reviled pretty much the world over. I have a dream, in the words of our Martin Luther King, Jr. that someday we’ll consider keeping an animal in a cage as barbaric as selling a man on an auction block.
A McKinsey survey published in The Economist showed that out of 15 major issues of the next five years, the environment is number 1 globally but the top issues after the environment are safer products, retirement benefits, health-care benefits and affordable products. These are pretty much the same things we've always been concerned about. Ethically produced products is near the bottom of the list and I assume that the welfare of animals falls in that category. So we want to protect the environment, meaning that we don't want to die, but aren't really concerned about everything else dying? I think we feel that we can't care about everything, that we have to pick our battles.
So I’ve learned that there isn’t anything wrong with me and there isn’t anything wrong with everyone else for that matter. It’s just that our moral barometers are all set differently. Looking at my five spheres of morality, by far the largest would be harm, followed by purity, which I think is where my love of nature comes from. The spheres of fairness, loyalty and authority are there but much smaller. If I had to choose between having money for retirement and seeing animals roam free, I'm afraid I'd choose the animals over myself.
The article said we didn’t know much about them because it takes years for a human to gain their confidence enough to observe them. Despite their size, it took a team of four local trackers to find Kingo and his family but it took six years for Diane Doran-Sheehy (responsible for saving this piece of the forest that Kingo and his family live in) to originally find and name them.
Then I came across this sentence, “Even though all gorillas found in zoos around the world are western gorillas, little is known about their behavior in the wild.” I just started weeping, right there on the plane. The image of this complex and incredible animal in a concrete cage, without his family, without his swamp and trees, without his six miles to roam and wander, without the peace and privacy to take his daily nap, just broke my heart. We don't even know enough about his behavior in the wild to even ATTEMPT to replicate his environment. How, I ask myself, how do we justify that? I had to force myself to try to think of something else, anything that would keep me from crying.
A few days later I was reading an article about the natural science museum finally opening this year in Golden Gate park. It's an impressive and beautiful building with a living green roof and solar panels, it's being touted as a highly responsible ecological building and yet, they are going to feature 38,000 animals in their aquariums. Granted they're growing coral and using local seawater but still, a space the size of this building must surely be much smaller than their complex and vast natural habitat, the ocean. I understand that we want to educate people about animals but I just haven't seen the data to support the theory that animals in captivity on display have helped any in the wild. By my count, the wild animals of this world are vanishing at an extremely alarming rate.
Then I was in Berkeley with a friend of mine. We passed an older hippie guy on the street with a clipboard. He was wearing the kind of socks that have toes in different colors, and Birkenstocks. He was collecting signatures for a farm bill; I know the one because I’ve already signed it and because I’m a Humane Society member. I thanked him and walked on. Another guy passed him and I heard the hippie ask him to sign a petition for a bill that would allow farm animals to move around in their cages. The guy just shook his head and moved on.
About an hour later, we were in a furniture store while my friend was looking for a bed. I heard the hippie in my head asking for help so the animals could “move around in their cages.” It made me sick, I thought it’s like asking for less torture, more humane captivity, the irony is ridiculous. I can’t believe we have to fight for this, that we have to try to convince people to care enough to not torture their animals before they kill them. I was overwhelmed with grief and had to leave the store. I couldn’t stop crying and my friend didn’t even believe me when I said it was because of the animals.
A few weekends ago, I almost volunteered to be that person collecting signatures. Can you imagine? What would someone do if they didn’t sign the petition and I started crying? I wonder. So today I was reading an interesting article in The New York Times Magazine about morality. The author says that we are genetically moral creatures. That we universally believe in certain principles that are possibly biologically motivated to keep us alive. Universally, we feel that it is wrong to harm others, we believe in fairness, we value community and loyalty, we respect authority and we revere purity. Where it gets tricky, however, is in the ranking and weight of those morals.
There are instances, for example, where certain cultures allow harm to those who are considered impure. Or where fairness is denied to those who disrespect authority. The upholding of these morals can be wildly divergent even if the basic motivation is the same. Liberals, for example, tend to rank fairness much higher than purity or loyalty. Also very interesting, was the fact that certain behaviors cycle in and out of morality.
Smoking has become morally bad since the emphasis on second-hand smoke whereas getting a divorce is more or less accepted as a fact of life. And certainly we have widened the net of who deserves humane treatment as time goes on. Slavery, once an acceptable economic practice, is now reviled pretty much the world over. I have a dream, in the words of our Martin Luther King, Jr. that someday we’ll consider keeping an animal in a cage as barbaric as selling a man on an auction block.
A McKinsey survey published in The Economist showed that out of 15 major issues of the next five years, the environment is number 1 globally but the top issues after the environment are safer products, retirement benefits, health-care benefits and affordable products. These are pretty much the same things we've always been concerned about. Ethically produced products is near the bottom of the list and I assume that the welfare of animals falls in that category. So we want to protect the environment, meaning that we don't want to die, but aren't really concerned about everything else dying? I think we feel that we can't care about everything, that we have to pick our battles.
So I’ve learned that there isn’t anything wrong with me and there isn’t anything wrong with everyone else for that matter. It’s just that our moral barometers are all set differently. Looking at my five spheres of morality, by far the largest would be harm, followed by purity, which I think is where my love of nature comes from. The spheres of fairness, loyalty and authority are there but much smaller. If I had to choose between having money for retirement and seeing animals roam free, I'm afraid I'd choose the animals over myself.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Speaking of tigers...
Last fall I went to North Carolina for my good friend's wedding and one our activities was a trip to the Carnivore Preservation Trust. North Carolina is one of the states that still allows citizens to keep wild animals as pets. When these brilliant people realize that it's dangerous to keep animals whose teeth are shaped like scissors and their claws are razor sharp and they're given up or taken away, CPT is where they live the rest of their days. They all really should be living in the wild but because they've been raised by humans, they can't.
A carnivore, by the way, is defined by its teeth, not the intestines as is often the argument that humans are carnivores. A carnivore's teeth work exactly like scissors, not to chew anything but to cut meat into bite sized pieces that are then swallowed whole. CPT's residents range from Siberian tigers to some amazing small cats that jump 12-15 feet with these powerful back legs and can catch 2-3 birds at the same time (one in each paw and one in the mouth), and a jaguar that can carry the carcass of an animal three times its weight up into a tree, with its teeth.
For the record, there are several differences between this facility and a zoo:
1) It's a not-for-profit organization that rescues abused, abandoned or otherwise neglected carnivores. It does NOT purchase animals, contribute to breeding programs (although ironically that is the origin of the CPT) or capture animals from the wild for profit, as zoos do.
2) They have very limited visiting hours as their focus is the well being of the animals, not making money.
3) You MUST go on a tour with a CPT guide. You cannot walk around unsupervised or even stray from the group. In addition, the guides only take you to visit the cats who are feeling "social" that day and avoid those that are new and still adjusting to their new environment. The guides are extremely well versed in their subject and highly engaging so you leave feeling educated and enlightened. They are so reverent to the animals and instruct guests on how to be considerate so that you feel you are being granted permission by the animals to be viewed, instead of the zoo environment of entitlement.
4) The habitats are dirt, grass, rocks, trees and bushes. There is no concrete. The concrete viewing arenas at the zoo are so disgusting to me. Can you imagine living your whole life with nothing natural in your environment? It reminds me of the white man making the Native-American children wear shoes when they had always felt the earth beneath their feet or fish in an aquarium the size of a shoe box filled with plastic plants. So sad!
We learned some really interesting things about tigers. The volunteers never ever go inside a cage with a tiger. A tiger is an extremely powerful and dangerous animal. Its cage is at least 20 feet high and food is catapulted over the top or put into an empty cage before the tiger is allowed to move into it. If someone hits a deer on the road there, they bring it to CPT to be thrown over the cage for the tigers, a real treat!
We also learned that white tigers are actually albinos. They are freaks of nature, not a rare species of tiger as some zoos (the famed educational centers) and circuses would have you believe. The first white tiger was found in the jungle by an Indian Maharajah in the 1800's. He brought the white tiger cub back to his compound and bred it with another tiger until they had another white one. As the story goes, he killed all the yellow cubs as he really didn't have any use for them. Then he inbred the white ones to get more but only one out of every four comes out white and they are almost always born with some kind of deformity - cleft palates, crossed eyes, malformed spines, shortened tendons of the legs and other totally disgusting things. In the wild, a mother tiger would probably kill a white cub, or it wouldn't survive on its own because it doesn't camouflage with its environment.
Then they told us a story about a guy who bought a "guard tiger" for his store. It was just a cub but it kept people from robbing him, apparently. Then one day it got taken away because he couldn't prove that he'd bought the tiger in the U.S. See, and here's where the law is totally stupid, it's legal to buy a tiger born in the U.S. bred by the circus or whoever, but not to buy one from the wild. I guess the reasoning is that an animal born in captivity is already ruined and might as well be a pet, but those animals should NEVER be bred in the first place. But I digress. A couple of years later, the shop owner turned up to the authorities with his papers proving the tiger's origins and demanded him back. The good people at CPT walked this guy to the cage of his now 600-lb. tiger at which point the guy freaked and said "you can keep him!" Good to know the people buying these cubs know so much about tigers, eh?
A carnivore, by the way, is defined by its teeth, not the intestines as is often the argument that humans are carnivores. A carnivore's teeth work exactly like scissors, not to chew anything but to cut meat into bite sized pieces that are then swallowed whole. CPT's residents range from Siberian tigers to some amazing small cats that jump 12-15 feet with these powerful back legs and can catch 2-3 birds at the same time (one in each paw and one in the mouth), and a jaguar that can carry the carcass of an animal three times its weight up into a tree, with its teeth.
For the record, there are several differences between this facility and a zoo:
1) It's a not-for-profit organization that rescues abused, abandoned or otherwise neglected carnivores. It does NOT purchase animals, contribute to breeding programs (although ironically that is the origin of the CPT) or capture animals from the wild for profit, as zoos do.
2) They have very limited visiting hours as their focus is the well being of the animals, not making money.
3) You MUST go on a tour with a CPT guide. You cannot walk around unsupervised or even stray from the group. In addition, the guides only take you to visit the cats who are feeling "social" that day and avoid those that are new and still adjusting to their new environment. The guides are extremely well versed in their subject and highly engaging so you leave feeling educated and enlightened. They are so reverent to the animals and instruct guests on how to be considerate so that you feel you are being granted permission by the animals to be viewed, instead of the zoo environment of entitlement.
4) The habitats are dirt, grass, rocks, trees and bushes. There is no concrete. The concrete viewing arenas at the zoo are so disgusting to me. Can you imagine living your whole life with nothing natural in your environment? It reminds me of the white man making the Native-American children wear shoes when they had always felt the earth beneath their feet or fish in an aquarium the size of a shoe box filled with plastic plants. So sad!
We learned some really interesting things about tigers. The volunteers never ever go inside a cage with a tiger. A tiger is an extremely powerful and dangerous animal. Its cage is at least 20 feet high and food is catapulted over the top or put into an empty cage before the tiger is allowed to move into it. If someone hits a deer on the road there, they bring it to CPT to be thrown over the cage for the tigers, a real treat!
We also learned that white tigers are actually albinos. They are freaks of nature, not a rare species of tiger as some zoos (the famed educational centers) and circuses would have you believe. The first white tiger was found in the jungle by an Indian Maharajah in the 1800's. He brought the white tiger cub back to his compound and bred it with another tiger until they had another white one. As the story goes, he killed all the yellow cubs as he really didn't have any use for them. Then he inbred the white ones to get more but only one out of every four comes out white and they are almost always born with some kind of deformity - cleft palates, crossed eyes, malformed spines, shortened tendons of the legs and other totally disgusting things. In the wild, a mother tiger would probably kill a white cub, or it wouldn't survive on its own because it doesn't camouflage with its environment.
Then they told us a story about a guy who bought a "guard tiger" for his store. It was just a cub but it kept people from robbing him, apparently. Then one day it got taken away because he couldn't prove that he'd bought the tiger in the U.S. See, and here's where the law is totally stupid, it's legal to buy a tiger born in the U.S. bred by the circus or whoever, but not to buy one from the wild. I guess the reasoning is that an animal born in captivity is already ruined and might as well be a pet, but those animals should NEVER be bred in the first place. But I digress. A couple of years later, the shop owner turned up to the authorities with his papers proving the tiger's origins and demanded him back. The good people at CPT walked this guy to the cage of his now 600-lb. tiger at which point the guy freaked and said "you can keep him!" Good to know the people buying these cubs know so much about tigers, eh?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Scaling the walls
On Christmas day, a Siberian tiger escaped its enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and attacked three teenage boys, killing one, before police shot and killed it. The zoo claims the teen and his friends were throwing things, harassing the tiger, and had evidence of drugs in their car. But the real concern seems to be whether the walls should be higher; clearly the public isn’t safe around a caged wild animal.
Yesterday, the paper reported that since the attack, in two separate incidents, a 600-pound polar bear scaled the wall of her enclosure and nearly escaped and a snow leopard, while being moved between enclosures, chewed a 4-inch hole in the mesh cage and stuck its head and paw through. The zoo administrator denied these reports as escape attempts or anything to be worried about. Of course, they mean that we don't have to worry about ourselves. We should still be worried about the animals.
Most of the animals that people like to see in zoos are mammals. Mammals are the only species that need touch from other mammals to survive. Our social structures are built around that touch – how and when and who can touch us. These majestic animals that we love to look at - gorillas, tigers, lions, elephants and polar bears – have incredibly complex social structures like our own. Think about your life. How many people you see on a daily basis, how many you talk to, how many are your friends and your family. Think about how many miles you travel, all the different kinds of foods you eat and the places you go and look at.
Now imagine that you instead you spent your whole life in an apartment with one person you don’t even know and might not even like. Your keepers expect you to mate and have children with that person! Should you actually like this person enough to do so, it's very probable that they'll take your child or sell you to another zoo. They feed you the same thing every day. You never leave, you never see anyone different, you weigh twice as much as you do now, and you sleep all the time because you’re depressed.
Now imagine that six days a week visitors came to look at you. They yell at you, pound on your windows, take pictures of you and sometimes throw things. They want you to do something entertaining, to make them laugh or smile but they get to leave and you will always be there. Would you regard that life as anything but torture? Wouldn’t you also scale a wall or chew a hole through your cage and attack someone? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to get out of that situation?
I have said before that PETA is too extreme but on this issue, I agree with them one hundred percent. Zoos are pitiful prisons and they should be closed. All of them. The position of the Humane Society, whom I normally support, is pathetic and contradictory:
The Humane Society of the United States strongly believes that under most circumstances wild animals should be permitted to exist undisturbed in their natural environments. However, we recognize the widespread existence of zoos and acknowledge that some serve a demonstrable purpose in the long-term benefit of animals, such as the preservation and restoration of endangered species, and the education of people to the needs of wild animals and their role in ecosystems. [Emphasis mine]
But then they go on to say that not only is it impossible to simulate an animal's natural environment, only 10% of facilities are accredited to humane standards - and even that doesn't ensure humane treatment! Their focus is to work for better treatment of animals in zoos. It reminds me of the tobacco companies who, when their sales are dropping, ask how they could get people smoking more and never question whether they should even be making cigarettes. That's what we should be asking here, why are there zoos?
Zoos fail at everything they claim to do. They don't educate. Where's the education is seeing an animal in a cage? It's not going to do anything it does in the wild and people don't want to learn anyway, they want to be entertained. Zoos don't preserve species. Even if they breed endangered species, those animals can never be released into the wild because if they're raised in captivity, they aren't really wild animals! In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond says that the animals that are domesticated are domesticated because it was possible, because it was easy. Wild animals are not meant to be raised by humans.
How many people, I wonder, after learning that an animal they've seen in the zoo is endangered, like the Siberian Tiger that killed the teenager, go home a write a check for preservation, or find out what they can do to help that species, get involved or write a letter? Are people really more concerned about poaching and encroachment and loss of habitat when they've just seen a majestic animal pacing in a cage like a creature that's lost its mind? Clearly it only sends a message that it's acceptable to torture animals.
"But the kids LOVE the zoo!" No, kids don't love zoos, they love animals. They come out of the womb loving animals but they have to be taught to love the zoo. Whenever I’ve gone with my nephew, we spend more time trying to get him excited about the exhibits than anything else. “Look Jonathan, look over here!” we yell while he seems perfectly fine to look at the plants, climb on a rock or watch other people.
Our pets are treated ten times better than these animals. They're domesticated for one thing, so human company is something they choose and enjoy. (Except for some states like North Carolina that allow ownership of wild animals including tigers.) They get to eat all different kinds of foods, or whatever food they want. They get out into the world, get to socialize with other animals, get love and affection and new experiences. Even so, we've all seen what happens when a dog is tied up and neglected. They're mean, they bark and bite and attack. Why? Because it's inhumane to restrict an animal's movement and deprive them of social interaction. Even domesticated animals have been known to escape from the slaughter house.
So I find it really sad that people love zoos. A Google search of "I love zoos" turned up 225,000 results while "I hate zoos," only 26,400. Ten times more people find the idea of building bigger walls and restricting the animals even more to be preferable over closing the zoo altogether. We put people in prisons as a punishment but what did the animals do to us? I say if you really like animals, boycott the zoo, donate to WWF, watch animal shows like Planet Earth, buy your kids a subscription to National Geographic Kids and take them hiking where you can see wild animals in their own habitat.
Here's the way kids should enjoy lions!
Yesterday, the paper reported that since the attack, in two separate incidents, a 600-pound polar bear scaled the wall of her enclosure and nearly escaped and a snow leopard, while being moved between enclosures, chewed a 4-inch hole in the mesh cage and stuck its head and paw through. The zoo administrator denied these reports as escape attempts or anything to be worried about. Of course, they mean that we don't have to worry about ourselves. We should still be worried about the animals.
Most of the animals that people like to see in zoos are mammals. Mammals are the only species that need touch from other mammals to survive. Our social structures are built around that touch – how and when and who can touch us. These majestic animals that we love to look at - gorillas, tigers, lions, elephants and polar bears – have incredibly complex social structures like our own. Think about your life. How many people you see on a daily basis, how many you talk to, how many are your friends and your family. Think about how many miles you travel, all the different kinds of foods you eat and the places you go and look at.
Now imagine that you instead you spent your whole life in an apartment with one person you don’t even know and might not even like. Your keepers expect you to mate and have children with that person! Should you actually like this person enough to do so, it's very probable that they'll take your child or sell you to another zoo. They feed you the same thing every day. You never leave, you never see anyone different, you weigh twice as much as you do now, and you sleep all the time because you’re depressed.
Now imagine that six days a week visitors came to look at you. They yell at you, pound on your windows, take pictures of you and sometimes throw things. They want you to do something entertaining, to make them laugh or smile but they get to leave and you will always be there. Would you regard that life as anything but torture? Wouldn’t you also scale a wall or chew a hole through your cage and attack someone? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to get out of that situation?
I have said before that PETA is too extreme but on this issue, I agree with them one hundred percent. Zoos are pitiful prisons and they should be closed. All of them. The position of the Humane Society, whom I normally support, is pathetic and contradictory:
The Humane Society of the United States strongly believes that under most circumstances wild animals should be permitted to exist undisturbed in their natural environments. However, we recognize the widespread existence of zoos and acknowledge that some serve a demonstrable purpose in the long-term benefit of animals, such as the preservation and restoration of endangered species, and the education of people to the needs of wild animals and their role in ecosystems. [Emphasis mine]
But then they go on to say that not only is it impossible to simulate an animal's natural environment, only 10% of facilities are accredited to humane standards - and even that doesn't ensure humane treatment! Their focus is to work for better treatment of animals in zoos. It reminds me of the tobacco companies who, when their sales are dropping, ask how they could get people smoking more and never question whether they should even be making cigarettes. That's what we should be asking here, why are there zoos?
Zoos fail at everything they claim to do. They don't educate. Where's the education is seeing an animal in a cage? It's not going to do anything it does in the wild and people don't want to learn anyway, they want to be entertained. Zoos don't preserve species. Even if they breed endangered species, those animals can never be released into the wild because if they're raised in captivity, they aren't really wild animals! In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond says that the animals that are domesticated are domesticated because it was possible, because it was easy. Wild animals are not meant to be raised by humans.
How many people, I wonder, after learning that an animal they've seen in the zoo is endangered, like the Siberian Tiger that killed the teenager, go home a write a check for preservation, or find out what they can do to help that species, get involved or write a letter? Are people really more concerned about poaching and encroachment and loss of habitat when they've just seen a majestic animal pacing in a cage like a creature that's lost its mind? Clearly it only sends a message that it's acceptable to torture animals.
"But the kids LOVE the zoo!" No, kids don't love zoos, they love animals. They come out of the womb loving animals but they have to be taught to love the zoo. Whenever I’ve gone with my nephew, we spend more time trying to get him excited about the exhibits than anything else. “Look Jonathan, look over here!” we yell while he seems perfectly fine to look at the plants, climb on a rock or watch other people.
Our pets are treated ten times better than these animals. They're domesticated for one thing, so human company is something they choose and enjoy. (Except for some states like North Carolina that allow ownership of wild animals including tigers.) They get to eat all different kinds of foods, or whatever food they want. They get out into the world, get to socialize with other animals, get love and affection and new experiences. Even so, we've all seen what happens when a dog is tied up and neglected. They're mean, they bark and bite and attack. Why? Because it's inhumane to restrict an animal's movement and deprive them of social interaction. Even domesticated animals have been known to escape from the slaughter house.
So I find it really sad that people love zoos. A Google search of "I love zoos" turned up 225,000 results while "I hate zoos," only 26,400. Ten times more people find the idea of building bigger walls and restricting the animals even more to be preferable over closing the zoo altogether. We put people in prisons as a punishment but what did the animals do to us? I say if you really like animals, boycott the zoo, donate to WWF, watch animal shows like Planet Earth, buy your kids a subscription to National Geographic Kids and take them hiking where you can see wild animals in their own habitat.
Here's the way kids should enjoy lions!
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