In mid-June, a horrible storm flood Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia the country. Nineteen deaths were recorded and six people are still missing. However, the Tbilisi Zoo lost over 300, which is more than half, of its animals. Rain caused the banks of the Vere River to overflow. An African penguin was spotted swimming nearly 40 miles downstream from the zoo’s location, before it was before being caught alive in a dragnet on the bordering country, Azerbaijan. When the flood raged over the city, a white tiger escaped, and ventured into a warehouse where a man was killed and more were injured by the tiger. This is just one reason why having zoos is dangerous.
Zoos have been around for a long time. Evidence that was found in 2009 shows that they had zoos in Egypt that dated back to 3500 BC. If we have has zoos for over 4,000 years, why should they be banned now?
Ants in your pants?
After being cooped up at a desk all day at school or work, we all want to run around and burn some energy off. Do you assume that it’s different for the animals, that they don’t have energy? In the past 50 years, most zoo habitats have gone from glass walls and cages with two bowls for food and water, to a hot, dry savannah or a humid rain forest with a wide variety of trees and colorful flowers. But not too thick, because then the visitors cannot see whatever beast or bird they came here to look at. The environment is one concern for a natural animal habitat, but another is space and size.
The national government requires lions, and tigers to have 240 square feet as a minimum habitat, leopards, jaguars, and cougars to have 200 square feet, lesser cats, which include lynx, bobcats, and ocelots only need 72 square feet, and small cats have the right to have at least 36 square feet of space. Imagine spending the wh After being cooped up at a desk all day at school or work, we all want to run around and burn some energy off. Do you assume that it’s different for the animals, that they don’t have energy? The environment is one concern for a natural animal habitat, but another is space and size. The state requires lions, and tigers to have 240 square feet as a minimum habitat, leopards, jaguars, and cougars to have 200 square feet, lesser cats, which include lynx, bobcats, and ocelots only need 72 square feet to live in, and a small, feral, and domestic cats can live in a minimum of 36 square feet. Imagine having to spend all day in a room that was six feet by six feet. On average for big cats, this 18,000 times smaller than their natural habitat. A polar bear’s natural habitat is one-millionth of the size it is in the wild, which can range up to 65,000 miles, says behavioral biologist Georgia Mason. A behavioral biologist is a biologist who studies the behavior of animals when in captivity, and how animals adapt (or fail) to living in captivity. Even though a study done by Dr. Mason showed that some animals, such as lynx, small bears, foxes, and mink do well in captivity, a government funded study in the United Kingdom showed that in the UK, 75% of elephants were overweight and only 16% could walk properly. African elephants can live up to three times longer in the wild, then they do in captivity. Lastly, 30% of lion cubs die in the wild, and over 45% die in zoos. This shows that the lionesses can take care of the cubs a hell of a lot better that some fancy zoologists with a degree in his or her office.
Just because some zoos have rid of small cages and abusive habits doesn’t mean all have.
Abuse Use
That giraffe that we saw last year at the Copenhagen Zoo is gone! What happened to it? Oh, it died, that’s too bad. What the bronze plaque doesn’t say is how the giraffe died. Most just assume it was natural causes, or maybe a sickness. You probably wouldn’t have guessed that it was murdered by the zookeepers, and then made into lion food. The reason reason they did this because the giraffe wasn’t able to produce healthy ovaries to produce offspring, so the 18 month old giraffe, Marius, was turned into lion food and considered useless. Plus their wouldn’t be any cute little baby giraffes for the zoo to make a big deal of and have online polls for baby giraffe names.
Humboldt penguins in the Scarborough Sanctuary, in the United Kingdom and native to southern South America, were put on antidepressants. Not for testing of a new medicine that could cure cancer or depression for humans, but because they were swimming in a deep state of depression. The habitat that they were living in was much to small, and when a small change is made to their routine, the penguins get anxious and depressed and makes it hard for them to produce offspring.
Another example is the famous abusement park, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, CA. Elephants Liz, and Asian elephant, and Valerie, an African elephant have hearing ranges far more extreme and delicate than humans. Putting them in an amusement park with so many sounds day after day is torture for anyone- but putting a species with such tender hearing is cruel abusement beyond belief.
The Woburn Safari Sanctuary and Park in England had an investigation done by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs found that three lions were being kept in a 10 foot square concrete room for up to 18 hours a day. The park also was found using chlorine in the seal tank to cut down on money, which cause eyesight impairments to all the seals living in the tank.
A final example of this is Asha, an African elephant, who lives in Natural Bridge Zoo in Virginia. She is forced to give rides in the scorching heat, lest she risk being stabbed with a bullhook (a steel-tipped baton with a hook at the end that is used to control and discipline Asha through fear and abusive punishment). She is also, like so many other elephants, all alone in her exhibit. This is cruel enough, seeing how elephants are a very social, amiable, and live in large family pods in the wild.
Another cruelty that is used at zoos is food. Whether undernourishment, or giving giraffes steak and tigers leafy greens, zoos need to have a nutritionist and gastrologist on hand to feed these hungry animals.
Dining with Dolphins
In Rick Riordan’s famous YA novel Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Percy and Annabeth hitch a ride in the back of zoo truck carrying animals (in a cage, of course), they encounter two zebras and a lion. The lion has a bag of turnips, and the zebras each have a steak in their cage. Eventually, the lion got the steaks and the zebras got the turnips, and it was a funny chapter, but something similar to this scene is all too common in zoos across the world.
We are all disgusted when our dog or cat brings in a squirrel, bird, lizard, chipmunk, or any other small critter. Who wants to clean up the remains of a dead, eaten carcass? Hunting is their natural instinct and the fresh meat is more delicious than any processed crap we could feed them, out of a can or a bag, wet or dry. Despite the size difference and the affection and violence levels (a domestic dog or cat probably won’t rip your head off), your cute bengal cat or regal german shepherd is closer to a leopard or wolf than you might think.
In this case, animals know to hunt, or they will be hunted. But do we really want to see our sweet little Bailey the chihuahua turning into White Fang or Maisy the siamese cat turn into Scar from The Lion King? Yes, we do. A study was done at the San Diego Zoo; researchers appraised five mentally and physically healthy cheetahs. They studied their eating habits when given the normal, commercial, standard zoo food, which is a cat food equivalent to a TV dinner- processed with much sodium, preservatives, and never fresh. Imagine eating Taco Bell’s beef taco, but instead of “beef”, this delicious concoction is made with horse meat. Then, they fed them fresh carcass of veal, cow, and horse. The researchers discovered that when the cheetahs were fed a fresh carcass, they ate much slower, observing the food, smelling it, then finally eating it. They ate much slower, meaning they enjoyed the taste much better. When given the zoo food, the cheetahs showed much less interest and possession over their food. When given the fresh carcass, they showed much more territorial over their food, therefore, acting like cheetahs in the wild.
It was feeding time for Kya and Taj, two tigers who live in captivity in the Southwick Zoo, in Mendon, MA. The zookeeper lowered down a piece of meat from who-knows-what and hung it from a string from the ceiling. The tigers looked at it, then ignored it. One went over to the meat sniffed it, took a bite, chewed, them decided it wasn’t interested. I found this interesting. Twenty minutes later I had a EUREKA! moment. The tigers didn’t want to be fed, they wanted to hunt! Ok, maybe that is from Jurassic Park, but still, it applies to this scenario.
Lack of proper food can lead to many other health problems, and mess with, and speed up the cycle of evolution.
Evidence of Evolution
Evolution is the process by which different kinds of living organisms change. Remember those cheetahs I told you about. Well, eating the crappy, soft zoo food is going against the natural process of natural evolution. Over time, the cheetah’s sharp fangs wear away to blunt teeth, which is the cause of ripping and tearing apart bloody carcasses. By eating soft food (when I say soft food, I mean the texture of wet food for dogs and cats), their molars stay sharp, which can bore a hole in the animal’s upper palate bone. Bacteria or other germs and diseases can get inside of the hole, and infect it, causing gum and tooth diseases. The most common disease is that is seen in captive cheetahs is focal palatine erosion. Animals held in zoos develop physical health issues, but their mental health is far below par, too.
Evolution plays a large part in behavior of species, but an unnatural change is that develops in zoos is neurotic behavior.
Captivity Drives Animals Insane
When we are at the zoo the little behaviors that we see the animals doing are sooooo cute! Grooming themselves, swaying back and forth, dancing, or bar biting, these repeated actions show that these animals have neurotic behavior. Neurotic behavior ia a behavior that results in chronic anxiety, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder, a phobia, or a personality disorder. Dr. Laurel Braitman, a doctor who’s book, Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves, gives a look into a captive animal’s minds, how they were tortured, and how they recovered. Her book is also helping humans understand depression, anxiety, and alzheimer’s. Scientists at the University of Oxford have studies showing that big cats develop neurotic behavior when in brought or born into captivity. In fact, studies by the Captive Animals Protection Society show that 90% of species at public zoos and aquariums have neurotic behavior. Birds pluck their feathers out; polar bears swim in endless circles or figure eights. Primates do vulgar things, such as throw their dung at humans (I would want to if was goggled at all day) and eat their own vomit, and carnivores pace constantly. Aquariums are not excluded from this misery. Some signs of neurotic behavior in aquatic animals are swimming around an invisible object, poking their head above the water, and rubbing their scales against the tank. Most neurotic behaviors are rarely to never observe in the mammals in their natural habitat.
Let’s stop this cruel punishment of captivity to innocent animals! Let’s expose zoos for what they really are. Costa Rica abolished all zoos and released all animals into the wild or a sanctuary, why can’t we do the same? It’s time to stand up for animals having a rightful place in the world.
