Why Zoos Are Important and Zoo Facts for Tourism

King Gossiper

Why Zoos Are Important and Zoo Facts for Tourism

Zoos have many other positive reasons for existing besides education:

they advance veterinary medicine, they increase our understanding of animal behavior (which helps in conservation), they contribute to conservation efforts, they provide wholesome entertainment, they create jobs, and they participate in breeding programs that help ensure that if animals do go extinct in the wild, we will still have genetically viable specimens in captivity.

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You suggest that most animal enclosures do more harm than good to the animals.

I strongly disagree. How well an animal does in its enclosure is dependent on the zoo and the species in question. It is true that some zoos don’t care for their charges as well as others. This is a problem with individual zoos, not zoos in general. Also, many species thrive in zoos- a few do not. There are serious questions about whether or not whales and porpoises are fit for captivity.  But most animals- when kept in enclosures that meet strict established standards- are perfectly happy in captivity.

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How can I say that they are happy? Obviously we can’t ask an animal if it is happy.

We have to measure their happiness by monitoring their behavior. If they are behaving the way that the species would normally behave in the wild (eating, bathing, interacting with each other, breeding, playing) we can reasonably assume that they are happy. Many times I have seen people regard the serious face of a gorilla and declare that the gorilla appears depressed. I ask them, “have you seen the expression of a wild gorilla?” That is just the way gorillas look! Either all gorillas- both wild and in captivity- are chronically depressed, or gorillas don’t express their happiness exactly like a human does.

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