Where do you find a variety of different animals from all over the world in one place? A place where almost everyone has been when they were young. A zoo keeps many animals in a confined space, but should zoos exist? No, I don’t think zoos should exist because the animals aren’t there for education purposes, the zoos aren’t actually doing what they’re claiming to and the artificial habitat is really nothing like their original one. Would animals like being in a zoo? I don’t think so.
Zoos claim to display or give educational opportunities, but most visitors only spend a few minutes at each enclosure, looking for entertainment rather than awareness. Most zoo enclosures are small, and instead of understanding the animals usual habits, signs often provide no more information than an animal’s species, diet, history and natural habitats. Animals are cramped together, lack privacy, and have small chances for physical exercise. These ...view middle of the document...
In fact most of the animals are not injured, or near the brink of extinction but they are captured from wildlife and put into a zoo for entertainment purposes and an act as a tourist attraction. E.g. the two pandas Da Mao and Er Shun that were “loaned” to the Toronto zoo for a couple of years, yes they are trying to help create more pandas but the Toronto zoo is making probably millions of dollars or even more! Zoos usually prefer exotic or popular animals ones who can draw crowds and publicity rather than threatened or endangered local wildlife.
A penguin lives in cold, snowy tundra with a body of water as their source of food. In comparison yes, a zoo does have all that but everything there is artificial. From the temperature to the habitat itself and what would happen if the electricity stopped? The air conditioner wouldn’t work and the temperature would either be too cold or too hot for the animals. Electricity aside, if you go to a zoo, the animals look sad and don’t do much but just sit and groom itself. That shows that the animals don’t like the place and that it’s not comfortable. The zoos don’t have enough space to properly recreate a natural habitat, wouldn’t it be weird if you spent your life in the wild running around anywhere you liked with your friends, then one day get trapped in small space? You’d probably feel miserable like the animals. I remember going to a zoo once when I was little and some lions were kept in a place as big as a football field the lions didn’t do anything except lie there on top of a rock sunbathing.
To sum it up, zoos shouldn’t exist because zoos aren’t educational, zoos aren’t actually doing what they’re claiming to and the artificial habitat is far from their original ones their original one. Instead of going to a zoo you could go to a reserve because it’s actually in the natural habitat of the animals and they can do whatever they want in that space.
http://www.peta.org/living/entertainment/reality-zoos/
http://www.lcanimal.org/index.php/campaigns/elephants/zoos-a-circuses
