Zoos across the world are under fire from the general public on whether or not they deserve to continue getting funded due to the debate on how ethically they treat their animals. Zoos have been built in order to protect, preserve, and educate. However, attention has been brought to the general public about whether or not zoos are accomplishing these goals. Organizations ranging from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, to the American Humane have been at a tug-of-war debating not only the morality, but also the success of zoos. Zoos across the globe are making efforts to ensure that the animals’ well-being on the individual scale and the species scale is as high as possible. 

To assess whether or not zoos are increasing the overall quality of life and well-being of animals, it is critical that one first understands what makes a zoos worth looking at and supporting. According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the AZA, zoos seeking accreditation, and thus, funding and official recognition, must comply to hundreds of standards. In particular, section 1.5 of the AZA accreditation guidelines covers the animal welfare and well-being. This section of the accreditation standards portable document format (PDF) require that all the animals must have a balance between “aesthetic and educational considerations,” enclosures must be safe for animals, the animals must be kept in “appropriate groupings”, enclosures must offer several different living conditions for the animals to choose from, there must be “an educational/conservation message” as an “integral component of any kind of presentation that involves the direct use of the animal (such as a presentation involving sea lions putting on a show in the water,)” and programs must be followed and incorporate the elements the AZA’s policies if live animals are used (AZA.) The general theme of the well-being section shows that the well-being of the animals is actually required to be met by set and approved standards in order for any zoo or aquarium to become a member of the AZA. This means that any zoo that is recognized by the AZA for meeting their hundreds of policies and standards and have been accepted into the AZA would qualify as a good ground for research as to whether or not zoos are actually benefitting their animals.

The place where zoos tend to accelerate the most in improving the lives of these animals falls on the individual level. There is a significant amount of documentation about zoos working past the accreditation requirements and focusing on making sure that the animals in their enclosures receive the best possible care in order to decrease and hopefully remove the chance of the animals developing depression, anxiety, or phobias. A recent publication (January 18, 2017) in The New York Times begins by addressing that a gorilla, named Colo, reached the age of 60, almost 20 years over the average life span of the typical wild gorilla! The article explains in the first paragraph that the reason Colo was able to live longer than expected “is because of the care she received [in the Columbus Zoo]” (Klein). One of the many ways the Columbus Zoo was able to achieve such an accomplishment is via their surrogacy program they implemented for the gorillas. The Columbus zoo has two article-mentioned methods as part of their surrogacy program, and both work together to find ways to benefit all different gorillas. The article explains that baby gorillas who are found without a mother are assisted by humans who have spent their lives studying the behavior of mother gorillas. The overall goal of this method is to produce “foster mothers” who, by watching humans cough when they do something bad, or carrying young on their backs, can care for future gorilla offspring that needed a mother like they once did (Klein). If zoos were to be shut down or the funding for the zoos that have programs like these that keep animals alive and well for so long were to be cut in part or in total, the chances of any gorilla or any other animal living as long as Colo did would be next to none, regardless to whether or not they are wild or in captivity. Not all animals need care like this, but the animals that are found in the wild that are either found alone as infants, or found horribly wounded would have a very slim chance of being anything more than a wandering animal’s next meal.

At the same time as mimicking mothers, there is the opposite end of the spectrum where zoologists need to ensure that the babies do not become too reliant on humans. It is not uncommon knowledge that zoo animals that become too reliant on humans do not fare well upon being released in to wild. Problems such as the newly wild animals searching for their human friends instead of placing themselves in a community of common species, or animals not knowing how to defend themselves and getting killed by other animals have been reported ever since zoos began to release animals into the wild. To ensure that this problem is addressed, some zoologists will implement different methods that ensure the animals don’t become too reliant on the zoo keepers. The zoologists will train the baby animals to get the feeding bottles themselves so that the animals will learn to find their own food as opposed to expecting a human to bring food to them. The list of different methods zoologists at the Columbus zoo is only becoming larger, as researchers and zoologists develop more methods and programs aimed at helping these animals. The list is expanding to include reward programs that makes animals relate hoof treatment to music, or relate getting a vaccine to being rewarded by a tennis ball on a stick (Klein). The more these methods get developed and implemented, the more improvement zoologists can see in their own animals, an improvement that without zoos, would be nonexistent.

According to Time Magazine, zoos are working to fight against the oncoming threats of Earth’s current mass extinction by attempting to help different animal species live on (Ganzert). Taking a look at the Phoenix Zoo, this article examines how the zoo has developed breeding programs in order to not simply assist, but save an entire species. In 1972, the wild Arabian Oryx was hunted virtually to extinction, with the individuals in captivity at zoos being the only ones left (Ganzert). However, with special breeding and reintroduction programs, a lot of these species, such as the Arabian Oryx, are able to make a small comebacks and have upwards of around a 1000 animals bring reintroduced back into the wild. While at the end of the day, it was the humans that brought the animals to this dangerous extinction line, it is important to remember that it is the zoos that are working tirelessly to fix that problems that modern day civilization cause.

If zoologists must weigh not interfering with nature to try to keep an ecosystem in balance, and stepping in and ensuring the survival of a population that is only endangered because of humans, ensuring the survival of the population should come first. However, if the goal of keeping these animals alive and well is on a zoo’s top priority list, why are animals still finding themselves extinct or not being benefitted at all by zoos? An article written by William Conway states the problem may lie in zoos not focusing their efforts in the conservation of the larger, wild habitats. According to the article “Zoos seldom participate in species or habitat restoration” (Conway). This is problematic because one must understand that zoos can breed thousands of a particular species in zoos, but if their habitat is in ruins, which is a common cause of a particular species failing in the first place, zoos get virtually nowhere in helping these animals. 

This is where the common people come in. It is the duty of the common people to help the same animals that humans as a species almost drove to extinction. The same article by Conway suggests a solution to this problem, a solution that can only be accomplished with the help of the general public. Because the human race is constantly expanding, and thus taking more space on this small earth, the article suggests that a solution might be to change how zoos work completely. The article states “Most important, we will have to work to sustain smaller than usually viable wildlife populations in reserves and parks; living with us, as a part of human-dominated landscapes… thus the 2lst-century zoo must be redesigned as a buffer against biotic impoverishment…” (Conway). Overall, what this article suggests is that zoos be altered to account for the fact that most wild areas are now under human influence. Zoos should be altered to take this into account by providing a large section of land in human dominated areas that are designated as conservation parks so that animals will have a “wild” despite the “wild” being placed inside an area of human influence. If the public can support zoos not just financially but also physically or even morally, these wildlife preserves where wild animals are free to roam among anyone living there can become a common thing. This idea is not just a dream or a crazy idea, it is already being implemented in Denmark, where their Zootopia holds 300 acres of “zoos without bars” (Phippen.) Denmark’s Zootopia is just the first step in creating better zoos and environments for these animals.

On top of keeping species alive on the individual level and species level, it is important to remember that zoo have a job beyond the animals that they must balance. At the end of the day, zoos are still a business and need to make some form of income in order to fund the animals, the care, the staff, et cetera. One way zoos can attract massive amounts of visitors is by advertising as an educational experience, especially since the AZA requires some form of educational output. However, one must question whether or not zoos are putting in an adequate effort into ensuring that visitors, whether they be on a casual day trip to a local zoo, or they are a load of children on a school field trip, are getting an educational experience that they see worth wild. A survey conducted by Warwick Frost and his team was published in his book in 2011 and contains a chart of peoples’ ratings on not only whether or not they agree or disagree on certain aspects of their zoo experience, such as how educational it was, but also how important they feel certain aspects of a zoo are. All ratings are ranging from 1 (being not important at all/strongly disagree) to 5 (bring very important/strongly agree). According to the public, the most important matter when it comes to going to the zoo is “having a fun day out” with “see lots of different animals” coming in close second, with mean scores of two different zoo being 4.58 and 4.48 respectively. According to the general public, Entertainment is of most importance (mean score: 4.236), then education (mean score: 3.895), and finally conservation (mean score: 3.64). Overall, what these numbers mean is that when someone goes to the zoo, they are for the most part expecting to be entertained, after all, that is the most common reason people go to a zoo as shown by the score 4.236 entertainment got. However, because education and conservation still got numbers above the 2.5, half of the max score, it shows that people still go to zoos to be educated and see the effects of the zoo’s conservation efforts. These number say that entertainment is certainly important, but zoos still need to find that called for balance of education, conservation, and entertainment. If zoos can work to get these numbers for education and conservation up, it would be expected that the overall support of zoo would also go up, thus increasing funding for whatever it is zoo need in order to help the zoo animals more effectively.

The same Atlantic article proposes that the definition or scope of education need to be changed. It is hard to measure how much someone learned by one specific zoo visit if all one measures is whether someone can, for example, correctly explain the eating habits of a bear correctly. The scope of education should be broadened to cover everyone and any form of learning, not just kids learning “textbook” information. The article claims that learning should not be simply measured by whether someone can answer a question, but should also include people learning that they want to get a job as a zoologist (Phippen). The question of whether or not zoos meet the educational standards presented to them should include common visitors and professionals. Animals in zoos are constantly being used by researchers around the world so that they can study these animals without having to go in the harsh wild themselves. If this scope/definition of educational is kept in mind, the educational ability of zoos is astounding. The more people are educated on how effective zoos really are at keeping the animals inside alive and well, the more support the zoos will get from the public, overall increasing their affectability.

Despite everything a zoo does to protect its animals, no zoo is without flaws, some flaws being more tragic than others.  According to a video produced by PETA, elephants are one of the most struggling animals in captivity. The video shows that an elephant’s life span can be cut in as much as half when the elephant is in captivity as opposed to the wild. To further address how zoos negatively effects animals, Julia Wilde published a video addressing how several mistakes of zoo keepers lead to an entire exhibit of manta rays dying, which also resulted in the enclosure being shut down completely. However, this information gets worse, as the video created by Julia Wilde also addressed how animals who are fed zoo food, particularly lions and cheetahs, have a problem with how they are fed. With food being directly brought out to the animals, the animals lose a “hassle factor” which the animals need to help dental features (Wilde). Despite this information, not all is loss, as Wilde continues where PETA left off in their video. PETA never gave all the information regarding the short life span of elephants. PETA claims that virtually all elephants have this shorter life span, with elephants that live longer being a near miracle. However, Wilde addresses that more accredited zoos are able to not just raise the life span of elephants kept in enclosures, they are able to extend it (Wilde). Wilde also expresses that the death of the manta rays was cause an accidental fault in the enclosure. While allowing an accident in an enclosure to kill off a large number of animals is a shortsighted reason to have animals die in captivity, it is no more common for animals to die like this in captivity than animals die in the wild to natural causes (Animal Ethics.) This shows that the accident with the manta ray was tragic, but if we should shut down zoos because of a once in a blue moon accident like the manta rays, then how do we also shut down mother nature where animals are dying even faster due to natural disasters. Making the mistake and killing the manta rays can only be an unfixable error if nobody learned anything from it, and from it, zookeepers learned how to properly set up enclosures similarly to the faulty one, but correctly.

Assessing the positivity of a zoos intervention with individual animals and their respective species can be difficult if one is ill-informed. There is a whole world of information that must be examined before one can determine whether zoos deserve the privilege to call themselves a preserve. While it is impossible to meet every standard of every animal while also maintaining the balance of education, conservation, and entertainment, zoos around the globe are attempting, and succeeding in making this effort. According to the well-known Bill Nye, his life was “enriched” by visiting a zoo. He explains that “humane enclosures where the animals do not have to face predators, do not have to have their offspring literally eaten by lions and dogs, that’s not bad. But causing them hardship and shooting this guy [Harambe, the gorilla of the Cincinnati zoo that was shot and killed in 2016 after a kid fell into his enclosure] this is really… troubling” (Nye). If scientists, zoologists, and the common people, can find a way to make a balance of the enrich ability, the conservation, the education, and the entertainment Nye points to, while also avoiding more conflicts like the manta ray exhibit or the Harambe incident, zoos can only get better. It’s impossible to make zoos perfect, but the positives of keeping zoos open and funded would go without question the closer zoos get to that perfect point. People would be able to live life alongside zoo animals for years to come, and future generations of children, and grandchildren will get the chance to see animals that without zoos, would simply be dream. Zoos are only getting better from here on out, making reaching this dream of a perfect zoo more and more of a reality.
