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Zoos

Is it cruel to keep animals in captivity?

It certainly can be, depending on how the animals are kept. The cruelty comes not from neglect or ill-treatment, but from depriving animals of stimulation. As the famous zoologist Desmond Morris has said:
" They are medically cared for, protected from the elements, well-fed and well-housed. They lack for nothing except variability, novelty and stimuli to maintain a high activity level " (1).

Caged animals may be deprived of their normal society, their families and mates. They have little opportunity to run, soar in the sky, swing through the trees, or roam over large distances. Most importantly, they usually have nothing to do, and don't need to use their intelligence and skills to solve daily problems of survival. They don't have to look for food, shelter or a mate, and they don't have to be on alert to avoid predators. Nothing much changes in a zoo enclosure.

Deep instincts that have evolved over thousands of years can't find any outlet. The result is boredom and stress. Animals may become apathetic and just sit in one place. They may show signs of mental disturbance through abnormal behaviours.

Abnormal behaviour in zoos

In 1993 the Born Free Foundation in the UK issued its Zoochotic Report, a 3-year investigation of zoos in the UK and Ireland, the USA and Europe. They found evidence of severely disturbed behaviour in many species.

The most common abnormal behaviour was repeated movement: rocking from side to side, pacing up and down or round and round, waving or circling the head, over and over again. Many species showed such behaviour in captivity, including carnivores, various hooved animals, elephants, monkeys and bears (2).

Polar bears often suffer badly in captivity. A 1985 study in the UK and Ireland found that 12 of the 20 polar bears were severely mentally disturbed, and that the death rate of cubs was twice as high as in the wild (3).

Another abnormal behaviour is biting or licking bars and walls. A study in Japan observed 116 giraffes in 31 zoos and that all of them showed such "tongue playing" and other abnormal behaviours (2).

Self-mutilation is a particularly disturbing form of abnormal behaviour. The Zoochotic Report shows a jaguar chewing the end of its tail, which has become completely bald. It shows a bear pulling out its own fur to the point that the belly and hind legs are bald. It shows an elephant bashing its trunk against its side (2).

Another abnormal behaviour is playing with or eating excrement. The Zoochotic Report shows a magnificent gorilla smearing faeces on the wall and eating them. It shows a gorilla and a chimpanzee vomiting and eating their vomit (2).

These animals show through their behaviour that they are living in an inadequate environment and that they are suffering, in spite of being well fed and medically cared for.

Problems go back to the way zoos were set up in the last century. London zoo was opened in 1828, Adelaide zoo in 1883. Animal collections were treated like stamp collections. The more animals the better, especially if they were large animals from foreign places that the public would be willing to pay money to see. It didn't matter if a zoo had only 1 of a species on its own, or if the space was much too small for the animal. The "specimens" were arranged in cages to make it easy to observe them at close range and at all times. They were captured from the wild, and many died during capture and transport (4).

Zoos have slowly started to change this legacy, but some of the problems remain.

Zoos in Adelaide

The term "zoo" is used loosely here to refer to a place where the public can view animals in a specially fenced off area.

• Adelaide Zoo - 8 hectares housing both native and introduced mammals, marsupials, birds and reptiles. Some good new environments have been established, but some enclosures are still quite small (see below).

• Monarto Open Range Zoo - associated with Adelaide Zoo. The 1000 hectare site is divided into a series of large paddocks, some of them open to the public and some used only for breeding programmes. Visitors are taken through Asian and African areas by bus to see ostriches, giraffes, zebras, various antelopes, as well as the endangered Przewalski's horse and Arabian oryx.

• Cleland Wildlife Park - a collection of Australian marsupials, reptiles, large parrots, waterbirds and small birds. Some animals roam in fairly large paddocks, while some are still in relatively small enclosures.

• Gorge Wildlife Park - around 5.5 hectares and, according to the owners, housing over 200 species of birds and animals. Many are native animals, but there are also monkeys and several introduced carnivores. Some of the kangaroos and wallabies are in large paddocks, and water birds have a lake, but some enclosures are quite small.

• Warrawong Sanctuary - around 14 hectares of re-established bushland, where native animals roam freely inside a cat- and fox-proof fence. There are kangaroos and wallabies and several of their smaller relatives, bandicoots, possums and quolls in the bush, and platypus in the lakes. Wild birds fly in and out as they please. Visitors are taken on guided tours.

Improvements at Adelaide Zoo

In 1984 the zoo kept 2200 animals of 330 different species of mammals, birds and reptiles (5). One major improvement in the zoo is that the number of animals has been reduced. Some, such as the polar bears, have gone to other zoos. Others, such as giraffes, wild horses, zebras and antelopes, have gone to the open range zoo at Monarto, where they can roam freely. This also means that there is more space for the animals remaining in the city.

Other improvements in the zoo include:

• There are now materials such as grass, bushes and logs in enclosures so that animals can hide if they wish. In traditional bare cages they could never escape the public, and this constant exposure was stressful for some animals.

• Some of the new enclosures provide much more suitable environments for animals. In the south-east Asian rainforest, siamangs and dusky leaf monkeys have large trees in which to exercise and rest. The surrounding moat is home to otters. These active little animals now spend most of their time swimming, whereas previously they paced up and down in their small pens.

• Birds in the walk-through Australian rainforest aviary also have large trees. They can fly freely and are active in the canopy.

• The hippopotamuses now have moats in which they spend most of their time. A few years ago they were in concrete pens with only a patch of water.

• The mandrills are now on an island with a large area of water around it, and the baboons are in a rocky area rather than in cages. While these new enclosures look nice and give the monkeys more room, there still doesn't seem to be much for them to do.

Remaining problems

A few animals at Adelaide Zoo have been observed pacing back and forth or circling around their enclosure, including a Syrian bear, a sun bear, a squirrel monkey, a black jaguar and a red panda.

Many more animals, though, are inactive and have nothing to do. For example, some monkeys and apes use tools to get food in the wild, but in captivity there is nothing for them to apply their intelligence to.

Very large birds of prey are kept in aviaries that are too small for them to be able to fly normally. These are birds with a very large wingspan. At Adelaide Zoo there are Andean condors, and at the Gorge Wildlife Park there are sea eagles and wedge-tailed eagles.

Parrots of various kinds are active and intelligent birds, but many species at Adelaide Zoo and the Gorge Wildlife Park are in fairly bare aviaries where there is nothing for them to do.

For more details information these points, see Problems in Adelaide zoos .

Baby animals in zoos

Zoos like to display baby animals because the public finds them cute and is drawn to displays with babies. In November 1997 the following species had babies at Adelaide Zoo:
sea lion, hunting dog, mandrill, tamarin, pelican, zebra, sitatunga, barbary sheep, giraffe and meerkat.

In the past, zoos have destroyed healthy animals because of over-breeding. There was no space for the young, and no other zoo who wanted to take them. These days some animals are on birth control to avoid this problem, but it always worth asking what arrangements have been made for baby animals to live out their natural lifespan in a good environment.

Zoos and conservation

Quite a few endangered species have been bred in zoos. In a few cases, animals have even been returned to their natural habitat. For example, Arabian oryx were returned to the desert of Oman, golden lion tamarins were returned to the jungle of Brazil, and Przewalski horses were returned to the steppes of Mongolia. Some of these horses were bred at Monarto Open Range Zoo.

Endangered native animals being bred at Monarto and Adelaide Zoo include the bilby and yellow-footed rock wallaby.

However, there are about 1.5 million species of animals in the world, so obviously zoos can only breed very few of these. Many are "insignificant" animals such as insects or worms, but they play a very important role in their ecosystem. These animals will only be preserved when whole habitats are preserved. Unless habitats are preserved, the endangered animals being bred in zoos won't have anywhere to go.

So, while zoos can make a small contribution to conservation, the most important step is stop destroying wildlife habitat for agriculture, housing or timber.

For more detailed information, see Zoos and Conservation .

Opposition to zoos

Some people have a philosophical objection to confining animals in zoos. They think zoos emphasise the domination of humans over other species. This confinement suggests that humans can do as they wish with other animals. Philosopher Dale Jamieson is one person who presents this point of view.

" Zoos teach us a false sense of our place in the natural order. The means of confinement mark a difference between humans and animals. They are there at our pleasure, to be used for our purposes. Morality and perhaps our very survival require that we learn to live as one species among many rather than as one species over many. To do this we must forget what we learn at zoos " (6).

The Great Ape Project (GAP) objects to keeping chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas in captivity. According to GAP, these great apes have mental capacities and an emotional life so similar to humans that they should also have the same basic rights, including:

• the right to life

• the protection of individual liberty

• the prohibition of torture.

This means that apes should not be killed, should not be imprisoned when they are healthy and haven't committed any crime, and should not be experimented on. GAP objects to keeping apes in zoos. It says that all apes should be able to live in their natural habitat unmolested or, where this is not possible, they should be able to live as freely as possible in sanctuaries, where their basic rights can be respected.

You can visit the web site of the Great Ape Project to find out more about this organisation.

Questions to consider at a zoo

1. How many animals are in the enclosure? Is this a natural social group?

2. How large is the enclosure? How far does this species normally travel during a day? Can the animals get enough exercise?

3. What are the animals doing? How would this species occupy its time in the wild? Is this behaviour possible in the enclosure?

4. Do the animals show any abnormal behaviour, such as pacing or rocking? Do they look alert, or are they apathetic?

5. Are there any enrichment programmes, such as getting animals to "work" for their food?

6. Are all the animals captive-born, or were some captured from the wild?

7. Are any animals on a birth control programme?

8. Does the zoo only breed animals when they have a guaranteed home? When was the last time that healthy animals were killed because they were "surplus"?

9. Has the zoo released any endangered animals back to their natural habitat?

10. Is the zoo involved in any habitat preservation programmes?

11. How does the zoo educate the public about the importance of habitat protection?

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References