Zoos can be fun because you get to be up close with some amazing species. Clearly, zoos are fun for the people, but what about the animals?
Animals that live their entire lives in zoos often die when they are released into the wild.
The environment that is built for the animals is artificial and not up to the real standards of the wild. Animals need to know how to hunt and how to survive, but when they live in captivity for all their life, survival is a hard skill to learn. On top of that, not all zoos have the proper resources to keep all these different animals in their proper climates. This can be extremely dangerous for these animals because they need conditions that will enable them to thrive and grow, but most zoos don’t provide that. According to Derek Lartaud, “What this means is that not all zoos have the resources to properly care for the animals they house. And for many critics, no amount of education or research justifies keeping animals captive.”
Other people believe that zoos are a good thing because they can educate people on different species and what we can do in order to help and protect them. But in doing so, we are putting these animals at risk of domestication or depression. Many also believe that when zoos take endangered animals and breed them inside the zoo, it will be beneficial. But, once you raise and then release the newborn animals into the wild, they will be clueless as to how they should survive.
In order to change this, we could start to hold zoos accountable for the welfare and health of these animals. Zoos could start to actually help the animals instead of using them to fuel and entertain humans. We need to stop funding these zoos, no matter how fun and entertaining it may be.
Overall, zoos are bad for the health and well-being of animals. They decrease physical stability and mental health as well. They create an inaccurate environment for these animals, who need certain conditions in order to survive.
