The Ethics and Purpose of Zoos in the Modern World

Introduction: Zoos and Human Civilization

The history of zoos is entwined with the history of human civilizations. Zoos represent the relationship between human beings and their natural environment, and especially between human beings and other animals. The very existence of zoos, and their predecessors such as menageries and personal collections of wild animals, suggests that human beings have long attempted to control wild animals in some form. Zoos enable human beings to watch, domesticate, and use wild animals for any number of purposes, including entertainment. Wild animal collections have been overt status symbols throughout human history and across many different cultures (Kisling). Core purposes for zoos and related institutions such as aquariums include "recreation, education, research, and conservation" (Kisling).

However, the philosophy and ethics of zoos are questionable. Before the existence of high-speed, high-tech communications, the only encounters most people could have with wild animals took place in the protected, artificial environment of a zoo. Yet modern communications and transportation technologies have made the entertainment value of zoos far less meaningful. To remain relevant, zoos should change their mission to focus more on research and conservation and less on entertainment.

Zoos have evolved from what Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier call "the passion for collecting" to a viable mode of protecting endangered species. The spirit of zoos has evolved, creating "lingering anachronisms involving purpose and ethics" (Robinson viii). Social values have changed, the ecosystems in which animals once thrived have changed, and thus the role of zoos has changed throughout the world. Likewise, access to animals in their natural habitat, combined with widespread information dissemination via new and traditional media, makes zoos much less about entertainment and much more about research and the preservation of endangered species.

Ethical Concerns About Keeping Wild Animals in Captivity

As Smith points out, "If the majority of the people visiting the zoo are only looking at caged animals and making their own conclusions about what the animals are thinking … then it seems to me they are internalizing the concept of power and control over nature and other animals, as well as teaching it to their children." One of the central ethical concerns of zoos is that they fail to actually teach anything except the ability of human beings to control, manipulate, and subvert nature — especially with regard to creatures that could potentially kill a human being in the wild.

Lions, polar bears, and other carnivores at the top of the food chain cannot often be appreciated in a first-hand encounter. However, these are the very animals that seem most thwarted in the confining environment of a zoo. No visitor to a zoo would question the ethics of keeping a cat or a dog at home, because those creatures have been bred and domesticated specifically to be pets. Lions, tigers, bears, and gorillas have not been bred as such and are woefully deprived of space, the ability to hunt, and in most cases the climate, flora, and fauna to which they are naturally adapted. The issue of animal dignity is a separate but equally compelling one. Wild animals do appear undignified when kept in cages and prevented from following their instincts — such as the instinct to hunt.

Even when wild animals are offered approximate reconstructions of a natural habitat, the results are less than satisfying for both visitor and animal. A lion may be offered an artificially constructed terrain and some raw meat. Or the lion may be housed in a "wild animal park" where visitors drive past and observe from cars. In the latter case, the lion is still prohibited from hunting, which is arguably the species' primary mode of existence. Hunting likely offers lions the closest approximation of what human beings would call satisfaction. Even without projecting human qualities onto wild animals, it is possible to understand what removing a predator from its natural environment might mean for that creature.

The Artificial Nature of Zoo Environments

For gentle foraging animals such as giraffes or tree-dwelling monkeys, hunting is not the central issue. Animals at zoos are often given large spaces in which to move about, and visitors are frequently treated to displays such as monkeys grooming one another. But even within the increasing geography of zoo enclosures, do captive animals truly feel safe, comfortable, and natural? Much depends on whether the animal was born in captivity or in the wild, but the zoo environment is unlike wilderness no matter how pleasant the zookeepers make it. At some point, the animal must be fed, moved, examined, and bred. And throughout zoo operating hours, dozens of human beings observe the animal — something that would never occur in the wild. Moreover, the animals have no predators to contend with and may feel too safe for their own good.

One of the reasons animals in captivity are sometimes unable to be returned to the wild is the loss of natural instinct. Animals born in captivity are likely to have fewer fight-or-flight instincts than those born in the wild. Therefore, the animals that visitors observe at the zoo are not truly wild. They offer glimpses into the basic nature of a species — its physiology, its movement, its general appearance — but in the wild, that same animal would contend with variables entirely absent from a zoo environment. Predators represent one such variable, as does the continual threat of death from other natural causes. Foraging or hunting for food is another. Although some zoos provide flora and fauna that allow an animal a degree of self-sufficiency, zoo animals invariably must be fed by human beings. They are totally dependent on their human captors — a situation that does not exist in true wilderness.

Conclusion: Balancing Animal Integrity and Human Progress

Zoos are a problematic institution. They provide for the common good by preserving species and offering facilities for research. Zoos allow for human-animal encounters that could not take place otherwise, and they are becoming increasingly pleasant places for individual animals. Many zoos offer extensive spaces for wild animals to roam, even if those animals remain barred from hunting or being hunted. For species preservation, zoos continue to serve a vital purpose. Zoos may even inspire visitors to pursue a career in the zoological sciences or a related field of inquiry.

Individual animals are safer in zoos than they are in the wild, in the same way that a house cat is safer indoors than outside. Yet the animal is not in its natural environment and depends entirely on human beings for its basic survival. Animal encounters at zoos are therefore fundamentally unlike those in the wilderness, because the zoo animal behaves differently — and perhaps abnormally. In zoos that allow shows and trained performances, the abnormal behaviors of captive animals are especially pronounced.

Zoos echo a deep-rooted human instinct to assert dominance over nature. The act of capturing and keeping an animal has historically been a sign of species superiority, and keeping animals in captivity remains the ultimate expression of that impulse — a powerful symbol that all zoo proponents should reflect upon seriously. Zoo environments sacrifice the integrity of animal behavior and the natural relationship between animals and their environment for the goal of human progress. As long as that trade-off remains, the ethical debate surrounding zoos will endure.

Works Cited

Baratay, Eric, and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier. Zoo. Reaktion Books, 2004.

Kisling, Vernon N. Zoo and Aquarium History. CRC Press, 2000.

Robinson, Phillip T. Life at the Zoo. Columbia University Press, 2004.

Smith, Athena. "Zoo Ethics." The Collegian. 2000.