Zoo Animal Ethics: Welfare, Conservation, and Captivity

Introduction: The Ethics of Zoos in a Conservation Age

Human beings have kept animals in zoos for centuries, but only relatively recently have the ethical considerations of this practice been widely examined. At one extreme are individuals and organizations that see no problem keeping animals in zoos and other attractions, in keeping with the long history of animal confinement for human entertainment. At the other extreme are those arguing that animals should not be kept in zoos on ethical grounds. This dichotomy has been complicated in recent years, however, as zoos have increasingly become some of the most important centers of animal conservation, forcing a reevaluation of the ethical status of zoos with respect to the animals they contain and the potential benefits they provide.

Examining the history of zoos, their potential for harm, and the ways they might better consider animal welfare reveals that keeping animals in zoos is ethically sound so long as the welfare of those animals is maintained — and that it is actually essential for zoos to continue and even expand their conservation efforts. Only by treating the animals already in captivity better will these conservation efforts begin to benefit animal populations as a whole, both in zoos and in the wild.

A Brief History of Zoos

Before addressing the contemporary state of zoos with regard to animal welfare, it is useful to consider the history of zoos in general, because this historical context helps demonstrate how zoos have always represented a balance between conservation and entertainment, even as that balance has shifted dramatically in recent decades. The earliest recorded example of something resembling a zoo comes from wall sculptures found in the tomb "of Mereruka, son-in-law of Pharaoh Teti of the 6th Dynasty" of ancient Egypt, dating to roughly 2300 BC (Bostock 7). The sculptures depict "oryx, addax, and gazelle […] tethered next to their manger, and some are being fed by their attendants, others led by men holding their horns" (Bostock 7). That these sculptures represent something akin to a zoo — rather than a collection of animals raised for food — is evidenced by the fact that they served a "religious or magical role, as scenes for a returning ka — or spiritual double of somebody whose body had been mummified — to gaze upon" (Bostock 7).

Along with the aforementioned animals, Egyptians kept crocodiles, lions, and, by the time of the 18th Dynasty around 1400 BC, "monkeys, leopards, [and] a giraffe [….] were kept in […] the first acclimatisation garden — that is, a place where animals brought from abroad could adjust, prior to their being domesticated or released as additions to the local fauna" (Bostock 8). Thus, even at the earliest stages of zoo development, one can see the dynamic between entertainment and conservation: these animals served as entertainment for pharaohs and royalty in both the real world and the imagined afterlife, while also being collected out of scientific and ecological interest.

While zoos gradually developed over the course of history, beginning with those Egyptian gardens, they generally remained accessible only to the rich and powerful for most of human history. Over the last few centuries, however, with the establishment of national scientific societies and public endowments, zoos became increasingly accessible, to the point that "each year more than 130 million Americans visit zoos — more people than attend professional baseball, football, and hockey games combined" (Bostock 34; Hanson 2). More recently, "the exciting developments in zoos have been largely in America and Europe," and the majority of major zoos and conservancies are now in the United States — whether the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, DC, or the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park in California (Bostock 34). These institutions have been at the forefront of the debate over the ethics of keeping animals, as they have had to balance revenues and visitors against growing concerns about animal treatment.

The Animal Trade and Its Consequences

These concerns are very real. Although ecological interests have always played a part in the creation and maintenance of zoos, they have often taken a backseat to entertainment and economic interests. This is especially true because the rise of zoos produced a kind of side industry in which animal dealers could profit by importing animals from distant regions. These dealers sold animals to zoos but, failing that, could also sell to "circuses that were expanding their menageries and trained animal acts, private fanciers of animals and birds, the pet trade, and laboratories" (Hanson 73–74). Thus, even if zoos did their best to treat their purchased animals well — something that cannot be assumed — they contributed by their very nature to a much broader trade that had few qualms about mistreating animals so long as they arrived alive. Even when animals did not survive, dealers could still profit, as selling dead animals to "collectors of dead specimens [became] a lucrative business in its own right" (Hanson 73).

While most contemporary zoos obtain their animals through far more strictly regulated channels, the fact remains that for much of their history, zoos contributed to a global economy of animal trade that served to displace and destroy a vast number of animals.

The Shift Toward Animal Welfare

Zoos' participation in the largely unregulated animal trade began to decline over the latter half of the twentieth century, and one particular example illustrates this transition well. In 1961, a three-year-old lowland gorilla was "captured by an animal collector and […] delivered to the zoo in Atlanta, Georgia," where he would spend the next twenty-seven years "in an enclosure of concrete and heavy bars," never once stepping outside (Hanson 1). This changed in 1988, when the gorilla — now named Willie B. — was introduced into "the grass and trees of a new, naturalistic immersion exhibit at the renovated Zoo Atlanta" (Hanson 1). The new exhibit was the result of "field studies of gorillas, their behavior, and their natural environment — scientific knowledge unavailable to earlier generations," which became widely available to the public and precipitated a fundamental reimagining of how animals should be kept (Hanson 1).

This new understanding led zoos to transform their exhibits, and "the importance of preserving [animal] populations and habitats, an inconceivable problem at the time Willie B. was captured and brought to Atlanta, emerged as the overriding educational message" of zoo exhibits (Hanson 1–2). However, this shift in public perception does not mean that all ethical problems of keeping animals in zoos were resolved overnight. While notions of animal welfare became paramount, what actually constitutes welfare remains a hotly debated topic.

Most contemporary zoos "claim that having healthy, long-lived animals that reproduce is sufficient proof of good care," and the fact that Willie B. "soon adjusted to life in a social group, became a father, and evidently lived happily until his death in February 2000 at the age of forty-one" has been cited as justification for the ethical soundness of contemporary animal exhibits (Wickins-Drazilova 27; Hanson 1). However, there are significant problems with this view of animal welfare, largely because it considers welfare in unnecessarily reductive terms that can actually allow some zoos to exploit animals while claiming to act in their best interests.

For example, one of the most frequently cited benefits of contemporary zoos is their breeding programs, which ostensibly exist "to conserve species and train future generations of conservationists" (Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute 2012). While maintaining biological diversity and saving endangered species through captive breeding programs is undoubtedly positive, it has also been ripe for exploitation: "many zoos reproduced animals in large numbers in the name of protecting wild animal species but in fact they used them for dealing with other wild animal parks but not for protecting and expanding the species" (Cui & Jiang 137). Thus, even as "zoos stopped collecting animals from the wild and started captive breeding programs," these programs did not end the trade in animals so much as make it more exclusive, limiting participation to other zoos and wild animal parks (Hanson 1). Breeding programs may increase the number of individuals of certain endangered species, but this does not necessarily mean that those animals experienced a net increase in welfare.

Conclusion: Conservation, Captivity, and the Case for Better Zoos

These additional criteria for determining animal welfare are especially important because now more than ever, the conservatory function of zoos is paramount to the continued existence of biological diversity. Animals are disappearing at an exponential rate due to climate change and other direct human interventions, making well-managed zoos increasingly essential. The ethical question of keeping animals in zoos does not hinge so much on the act of captivity itself as on the treatment animals receive while captive — particularly because in some cases, the only way to ensure the continued survival of a species is to keep it in captivity, safe from the external forces that have decimated its population.

Therefore, so long as the welfare of every animal is genuinely attended to — according to a robust framework that includes criteria for identifying normal and abnormal behavior, ensuring freedom and choice, and respecting dignity — it is entirely acceptable, and in many cases essential, to keep animals in zoos. The ethical imperative is not to abolish zoos, but to hold them to higher and more comprehensive standards of care.

Works Cited

Bostock, Stephen. Zoos and Animal Rights: The Ethics of Keeping Animals. London: Routledge, 1993.

Cohn, Jeffrey P. "Do Elephants Belong in Zoos?" Bioscience 56.9 (2006): 714–7.

Cui, Bingbing, and Dezhong Jiang. "The Problems and Countermeasures of Animal Protection in Zoos — Take Shenyang Glacier Zoo for Example." International Journal of Biology 3.1 (2011): 136–9.

Hanson, Elizabeth. Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

United States. Smithsonian. Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institute, 2012. Print.

Wickins-Drazilova, Dita. "Zoo Animal Welfare." Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 19.1 (2006): 27–36.