To start, what is a zoo and why do they exist? Zoos, as the documentary states, were started when animals were seen as trophies and awards to show how wealthy or famous someone was. The animals were kept in terrible conditions and treated poorly. This was around the time when circuses heavily featured animals, so they were used for just animal storage basically.
In my opinion, zoos can never replicate the wild. You can try your hardest, but unless you put a giant fence around a lion's territory and let zebras in every time they needed to eat you wouldn't be doing it right. Zoos are not a natural thing. They have greatly improved, and I'm all for them if the animal is on the brink of extinction and could live in captivity well. Even in a nice big zoo, some animals just shouldn't be in captivity, mainly migratory animals. Most zoos I have been to, even the one I worked in, had problems, but also had some great parts too. I like zoos for the educational value that they bring to the table. Some day I would like to be an animal educator, but zoos are also good as it lets people see animals that they otherwise wouldn't. Granted, they might not be happy animals but the people may appreciate them more if they seem them in real life.
The documentary goes on to talk about stereotypic behaviours. I will cover what they are here. A stereotypic behaviour is a repeated action with no reason. These behaviours often start as a coping mechanism or a way to cope with boredom. The lady talking mentions self harming, yes animals can do that. It comes as a shock to many people that animals get sad and hurt themselves like they do. It isn't nice to know, or even see for that matter, but it does sadly happen in cases where the animals welfare is low. Another thing to note is that these stereotypic behaviours do not occur in the wild, only in captivity.
The professor makes a good point about us as people only now seeing these behaviours behind a barrier do not know when they started. He is right, these behaviours can be effected by the animal and how it was raised and they are often coping mechanisms. One thing he said though about them not being an indicator of poor health of the animal I disagree with. Oral stereotypies are caused by the animal not being able to forage, and activities such as pacing is a sign of a lack of space or the inability to exhibit natural behaviours. Organisation Zawec state that if the behaviours are performed for a prolonged period of time it will become part of the animal's natural pattern. This is a sad reality of the behaviours, even if an animal is moved to a much better environment they will continue the behaviour because they don't know what else to do. A prime example of this is Joey, he was in a terribly small space and had the stereotpy of spinning, even when moved to a much larger area with other animals he still spun because it had become ingrained in his mind to do so.
The documentary progresses to say that some animals shouldn't be in zoos, which I fully agree with. An example that they mention is Polar bears. Now I've done a post on them before, and I thoroughly agree that they should be left in the wild. Polar bears are migratory animals, they spend so many months of the year searching for food near coasts and in the ocean. To keep them in a zoo, where they might have one millionth of the area they roam. It's just cruel to keep them in an area where they can't travel.
Thankfully, as the documentary states, the UK has decent to good zoos, but this is not the case for the rest of the world.
That's all I'm going to cover in this post, but I recomend that you watch it in your own time. Comment your thoughts on it down below. See you next time.
-Dari
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