We need to talk about zoos

For many children and teenagers, nothing fills them with more excitement and joy than the thought of going to a zoo. After all, who wouldn't want to see lions, tigers and bears up close? But as it turns out, zoos are actually not happy places for animals.

1. Zoochosis

The term zoochosis refers to a psychological condition in which animals kept in captivity begin to display highly repetitive behaviours such as pacing and circling, neck twisting, head bobbing, weaving and swaying, rocking back and forth, overgrooming and self-mutilation, as well as self-induced vomiting and playing with excrement.

The problem is, animals have evolved physically and behaviourally over thousands of years to become specifically adapted to their natural habitat. However, captivity is nothing like life in the wild. Animals in captivity have no freedom, no autonomy and no agency. Their environment is forced upon them, as are their social interactions and circumstances, and they have to continuously be in the presence of humans who may be loud, bang on their enclosures, point at them, or in the case of a tiger at London Zoo, have beer poured on them by a drunken visitor.

To top it all off, they have no means of escape. They are literally trapped in these enclosures their entire lives, and if they do ever escape, they are often shot and killed, as was the case for two chimpanzees who were shot at a Dutch zoo in November 2020.

The psychological impact of zoos is even acknowledged by the zoos themselves, where the use of antidepressant and antipsychotic medication is well documented. In fact, a survey of every zoo in the US and Canada that housed gorillas revealed that half admitted giving pharmaceutical drugs such as xanax, valium and prozac to the gorillas. The same kinds of drugs have also been given to other species of animals including bears, chimpanzees, zebras, wildebeest, orangutans and also penguins in the UK.

In the case of a female gorilla called Johari, who continuously resisted mating with the male the zoo had placed her with, the zoo drugged her with Prozac so that she became unable to fend off the male.

It’s also difficult to fully know the true scale of the problem. As Laurel Braitman, the author of a book called ‘Animal Madness’ puts it: “At every zoo where I spoke to someone, a psychopharmaceutical had been tried.”

Clearly, something is wrong here. Even if we just think about dogs, we view people who keep dogs locked up, or who don’t take them outside for walks to be dog abusers, yet we lock up wild animals and confine them for their entire lives but don’t consider that to be abuse.

Elephants are a notable example. In the wild they walk up to 50 miles a day, yet in zoos these social and cognitively complex animals are confined in enclosed spaces where they can suffer from arthritis and joint pain.

A study of African elephants showed that their average lifespan in European zoos is less than 17 years, which is less than half the average lifespan of African elephants who are killed by poachers in the wild. When the study looked at African elephants not affected by poaching, their average lifespan was 56 years in the wild, or more than three times as long as those kept in European zoos.

In other words, our enjoyment at zoos comes at the expense of the sanity and wellbeing of the animals confined within them.

2. The conservation narrative

Zoos tend to advertise their efforts to help the conservation of endangered species, but is that really true?

There have been some cases of reintroduction of wild species using zoo animals, as was the case with the Arabian Oryx and Przewalski’s horse. However, these examples are few and far between and don't justify the confinement of every other animal species in zoos. After all, the captivity of elephants, lions, dolphins and bears had no bearing on the success of the Arabian Oryx reintroduction.

And if we just consider that the majority of successful reintroduction programmes are carried out by government agencies and not zoos anyway, then it becomes clear that the successful reintroductions only required targeted breeding programmes for the critically endangered species that needed saving, not zoos.

It only goes downhill from here.

Back in 2014, the world looked on in horror as a perfectly healthy giraffe called Marius was shot to death at Copenhagen zoo. He wasn’t shot because he posed a threat to human life, he was shot because he was considered surplus. In other words, there were more giraffes than the zoo wanted. A few weeks later, the same zoo killed four lions, including two cubs, because they wanted to make space for a new male lion to use for breeding.

This practice of killing healthy animals is not specific to just Copenhagen Zoo. In fact, it is estimated that every year between 3,000 and 5,000 animals are killed by humans in European Zoos that are members of the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums (EAZA), the organisation that operates the European Endangered Species Program. For perspective, the EAZA only represents eight per cent of all zoos in Europe, so one can only imagine how many animals could be killed in the other 92 per cent.

It's not just healthy giraffes and lions who are killed - leopards, bears, tigers, hippos, lynx, elephants and many other species have all met a premature end even though they were healthy.

Why are they doing this if their intentions are to help with the conservation of endangered species?

This problem mainly arises because of the captive breeding programmes that take place in zoos. If an animal becomes too old to be used for breeding, doesn’t have desirable genes, or is taking up space for an animal that would be more profitable for the zoo, they are seen as disposable.

Not only are healthy animals being culled in zoos, but other healthy animals are being taken from the wild. In 2016, 18 African elephants were captured from the wild and brought to zoos in the US. Dan Ashe, who at that time was the director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which is the organisation that approved the capturing of the elephants, is now the president and CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), an organisation whose members include those who received the wild-caught elephants and state on their website that:

“Visitors can trust that AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums are working hard to protect wildlife and wild habitat for future generations to enjoy.”

How, exactly? By capturing animals from the wild and locking them up in zoos where they have lower life expectancies? Ironically, the reason why elephants continue to be captured from the wild is that the captive breeding of elephants is so notoriously difficult with low birthrates - and even when births are successful there are problems with high rates of stillbirths, calf rejection and infanticide, disturbing and highly unusual behaviour for elephants.

In fact, captive elephant populations are actually in decline. It’s estimated that for every new birth in captivity, two captive elephants die and that the infant mortality rate for elephants in zoos is nearly three times what it is in the wild. In other words, rather than wild elephants relying on captive elephants to sustain their population numbers, captive elephants are instead reliant on wild elephants to sustain their population numbers.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the organisation that tracks the conservation status of animals more comprehensively than any other, states that they do “not endorse the removal of African elephants from the wild for any captive use.”

And beyond all of this, it would be impossible to take many species of animals from zoos and place them into the wild because they would not be equipped to survive there. Plus, because of the decades of inbreeding, the animals can have the wrong genetic profiles and be diseased, meaning that mixing these captive animals with wild animals from the same species could weaken the genetics of the wild populations.

In the case of London Zoo, a study showed that two out of three lion cubs born there die because of the amount of inbreeding that has taken place. As one of the authors of the study puts it:

“There are situations where they’ve bred the grandfathers with the granddaughters. This shows that the concept that zoos are conservation tools is completely false. This research blows that idea apart.”

Furthermore, it’s estimated that 70-75 per cent of species kept at European zoos are not threatened in the wild, and only 5 per cent of mammals kept at the zoos are considered critically endangered, many of which are not able to be introduced into the wild anyway for the reasons just noted.

So what are the conservation benefits of keeping animals that can’t be introduced into the wild and the vast majority of which are not endangered in the first place?

Zoos would argue that they donate money to conservation efforts. However, the AZA states that they have 200 million visitors a year to their accredited zoos and donate $160 million to wildlife conservation. This means that 80 cents from every visitor is donated to wildlife conservation.

In the UK, the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) states that they welcome 35 million visitors to their zoos each year, with £24 million being spent on conservation per year, which means that less than 70 pence per visitor is spent on conservation.

This doesn’t take into consideration the money spent on food, drinks and merchandise from the zoo shops.

In other words, donating one dollar or one pound to a conservation organisation would contribute more funds to wildlife conservation than visiting a zoo and it doesn’t involve subjecting wild animals to a life in captivity and all the problems this causes.

When London Zoo spent £5.3 million on a new gorilla enclosure, the chief consultant to the UN Great Apes Survival Partnership said: "Five million pounds for three gorillas, when national parks are seeing that number killed every day for want of some Land Rovers and trained men and anti-poaching patrols. It must be very frustrating for the warden of a national park to see."

If we put this point further into perspective, Chester Zoo in the UK had an income of £47.4 million in 2019, which incidentally is about the same amount as the annual budget of the Kenya Wildlife Service. The Kenya Wildlife Service manages 27 National Parks, 32 National Reserves, and four National Sanctuaries, four Marine National Parks and six Marine National Reserves.

In just one of their national parks, there are 1,600 elephants and more than 100 lions, as well as more than 50 other mammal species. For reference, there are six elephants and three lions at Chester Zoo. Because of Kenya Wildlife Services anti-poaching work there has been a 12 per cent increase in the numbers of elephants, rhinos, lions, giraffes, zebras and antelopes since 2014.

Therefore, the income of just one of the more than 300 licenced zoos in the UK could fund the annual budget of the entire Kenya Wildlife Service.

Zoos also argue that they serve to educate the public and inspire people to care about the conservation of the animals they see in zoos. But people have never seen a humpback whale or a blue whale in captivity and yet feel no less strongly about their protection than the animals they see in zoos. When it comes to conservation education, nature documentaries can do that job without confining animals.

Paul Boyle, the senior vice president for conservation and education at the AZA said it best himself when he stated: “People leave their homes, and the intent is not to save animals in Africa - it’s to have a family outing.”

At the end of the day, zoos are not built with the animals’ best interests in mind. No matter how they spin it, the point of a zoo is to confine animals for human entertainment and profit. If we truly want to help animals while keeping their best interest in mind, we’re better off doing things like watching nature documentaries, supporting wildlife sanctuaries and conservation organisations, and visiting state and national parks.