Please allow me to restate my last comment: I can see something wrong with shoving an electrode into a cat’s brain – but I believe the knowledge we gain and pass to our children is worth this sacrifice.
Fair enough.
OTOH, I believe that the knowledge and understanding we gain and pass on to my child is worth the confinement of animals in zoos.
Err, our children, that is, rather than just my child.
Although I admit some bias toward the anderling. 
Andros, what are we learning from zoos that couldn’t be learned elsewhere?
I’ve read significant support for zoos in this thread, but very little for circuses (circii?).
Are you opposed to society permiting humans in circuses?
Actually , I think circuses (well run ones) provide a functional life for an animal. That is preferable to a useless existance in a zoo as far as the animal is concerned.
After all, does one presume that an inmate of a prison is better off than a trapeze artist under the big top?
{sigh} I had a nice lengthy post almost finished and a misplaced key stroke killed it. I could cry. Or perhaps this is my chance to be more succinct.
jharding writes:
And does this mean we no longer allow the animals currently in captivity to reproduce? While birth control is feasible for some animals, others are in situations where it’s not. Do we confine them further just to be safe (i.e. in single-sex enclosures)?
I don’t share your confidence. Admittedly, it’s very hard to say because of the huge variability in factors such as natural behaviors between different animals. And are you talking about all animals or just mammals? And how about the fact that some might return to their enclosures given the chance? Is this preference or just habituation or natural tendency to return to a familiar setting that smell/feels/looks like “home”? And how much does it really matter? Can you be sure that the exodus in the first place is not a result of being startled or curiousity?
A better assessment of how “comfortable” a given animal is with confinement is stress, which is linked to health & behavior (eating, sleeping, reproduction). Unquestionably, some animals do exhibit stress in captivity, but in many cases that may actually be due to in appropriate environmental conditions, inappropriate enclosure mates, or inadequate diet. Most zoos and aquariums these days (that can afford to) aim to make enclosures that are as realistic as possible. These provide benefits both for visitors and animals, and in many cases husbandry staff observe natural breeding behavior and successful reproduction. Reproduction is one of the most labor-intensive activities animals undertake. Suboptimal conditions often result in failure to breed or failure to successfully give birth to and rear offspring. I think the success of a given institutions’ collection animals to reproduce (where birth control or other means of preventing such are not in use) and otherwise maintain health are a more accurate and achievable way to assess whether an animal is “happy” with its situation.
Re: whether liberty is desireable or beneficial to animals versus captivity, you said:
Well, right off the bat you’re anthropomorphizing again and despite your disclaimer I DO think that’s an unfounded assumption to make. And even if we accept humans as analogous to animals re: the desire for freedom versus safety, I would have to pose the counter example that our very own society and the continued debate on this very message board over things like gun control, governmental responses to the threat of terrorism, school regulations established to address the possibility of violence, etc. show that there are a significant number of people quite willing to exchange liberties for the guarantee of increased safety. And count me in as one of the people who can’t quite figure out the attraction of extreme sports and flirting with danger just because one can. I LIKE being safe. And well-fed.
Thanks for your very balanced response. I get the impression that you fall somewhere in the middle on this debate and just like to play devil’s advocate.
Meanwhile, our questing OP, cainxinth commented:
Not necessarily. It’s largely because being given food at regular intervals means that they don’t have to scrounge for it. Most of the day to day activity of wild animals involves finding food. When they don’t have to look for it they can’t exactly take up a hobby. So they tend to develop unusual behavior to fill up time. Basically, they’re bored. But that doesn’t mean other things can’t be found for them to do. This is a well-recognized problem that a lot is being done to address. In fact, that’s why I directed you to the Shape of Enrichment website in the first place. The goal of animal enrichment is to provide animals with an opportunity to express their natural behaviors, most of which have to do with seeking for food. Enrichment programs for primates are extremely well-developed; in fact, they’re required by the USDA. They may soon be for marine mammals as well. The more complex a wild-animals natural behavior, the more likely they are to develop what are called “stereotypic” behaviors, which is why enrichment programs generally tend to be taylored for primates and carnivores before other mammals and lower vertebrates. Sometimes enrichment devices may look completely unnatural (you should see some of the “toys” we build during our enrichment-device building days!) but be perfectly functional. In other situations, the drive to producing more-realistic habitats also serves a role in providing enrichment for the exhibit animals. As I said before, there’s a lot more to most modern zoos and aquariums than animals in concrete and steel cages, and an increased quality of life for the animals is often the result.
Of course not, because what you term “symptoms of stress” are, as I stated above, actually signs of boredom. Animals in the wild have more complicated symptoms of stress; complicated primarily because it’s very important for a wild animal’s survival that it NOT show any signs of weakness. Prey animals become targets when they look injured; predators tend to get their food or territories stolen. Leaf through some National Geographic articles and I guarantee that you’ll run across some pretty scruffy looking wild critters (and that’s not just because they’re not reguarly groomed). In fact, in this month’s issue there’s an article about musk oxen that shows two pictures of cute little calves (4 animals in all). In the text it clearly states that all four were found dead shortly after the photos were taken because they’d gotten seperated from the herd. There are also pictures of some very scarred up lions and some angry letters to the editor regarding a previous issue where an orphaned animal was photographed and (again) turned up dead. Wild animal’s lives are often short and frequently violent. They fall victim not only to their natural predators but also to untreated disease, uncorrected injuries, vagaries of weather, and (unfortunately) clumsy or intentionally malicious humans. Whether or not you think this still qualifies as a better quality of life than being confined but otherwise treated as well as possible (including receiving better health care than some Americans and most citizens of the developing world) is up to you.
{WAAAHHHH!}
[hijack] You know, I can’t understand why getting my name right is so difficult. It’s a simple name and an increasingly common spelling. Didn’t my nickname give you a hint?[/hijack]
Actually, a significant portion of my duties is that of a glorified secretary, so I could conceivably find work anywhere if my position was terminated. So that’s not really my concern. What is my concern is providing you with some info from the other side of the equation, to balance the anti-zoo cites and accompanying rhetoric you quoted. Though I don’t agree with the position of those who wish to terminate zoos I do feel that it’s important, in the grand scheme of things, for their critiques to be aired. If it wasn’t for the voices of those concerned with animal rights, I don’t think we would have come as far as we have from the days of all concrete and steel and unregulated research. Hearing the concerns of the critics brings to light things that can be addressed and rectified and leads to an overall improvement in the quality of life for captive animals. And I think even those strongly opposed to captivity of wild animals would agree that this is a good thing.
None of which have animals. I don’t think you really grasp the impact actually seeing, hearing, smelling, and sometimes even touching a real, live animal can have on the level of interest and investment someone has on the survival of its species. It’s the very proximity and reality of the animal right in front of you that really drives home the message. And I also don’t think you really appreciate the impact that several hundred years of having zoos in the society has had on how we as a population feel about animals that live far away. I think it’s hard to appreciate how seeing an elephant during a school trip to the zoo as a child can change attitudes about animals. There are people living in urban areas whose entire experience of animals would otherwise be limited to domestic pets, feral pigeons, and rats but because their school or their child’s school had a field trip to a zoo have had the opportunity to see lions, tigers, alligators, sharks, emus, koalas, polar bears, etc. NOTHING can substitute for actually seeing an animal. To give a somewhat related example for me, personally…just reading that passenger pigeons are now extinct has little emotional impact to me. I’ve never seen a live passenger pigeon, after all. But when I go to the Museum of Natural History in DC and see the stuffed remains of Martha (the last of her species) next to a black plaque with white lettering telling of where and when she died and concluding with the stark word EXTINCT, it makes me cry. How much more might I care if I’d actually had the chance to see her alive?
But such would necessarily involve having captive animals. Where would the $$ come from? As I believe I’ve said, all these activities when done by zoos are done with $$ generated by people coming to gawk at animals. Or donated by people who grew up going to zoos. Or by conservation groups consisting of people who grew up going to zoos. If the animals have to be in captivity anyway, why not let people look at them since there may very well be the benefit of increasing public awareness about animals?
Oh, and I bolded veterinary training because I’m extremely curious to know where else you’d think that would happen. Vet school students do externships at those zoos and aquariums that offer them precisely because those are some of the only places to go for that training.
grienspace asked:
I didn’t address this topic because it’s not really one I have a lot of information about. I personally don’t have a problem with circuses, providing they take care of their animals well. As you say, training of animals actually gives them something to do and trained animals often seem to be enriched by it (a good example being dogs).
MicheLe
I can sympathize–the same thing happened with my previous response. At this risk of being directed to the Pit, I’ll just add, “I hate this new messageboard!!!” We now return you to our regularly scheduled…
Again, answering for Jamieson, I think he would suggest that for those animals whose return to the wild would kill them in quick measure, he would encourage birth control. What would he suggest for those animals who cannot be released into the wild and who will not accept birth control measures? I’m not sure, but I’m guessing he might be willing to accept some ‘collateral loses’ with individual animals if the ‘greater good’ is served by eliminating zoos entirely. Disclaimer: I was speaking again for Jamieson, these views are not my own.
Jamieson is a utilitarian (no doubt how this essay ended up in a book edited by Peter Singer, himself a very vocal advocate for animal liberation based on a utilitarian ethical system). As a utilitarian, Jamieson and Singer and others constantly run the risk of allowing for individual tragedies if the outcome is one of maximized happiness/pleasure/good.
In reference to animals expressing a preference for freedom over captivity…
All valid points. I’m sure there would be a host of confounding factors that might make any clear conclusion (liberty or captivity) subject to careful review. As such, my Nobel Prize winning research study will have to be fine-tuned a bit more before I go begging for funding. 
In reference to ‘higher’ animals (most mammals) versus all other critters. My sense is that those animals would most recognize the phenomenon of being captive (most mammals) would be those who would opt for liberty as a choice. Note, I still do not think this indicates anthropomorphizing. To me this just speaks to our interpreting animal behavior for what it certainly appears to be.
Agreed, however there seems to be good evidence that zoos generally lower the fecundity of most of their critters, meaning that they reproduce with fewer offspring or at longer than normal intervals than their wild counterparts. Of course one could argue that for every 10 of ‘X’ born in the wild only 3 will reach adulthood or reproductive age themselves. While during that same time span only 5 of ‘X’ are born in captivity yet 4 of those will reach adulthood or reproductive age. So which is better? My personal position is that reproductive efficiency is another poor justification just as longevity is. I’d be willing to ease up on my position here were it in reference to endangered or threatened species–at this point it does boil down to a numbers game.
I think we’ve drawn our ‘anthropomorphizing’ line in two different places in the sand. In reference to basic drives, hunger, thirst, sex, etc. I don’t see any problem with comparing humans and non-humans. I have included into my ‘basic drives’ bag of tricks this thing I’ll call the drive for liberty (maybe self-determination or autotelocity). I do not think that all animals have this, although I do think that all humans (notwithstanding some form of impairment) have it. I also think many mammals have this as well. This drive like any drive has degrees that vary across individuals and circumstances. Thus, when one is hungry, one may be either peckish, starving or somewhere in between. When one is thirsty one may be either a little dry, positively parched or somewhere in between. I see the same thing with liberty. One may feel mildly restricted, completely lacking in any self-determination, or somewhere in between. So recognizing that there are degrees and differences across individuals and situations wouldn’t infer that the drive is non-existent if it isn’t uniformly present.
No argument that through agreeing to live in societies we’ve negotiated trade-offs or exchanges of our liberties for safety/security. However, neither are we willing to eliminate all liberty for total safety/security. I’m not even sure that such a perfect, negative relationship exists. Nonetheless, I think most would agree that we all have needs/drives (whatever) related to freedom or liberty. My position is that I believe most mammals possess these same drives too. And the fundamental notion of enclosure or captivity is expressly counter to freedom or liberty that even a number of non-human animals would recognize.
My pleasure, I’ve enjoyed our discourse greatly! While I wouldn’t put myself in Jamieson’s camp on a number of things. I do share his belief that the money and effort devoted to maintaining zoos would be better served if directed towards other conservation causes, such as large-scale habitat protection. A realistic goal? Probably not, but a guy can dream can’t he.
I’d like to addend on a personal experience or two to this. First of all it was certainly zoos and aquariums that stimulated my own interests in Natural History at an early age and it specifically was behind the scenes educational programs for young children that had a fairly profound effect.
But more recently I noticed something interesting when I was at the Knowland Park Zoo in Oakland, CA ( a small, but superior instituition overall IMHO, at least in recent years and despite some publicized elephant difficulties ) with my two youngest nieces. The older is from a far more restricted situation economically. Not really deprived, but both her parents work multiple low-paying jobs to support her and her siblings and they don’t have either the time or the assets to take her to the zoo regularly. She is from an urban environment and her fear and wariness of animals was quite apparent. This was particularly marked in the petting zoo section, which not only scared the bejesus out of her, but where it became apparent that she wasn’t aware of the proper way to interact with the animals ( when she wasn’t frightened, she moved to fast and wasn’t respectful of the animals ).
The younger of the two, who goes to the zoo regularly, was far more confident and respectful, despite being almost a year younger. Happy and fascinated with the animals and far more interested in them than the small section of children’s rides that really captured the imagination of the older.
I think that zoos, quite aside from their status as breeders and conservators of a handful of charismatic megavertebrates ( important work, mind you, however limited it may be ), serve a possibly vital function as a connection and chance for emotional maturation for inner city kids, that other tools ( such as the internet ) just can’t match. With increasing urbanization, I think that despite some of the more distasteful elements of zoos, they are an increasingly necessary evil. By contrast, if this question had come up 100 years ago when most people lived in rural/agricultural settings and zoos were just a place to gawk at oddities, I’d be all for banning them.
But it’s important for children to learn to interact with other living things ( I’m pro-pet as well ). And instilling a sense of conservation in young minds isn’t such a bad idea, either.
Now that said many of the “zoos” in this country, especially the roadside variety, are shitholes. And even the good ones have flaws. But superior instituitions ( I’ll throw out the Monterey Bay Aquarium as an example ) should be supported, both for their conservation and educational work. And the bad or just marginal ones should be encouraged to reform ( or close ).
- Tamerlane
**Michelllle **and Tamerlane addressed this pretty well.
But I’ll boil it down. What do we learn?
How animals smell.
How they move.
How big they are.
How they eat.
How real they are.
You don’t get that from a computer screen or a nature show. There is a realization of reality one can only get from actually watching an animal in the flesh. It’s why I’ve been a member of the WWF for fifteen tears.
Michele, I apologize for misspelling your name, and appreciate your interest in this subject even if it is quite opposed to my own. I always prefer to speak to someone who agrees with nothing I say rather than someone who agrees with everything. People who unfailingly agree usually do so because they have no opinions of their own. (or they’re too nice for their own good)
But, despite the advancements of the past few decades and the new enrichment programs the concrete and steel cages as well as bored and stressed animals which exhibit sad behavioral aberrations still exist. And, can zoos ever hope to truly replicate a natural environment? It seems to me that to do so you would have to let the animals live and hunt together.
This is truly the point of departure in this debate. If I understand correctly, you believe that a living creature would prefer or at least be impartial about an unnaturally safe and stable existence as opposed to living amongst the perils of the wild. In the end, I suppose it is a matter of opinion, but I cannot believe a magnificent creature like a tiger would choose a cage, albeit a very nice cage, enrichment activities and toys, and a three square meals to his natural, dangerous environment. Mother nature is violent, it is deadly, and it has always been that way; animals have an instinctive understanding that they are living in a world where it is kill or be killed, and may the best tiger win. I mean no offense, but perhaps it is you who is anthropomorphizing animals by assuming they would desire better living conditions that the wild. Human left the trees to build cities, not ape.
Vets: I have no beef (no pun intended) with holding animals captive for educative purposes. If there were no zoos, I wouldn’t have a problem with Veterinary Schools keeping animals for their students to study. As for the money, it would come from tuition, fund raising, government subsidies, donations, etc. Animals are expensive to acquire and care for, so if a school doesn’t have x animal, they can take a field trip to one that does. Also, there are only so many animals that can be kept as pets, would a veterinary school even need a tiger or elephant? And for those individuals who wish to study wild animals, they can do so in the wild.
Circuses: Its bad enough that we pull animals from the wild, confine them in our cities, and display them to the public, but at the very least it offers some educational as well as experiential opportunities. Circuses however, serve no purpose beyond entertainment. Michele, I cant understand how you can feel so deeply over the premature extinction of species and feel no compassion whatsoever towards a living creature that was ripped from its family, and forced to travel the world performing tricks, usually prodded into doing so via whip, electric prod, sedatives, and treats. Furthermore, I do not buy the argument that they prefer a functional life, wild animals already have a function in life; it’s called propagation of the species. I would also argue that dogs are not a good analogy, they are a domesticated species, they have been bred over thousands of years to be human companions, elephants, bears and other circus animals have not.
The only convincing justification I’ve heard so far as to why zoos should exist at all is that its is healthy and beneficial for society to experience animals up close and personal. That it shows people a world they might otherwise never come into contact with, and creates a bond with animals, strengthening the cause of conservation. Its hard for me to debate this, I’m an animal lover, and before I came to view zoos in the light I now do, I used to delight in seeing beautiful creatures like koalas and tigers in the flesh. But, I can no longer let the fact that this creature is little more than a prisoner relegated to a sham of its former life allow me to enjoy its company. However, it seems I’m in the minority in this opinion. So let me really take this thread to the limits of reason and pose a purely hypothetical question: If computer technology (the internet, VR, etc.) could one day enable realistic representations of animals, even their odor and texture, would you be opposed to phasing out zoos in a humane and sensible manner?
If you’re going this way, there’s a popular activity that you should want to ban : horse riding. We"re training horses to do many unnatural things, and purely for our amusement, since riding horses is seldom necessary nowadays.
Actually, I’m wondering if owning a pet wouldn’t fall in the same category. Basically, they’re captive and we own them for our entertainment.
And frankly, concerning zoos : being worried by the moral issue of keeping an extremely tiny number of animals in captivity while we’re slaughtering (and keeping in captivity before) millions of other animals for our food seems rather silly to me.
cainxinth wrote:
And what, exactly, did dissecting that grasshopper or the pigeon teach you about human anatomy? Personally, knowing my surgeon had dissected 10,000 frogs wouldn’t make me too comfortable if s/he hadn’t done work on people before. That’s what TEACHING HOSPITALS are for - so that prospective surgeons can first watch, then assist, then carry out operations.
I’m also interested in how a “person wishing to enter a medical career” benefits from direct observation of evolutionary changes in different species? I suppose you could recommend that your patient go home and acquire a particular characteristic and then pass it on to his or children. That is, if Lamarckian notions of the inheritance of acquired characteristics hadn’t been overturned more than a century ago.
And Dr. One-L wrote:
And assuming that they don’t is simple arrogance. And as more than one person has pointed out, arguing that animals have it better in zoos because they get fed etc. is anthropomorphism at is most reductionist and self-serving.
And i’m always rather amused by those who seek to defend zoos by pointing to the fact that previously incarcerated animals cannot easily adapt to the wild. Dr. One-L used the example of Keiko/Willy. So, the logic of this argument is that because an animal that humans have held in captivity is ill-prepared to live in the wild, we are justified in holding animals in captivity.
Lets try this circular logic with a different set of actors. Say i have a child and keep him locked in a cellar for his whole life, never seeing daylight and totally dependent on me for everything (culture reference - anyone seen the Australian movie Bad Boy Bubby?). If i then let that person out at age 20, does the fact that he cannot function in the outside world serve as a reasonable excuse to mete out the same treatment to other people?
Even if we leave the analogies to the animal kingdom, we can turn the case around. So, when wild animals are captured for zoos (as still occurs with some species), surely the fact that they fight against their capture and have trouble adapting to life in captivity means that they should be left in the wild? This position is just as tenable as the “trouble readjusting to the wild” school of zoo defence.
Note that i have not even had to advance my own position on the issue of animal dissection and animal captivity. The “logic” of some of the defenders of these practices can sometimes be so patently illogical that one doesn’t even need to assert a contrary position.
Having said that, i do believe that some zoos serve a useful purpose, and that their educational function has been underestimated by some people on this board. I also, for reasons that aren’t quite clear even to me, draw a line between zoos and aquaria. The latter never seem as bad to me, except where they have large ocean mammals in relatively small quarters (the Vancouver aquarium’s Orcas come to mind). I realise that there there is a certain “speciesism” to my distinction, and i would be hard-pressed to defend it. But i thought that it was better to acknowledge my prejudices and inconsistencies, rather than to imply that i don’t have any, as some people on this board seem to do.
A final note. On Friday night i was at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, where Dr. One-L works. The aquarium has cheap admission on Friday nights (it’s an absolutely outrageous $16 normally), and i think the most distressed creature in the building was me, with all the damned children running around and screaming their heads off and pushing their way beteen people to get at the displays. I almost threw a couple of ankle-biters into the shark tank. So much for my “kind to animals” philosophy.
Keeping with my earlier distinction, I am not opposed to the use of domesticated animals for entertainment purposes.
The evolution of the respiratory, circulatory, nervous, musculoskeletal, and virtually every other system that makes up your body can be traced back through our ancestors. Among vertebrates there is a clearly observable path of increasing complexity. Studying and dissecting examples of Agnatha, Chondricthys, Osteichthys, Amphibia, Reptillia, Aves, Mammalia in that order offers insight and familiarity into our own bodies. Speaking personally, comparative anatomy was a necessary preparation for my first (and only) dissection of a human cadaver; I think much of the medical community would agree (any SDMB MDs have an opinion?). And, I never recommended animal dissection as a substitute for all other medical schooling; that was your assumption.
I might add that a thorough understanding of Comparative Anatomy is often essential in fields like Paleontology, Biophysics, and Evolutionary Biology.
I can’t personally speak to its utility in medical school, but maybe Qadgop or some of our other MD’s can.
- Tamerlane
Tamerlane wrote:
I certainly wouldn’t dispute that comparative anatomy must be useful in a variety of different fields. That seems only a matter of common sense.
I suppose i would ask whether the actual dissection of a large variety of species (as described by cainxinth) is necessary to achieve such an understanding? While i may not be able to perform surgery simply by spending hours studying Gray’s Anatomy, i will still be able to develop a pretty thorough understanding of the arrangement of the human body. Similarly with animals, surely such a level of theoretical understanding doesn’t require each individual to wield the scalpel.
In a different context, some years ago a friend of mine who is a psychologist refused to do the experiments on rats that were routinely required of her freshman psychology class in college. There were over 1,000 freshmen in the course, and each person was given a rat with which to experiment. The same experiments were done by every freshman class year after year, and she told the professors that surely so many tests had produced a set of results consistent enough to act as a teaching platform without sacrificing another thousand animals or so every year. And that if these experiments hadn’t produced relevant results, then maybe the tests weren’t that useful anyway. The professors conceded her point, and let her read previous studies instead, although they didn’t reduce the practice in general.
An interesting aspect of dissection and vivisection is the inconsistencies with which such practices are assigned relevance for an understanding of humans. It seems that when a test on a bunch of rats produces findings that are contrary to those desired by, for example, a drug company, we are told that the animal findings are not necessarily relevant for people. Yet when the results conform to the research sponsor’s financial needs, the correlation between humans and animals is forcefully asserted. Now, i’m sure there are cases when each contention is perfectly valid, but the relative predictability with which they conform to economic issues at least raises cause for concern.