People always say that animals are our friends; that is why we’d like to go to zoos to see those animals. But are the animals happy about being locked in cages and being seen by people everyday? Or do they want to live in the environments that they are supposed to live? Of course we are never able to know what an animal thinks, but I know one thing for sure, I don’t want to live in a cage and to be showed to people everyday. Keeping animals in the zoos stops them from being who they really are. Just the other day, I read an article online that was about something shouldn’t have happened. After a day of snowing, the zoo was covered by heavy snow and it looked white and beautiful. An African lion couple was enjoying their afternoon in their really small territory because they were being kept in a zoo instead of living in a wild space where they belonged to.
Suddenly a lot of snow balls started to fly to them and they had no idea about what just happened. It turned out it was because those tourists wanted to “have fun” by throwing snow balls to the lions. They wanted to see their reaction, because obviously the tourists found it was “interesting”. Those African lions who were supposed to be wild had to stay in a very little corner so that they could keep themselves from getting hurt. They couldn’t do anything but staring at those tourists angrily. The minute an animal gets locked up, it loses its rights of living comfortably; and that’s the reason why the horrible thing would have happened to those African lions.
The Essay on Arguments for and Against Keeping Animals in Zoos
Zооs аrguе thаt thеy sаvе еndаngеrеd spеciеs аnd еducаtе thе public, but аnimаl rights аctivists bеliеvе thе cоsts оutwеigh thе bеnеfits, аnd the viоlatiоn оf thе right оf thе individuаl аnimаls is unjustifiаblе. Rоаdsidе zооs, pеtting zооs, аnd smаllеr аnimаl еxhibitоrs tеnd tо kееp thе аnimаls in smаllеr pеns оr cаgеs. Sоmеtimеs, bаrrеn cоncrеtе аnd mеtal bаrs is аll а tigеr оr bеаr will knоw ...
Animals in captivity suffer from stress, boredom and confinement. The baby animals would get sold or traded to other zoos for visitors and money, so that the intergenerational bonds are broken. For those animals in captivity, a zoo is like a prison to them, in which they don’t have their basic rights, they’d lose their instincts. Animals belong to nature; keeping them in zoos is not the right way of saving them, even the endangered ones. So next time when you go to visit a zoo, ask yourself a question: am I looking at a precious animal or am I looking at a prisoner.
Works Cited
Lin, Doris. “Arguments For and Against Zoos.” About.com. N.p.. Web. 11 Jan 2013. .
