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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Counter point:
Humans are the most effective predators ever. If we don't actively protect all "large" animals, we will just murder them all with our lifestyle. By accident.
Now, how do we get people to care about all these wonderful creatures?
My answer is that we make sure that all humans respect and expect to care for animals. That means that children need to see these animals.
To me, that's a zoo. Yes, that's enslaving the animals, but seeing an elephant makes me much more likely to give two shits about keeping it alive.
The problem with this attitude is my kids already love elephants and hate zoos.
My daughter cried the first time she saw an elephant at the zoo, and asked me why they were all in cages.
She called it an animal prison and I kinda agree.
The younger generation gets plenty of world information from the internet now, they don’t seem to need or like the idea of zoos like we did growing up, before you could just see any animal any time you wanted with a pocket computer.
How big was the zoo?
I grew up near a zoo that's pretty big and tends to take really good care of the animals. Some exhibits, especially those in the newer Africa section, don't even have any obvious fences because the cages were designed with natural walls. The result was that while they had some older exhibits that felt like jails, those were being phased out in favor of the more natural ones.
When I got older I was surprised to find out that exhibits like that weren't normal. It wasn't normal for the tigers to have 2-3 acres of land, with visitors viewing the tigers from bridges. It wasn't normal for the ostriches, elephants, zebras and giraffes to share a massive exhibit covering a quarter of the park.
What was normal, was putting them in tiny boxes.
What the fuck?
However, it is because of my experiences growing up that I believe zoos can be ethically created and maintained. The issue is that they need a lot of space and funding to do so, which they rarely get.
Wild tigers have a territory of ~20km² for females and over 60km² for males. How is giving them 2-3 acres of land not cruelty?
You're applying human standards to animals, to you having 2 acres on your own is impressive, to them it's a prison.
They need that much land in the wild because they're apex predators, and that's the amount of land necessary to support enough wildlife to feed them continuously. Not because anything less than that is confinement to them.
Zoos do more than just hold animals. They are vital in the preservation and recovery of many animals.
Sure. But that's your and your kid's privileged experience. My child has the same privilege.
The whole of humanity needs that same experience.