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Ethics and Morality
It's Still Not Happening at the Zoo: Sharp Divisions Remain
At a recent meeting the zoo director who killed giraffe Marius is called a hero
Posted May 9, 2017
For some, keeping animals in cages is business as usual and not worth debating
Many people are interested in zoos and the highly compromised and deprived lives of their residents, individuals whom Jessica Pierce and I call "zooed animals" in our book The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age. At a recent international meeting held at the Detroit Zoo called Zoos and Aquariums as Welfare Centres: Ethical Dimensions and Global Commitment that brought together people with radically different views on zoos, there were many interesting and wide-ranging discussions about a good number of issues. However, it was clear that sharp divisions still remain on the way to reforming zoos to becoming more suitable homes for their residents and phasing them out as we now know them. The description for the meeting reads as follows:
The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) and the Detroit Zoological Society’s Center for Zoo Animal Welfare (CZAW) are convening leaders in the fields of animal welfare and conservation to join us for the CZAW’s fourth International Animal Welfare Symposium.
Zoos and aquariums play important roles in the conservation of species. They are also centres of animal welfare that focus on individuals, not just species. Within a complex framework that includes and balances sometimes conflicting priorities for individuals (welfare) and for populations (conservation), there is a need for solid science, strong guiding principles and policy, and a clear ethical foundation.
The invitation-only three-day symposium will include presentations and facilitated discussion focusing on processes to safeguard the well-being of animals and fundamental animal welfare policy for zoos and aquariums developed to ensure all animals are able to thrive. Specific topics will include animal welfare-based accreditation, the use of animals in visitor interactions and welfare aspects of population management.
This symposium is targeted at leaders in all regionally and internationally accredited zoos and aquariums, and experts (including academics) in animal care, animal welfare, animal ethics, animal law, wildlife conservation and animal protection. The goal is to create a strong worldwide foundation based on values and principles that further advances the fields of zoo and aquarium animal welfare (and conservation) science and policy.
I was very pleased to be at the meeting and I learned a lot. However, one of the main questions, namely, "Should animals be in zoos in the first place?" was pretty much ignored except by a few people. Many people who spoke simply assumed that it was perfectly okay to keep animals in cages for any number of reasons, and some were rather overt in their criticisms of people who spoke about the loss of freedoms by zooed animals and how keeping animals captive raised some very basic and important ethical questions that demand careful scrutiny. In a few discussions I heard something like, "Well, we all assume it's all right to keep animals in cages, so let's get on with figuring out what sorts of reforms are needed." We didn't all assume this at all.
Along these lines, it's interesting to note that as of today, in an on-going survey centering on the question "Should we keep animals in zoos?" 66% of respondents say "no" and 34% say "yes."1 And, zoos have lost favor with a quarter of Americans. All in all, as Dr. Lori Marino put it in an email to me, the main message became, “How can zoos tell people about all the good things we do?”
One of the themes centered on how to reform zoos, yet there was some apparent resistance to suggestions that were offered that included turning zoos into sanctuaries for rescued animals who need to be rehabilitated. In my talk I discussed some general ideas about what zoos do and how they patronize their residents. I talked about some "poster individuals" including Marius, a young and healthy giraffe who was killed at the Copenhagen Zoo because he didn't fit into the zoo's breeding program, Harambe the gorilla who was killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a youngster fell into his cage, Tillikum a SeaWorld Orca who lived a horrific life in captivity, Packy, an elderly elephant who was killed at the Oregon Zoo, and Szenja, a polar bear at SeaWorld who died shortly after Snowflake, her friend of 20 years, was shipped to the Pittsburgh Zoo to make more polar bears who will live out their lives in cages. Szenja likely died of a broken heart.
I also discussed a few aspirational reforms that I would like to see put into action. These included *stopping captive breeding, *putting an end to shipping animals around as breeding machines (playing "musical animals"), *stopping killing otherwise healthy animals who won't be able to make contributions to a zoo's breeding program (these individuals are "zoothanized" not euthanized; please also see "Killing Healthy Animals in Zoos: 'Zoothanasia' is a Reality"), *refraining from calling zooed animals "ambassadors" for their species, *coming to terms with what zoos actually do in the fields of education and conservation, *focusing on individual animals, and *turning zoos into sanctuaries for rescued animals. Some zoos already are taking in rescued individuals. Frankly, some of these suggestions didn't go over very well with some people representing zoos. While some zoo advocates were willing to discuss them with me and with others, others simply blew them off as if they were delusional and utterly irrelevant. Their attitude was that is was perfectly okay to keep animals in cages and that there was no need for further discussion.
Another topic that came up a few times was that human behavior in terms of caring for other animals hasn't caught up with the science of what we know about the cognitive and emotional lives of zooed (and many other) animals. In our book, Jessica Pierce and I call this the "knowledge translation gap," and it's true we know a lot more about what other animals want and need and this information isn't used on their behalf.
However, we've known for a long, long time that other animals have very rich and deep emotional lives -- they are sentient beings -- and that they suffer deeply when their freedoms are compromised and they are deprived of being able to express themselves and to make choices about how they want to live. They've lost agency, their autonomy and the ability to make choices and to control their lives. This will be the same for animals who live in Zootopia, a novel zoo that's been proposed in Denmark. Zootopia has been described as "a radical reboot of the tired zoo concept: a nearly wall-less and cage-less landscape in which the animals roam relatively freely in multispecies habitats." Nonetheless, the individuals who live in Zootopia will be caged, they still will have compromised lives, and they will live managed lives as do animals in other zoos.
Reform also means replacing the science of animal welfare with the science of animal well-being in which the lives of all individuals matter. Animal welfare patronizes other animals "in the name of humans" and allows for all sorts of abuse and suffering. Welfarism puts human needs first and tries to accommodate animals within the "human needs first" network framework. Focusing on zoos, in our book The Animals' Agenda, Jessica Pierce and I write (page 116):
The muddled logic of welfarism is on perfect display here, as the zoo seeks to justify killing four healthy lions in order to make room for one healthy lion. Although we want animals to behave in “naturalistic” ways, sometimes this natural behavior is bothersome and gets in the way of our primary agenda: to create an exhibit that visitors will pay to enjoy. The killing of the two elderly and two young lions was “necessary.” Welfarism in the zoo setting will all too often put the zoo first, and the animals second, making the claim that “zoos are for animals” continue to ring hollow.
The science of animal well-being seeks to flip the priorities: individual animals must come first. In all likelihood, animals would gather around the conference table and decide that the entire enterprise ought to be scrapped. Yet it may turn out that animals really need sanctuary, because their wild habitats are too full of humans, too fractured, too hot, too unstable, and too polluted—or nonexistent, as in the case of polar bears whose habitat is melting into the ocean. Zoos would then function as refugee camps. The notion of selling tickets so people can come through and gawk at the refugees would be recognized for what it is: an insult to the dignity of those who have lost everything.
The zoo director who was responsible for killing Marius is heralded as a hero
The zoo where the four lions were killed is the Copenhagen Zoo where Marius, a young and healthy giraffe, had previously been heartlessly and unapologetically killed. I have to say that I was shocked when Simon Tonge, Executive Director of the UK's Whitley Conservation Trust, claimed that Bengt Holst, the zoo's scientific director who wrote off killing Marius as business as usual, is a hero. Mr. Tonge also has claimed, we have zoos "to educate and inspire people; we want them to come to love animals and plants in the same way that we do.” How loving animals, unnecessarily killing them, and heralding one who does this as a hero are related baffles me.
We need a revolution of heart as we reform zoos
As I mentioned above, I was thrilled to be part of this landmark meeting, however, it's very clear that far too many animals have lost their minds and hearts in zoos around the world, and much work needs to be done to improve their lives as zoos, as we know them, are phased out to become sanctuaries. Zooed animals, like companion animals, want and need more than they usually get from us.
We need a major revolution of heart that focuses on the plight of zooed animals. These beings need all the help they can get, and claiming it's just fine to keep them in cages of all shapes and sizes avoids the question of whether we should be doing this in the first place.
Note: I've closed off comments because I do not accept, neither does Psychology Today want, personal or ad hominem comments. This particular comment posted anonymously by "islandhorse" falsely claimed, "Readers might be interested to know that Bekoff in fact conducted some of his graduate training at the Smithsonian's National Zoo under the direction of scientists there." This is utterly false. I never studied there for a single second. After he read this false claim, Dr. Benjamin B. Beck sent me the following note for those who want further information: "As the former Associate Director of the Smithsonian National Zoo, with oversight of its research department, I can assure readers that Marc Bekoff did not conduct any of his training at the National Zoo."
1I just want to mention that while some people question the validity of these data, they do show a clear preference.
Marc Bekoff’s latest books are Jasper’s Story: Saving Moon Bears (with Jill Robinson); Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation; Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed: The Fascinating Science of Animal Intelligence, Emotions, Friendship, and Conservation; Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence; The Jane Effect: Celebrating Jane Goodall (edited with Dale Peterson); and The Animals’ Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age (with Jessica Pierce). Canine Confidential: An Insider’s Guide to the Best Lives For Dogs and Us will be published in early 2018. Marc's homepage is marcbekoff.com.
