The most fundamental argument against zoos is that wild animals belong in the wild. Throughout history humans have captured the most majestic animals for our own entertainment and medical experimentations. It is clear to all that even the most facilitated zoos can never duplicate the wild environment and many zoos worldwide do not even attempt to replicate the animals natural habitats.

 

Zoos can't provide sufficient space

 

Zoos cannot provide enough space in their enclosures compared to the space animals have in the wild. Animals like tigers have an eighteenth of the size they would have in their natural environment, which polar bears having a devastating one millionth of the space they use in the wild. 

 

Animals die prematurely in zoos

 

 Taking away human and predator factors in the wild, animals live longer in their natural environments African Elephants and Orcas tripling their life expectancy in the wild, compared to those who live in captivity.

 

UK zoos are connected with animal circuses

 

CAPS exposed a UK zoo in 2009 that had breeding connection with a controversial animal circus. Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm had been breeding camels from the Great British Circus for several years and in 2009 obtained three tigers from the circus. A female tiger at the zoo had three stillborn cubs and another who died at three weeks old. The mother also died. The same zoo was found to doing business with another circus animal trainer in 2013. This was the same trainer who had been sold lion cubs by West Midland Safari Park and sent them to a travelling circus in Japan.

 

 

Zoos do not benefit towards conservation as much as they claim to

 

Zoos claim to breed animals for eventual release to the wild but breeding programmes are primarily to ensure a captive population, not for reintroduction.

 

Zoos spend millions on keeping animals confined, while natural habitats are destroyed and animals killed as there is insufficient funding for protection. When ZSL London Zoo spent £5.3 million on a new gorilla enclosure, the chief consultant to the UN Great Ape Survival Project said he was uneasy at the mismatch between lavish spending at zoos and the scarcity of resources available for conserving threatened species in the wild. “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”.

 

What impact do zoos have on natural selection and evolution

 

However idyllic the wild it is not free from its dangers- but animals have evolved for thousands even millions of years to adapt and survive to become what they are today. As already stated placing animals in unsuitable environments cause stress and behavioural changes, but what long-term effect will this have on the species? Very rarely do animals in zoos return to the wild, so this will ultimately effect breeding numbers in the wild, and will also lead to devastating effects of natural adaption and selection of the species, making it very difficult for natural evolution to take place.