Zoos and Aquaria
One quarter of a million animals are imprisoned in 400 zoos across the UK.
Modern zoos say that the animals in their care are well looked after and are very happy. They also claim that they help to educate young people about wild animals.
However, recent studies of zoo animals have shown that many of the inmates are not only very unhappy, but are also mentally disturbed as a result of their captivity. Separated from their natural habitat, and deprived of their freedom, their normal social behaviour is totally disrupted, and they become stressed and frustrated. Anyone visiting a zoo can see strange ‘stereotypic’ behaviour – tigers endlessly pacing up and down; elephants rocking back and forth; bears repeatedly nodding or swaying their heads from side to side; animals biting the bars of their cages - all a result of ‘zoo madness’. Compared to the excellent footage taken by patient cameramen of animals in the wild, zoos offer a bad example of how animals behave.
Zoos claim that they perform valuable conservation work by breeding endangered species, and returning them to the wild. But very few animals bred in captivity have actually been successfully reintroduced into their natural habitat. Ultimately, there is little point in breeding animals in zoos if their habitat is being destroyed. Tragically, once an ecosystem has gone, it cannot be replaced. Zoos simply cannot preserve all of the thousands of plant and animal species that make up complex ecosystems such as tropical rainforests. The only way to ensure the survival of endangered species is to preserve their natural habitats and to give them better protection in the wild.
Want to know more?
- Read our Zoos factsheet
- What are Aquaria? factsheet
- Find out more on the Captive Animals Protection Society website
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