Animals That Live in Zoos
By: Maria Blair
Mrs. Kennedy
June 25, 2014
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Zoos should not hold animals captive and make them endure the cruelty and harsh environments pushed onto them. Marc Bekoff an amazing biologist did extensive research on this topic in his book Animals Matter, that there are only 216 accredited zoos in the United States and more than 2,000 licensed zoos that are not accredited by the Association of Zoos.

There are some zoos that are holding animals captive in cages and not giving the animals the right environment to live in. Animals are often in cages at night. The saddest part is that the majority of zoos do without telling the visitors is hold additional animals in cages in the back and not show all the animals they have captive in their zoos. Zoos do this intentionally to make it seem like they are incapable of what they say their accused of.

There are many reasons zoos hold animals captive. One of which being they are not approved by the AZA, a program to make sure all animals are safe in the United States. The space zoos give the animals rarely or if ever really match the animals’ natural environment. Which is sad because the zoos are claiming to be helping the animals that are endangered but they are only making their death sentence shorter.

Christine Van Tuyl in her book Zoos and Animal Welfare did many accreditations on zoos and found that, worldwide there are more than 10,000 zoos, with hundreds of thousands of animals held captive.

The diets of the animals in zoos are not natural. Zebras have been found to be becoming more obesity from the grass they feed at the zoos. This is because the grass is higher in calories than the the African Savannah and the result in obesity is an affect in lady zebras fertility.

Signs on zoo enclosures give very limited information on the animal itself, the information is bias and even sometimes false. Studies have shown that most visitors spend less than three minutes looking at each exhibit, and sometimes as little as eight seconds

In the world today there can be many improvements in zoos. The population of animals dying in zoos is becoming a greater risk then it was back in the olden days. Zoos need to improve their tactics and better their animals futures. Many childhood memories we have as children we want to continue for our children in the future to see. Lets not let the society of the United States today ruin the great memories we have had in the past. Stand up today and let the voice be heard that we want to help our local zoos.

RESOURCES

• Photos were taken from the image search in app gallery this was public domain.
• Information found in the book Animals Matter and Zoos and Animal Welfare.