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Are Zoos Objective Or Cruel And Torturous To Animals?

Decent Essays

T he existence and the moral value surrounding the operation of zoos are still a hotly debated topic today. There are some people or organisations which support zoos for their role in animal conservation as well as pointing out its educational values to the public. Some others argue that zoos were unethical, or downright cruel and torturous to animals. Each side mutually defend themselves and claims that they are putting these animals first.

A widely-believed argument is that zoos forced animals to live in an unnatural environment, making them stressed and sick. Many zoo animals live in a different environment than the one they lived in before. Animals will feel discomfort or stress, ‘...the animal will not be at peace.’(Martel, p50). Most …show more content…

Because of our sense of superiority, our “obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything” (Martel, p39) we subconsciously placed ourselves higher than the animals, and therefore “justifying” our acts of cruelty to the animals. This thinking makes us believe that Earth and everything inside it is ours, and ours alone, to use and exploit. Such evidence of this thinking is shown, for example, on the Bible (“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”” – Genesis 1:26, NIV). This makes us believe that it’s okay for us humans to capture and cage these wild animals and later putting them in the zoo because we think they are rightfully ours, and we can use them in whatever way we see fit, many times without thinking about what effects will it have on them. Similar attitude is also shown when we often clear out forests to build new housings and completely ignoring the effect it would have on the environment, or indeed the biosystem of the forest, and the animals within it. What nature took thousands of years to make, we destroy in days. We are putting ourselves first and foremost of everything, and the negative effects are showing. It’s the same with zoos. If we keep condoning the zoo animal’s mistreatment the same as we keep condoning all of those illegal hunting, illegal forest clearing, and over-mining of resources, it could affects the way of our next generations treat the

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