Zoos, huh! What are they good for? (Answers on a postcard, please)

[lethargic_man]

aviva_m and I visited a zoo recently. I was reticent to go; I'm not comfortable with the incarceration of animals in small spaces—indeed, since I discovered the idea of goldfish having a seven second memory is a myth, I'm not even comfortable seeing them in a tank, unless it's as large as a pond. Consequently, we went to the larger of Berlin's two zoos, the Tierpark.

This was the first time I've been to a full-blown zoo (beyond the likes of Pet's Corner in Jesmond Dene) since I went to Whipsnade at about sixteen, and I was rather trepidatious. Once we got there, aviva_m was entranced to see the bears' antics, and I was delighted to discover that next door to the elephant enclosure one could find both hyraxes and a manatee: the elephant's closest relatives.

But.

The enclosures, though larger than, say, the 1930s-era bear pit we previously saw in Berlin,^* were all rather small compared to the amount of a room the animals would have in the wild. I was distressed to hear a tiger wailing a single plaintive note over and over again, and to see a dhole engaging in a clear example of stereotypy: the pacing or rocking back and forth that characterises animals^† kept in an environment which is too small and does not feature enough stimulation. It actually had quite a large enclosure, quite a few tens of metres on a side, and the other dholes were unaffected, but this one was running in a figure-of-eight shape ten metres in length over and over again, and had been doing so long enough to have worn a rut into the ground.

* Built because the bear is the city's emblem (due to a folk etymology deriving the first half of "Berlin" (pronounced in German like "bear-lean") from "Bӓr").

† Or humans: think of the children found in the orphanages in Romania when Ceaușescu was toppled.

I find myself wondering what justifies treating animals like that? Once upon a time zoos were the only way people could get to encounter exotic animals beyond mere pictures of them, but now there are amazing natural history programmes on TV, which will show you animals in their natural environment in a way you could never see in a zoo.

It's true that sometimes zoos are a necessity for protecting endangered animals threatened with extinction in the wild, but my experience in game reserves in South Africa showed me there is an alternative. Yes, it's more expensive to run a game reserve and shuttle people around in jeeps in the hope (not guaranteed) they'll see wild animals, but so? Do animals exist to be paraded before us at the cost of their mental health? Besides, sometimes large game reserves aren't necessary. The penguins I saw in South Africa stayed in their colony by their own choice. They could go out swimming and hunting in the sea as far as they liked, but they always came back to their nests.

Thoughts or reactions?

Comments

[green_knight]

There is 'what animals might encounter in the wild right now'; there is 'the natural range of the animal if resources were plentiful and they hadn't been driven into areas useless to humans' and there is, perhaps more importantly, the environment an animal needs to fulfil all of its physical and social needs.

To give an example, on a scale of 1-10, my horse was at a 2 when shut into a box (10 square meters) for more than a couple of hours [*] (and he did display the full range of stereotypical stress behaviour, depending on overall stress levels, which is why I tried to minimise this). In a field of about 4acres upwards with other horses and a varied environment (not just food and water but various forms of shelter), he was at 10, but he wasn't noticeably happier in a 14 acre field than in a 4 acre field.

But the interesting thing is that my horse who hated to be shut in was around an 8 in a paddock that was around 50x50m - it met all of his needs for social interaction and wandering around and seeing what's happening in all directions and being able to pick the right spot for the time of day/activity, and it was large enough that he could move around freely. What he couldn't do was to really run; and while he happily made use of the opportunity when it arose, it did not seem to bother him much to not have it.

So while zoos won't be able to provide the full range that animals have under ideal conditions, they strive to provide an environment that's good enough; and a big part of that is area division and allowing animals to withdraw, and making them move from resting to feeding places and water elsewhere and, and, and. (And sometimes those measures fail to work for a specific animal, and sometimes there are other stressors involved, and sometimes they need a little time to settle and trust that they'll always be able to move freely when they want to...

My personal feeling is that if an animal continues to show signs of stress, not just at particular times (e.g., feeding, or when it has to be isolated for health reasons), then you need to change its environment; this is not an acceptable long-term condition, and if you cannot move it to a less stressing environment, you might need to find it a different placement.

I would disagree with the 'people can just see them in large game reserves' because not everybody can (or should) fly all over the planet; and I think that zoos can - and do - make a major contribution in making people *care* about animals. (They also do a lot of research that's usually not very obvious).

Incidentally, I feel that one of the most important lessons to visitors *is* putting the animals first - if you give them an enclosure that's large enough for them to hide from visitors, you teach people that they are not entitled to an animal's attention: it's a privilege to observe an animal (and interact with them if the situation warrants it), and the animal owes you nothing at all.

So I think zoos have a point; which does not mean that I don't want to see them work on improvements; but most European zoos seem to be actively working on this. (I haven't been to the Tiergarten, though I did go to the former West Berlin zoo; I did get to see Knut.)


[*] A lot of horses aren't bothered much. As long as they have food and water and other horses around and can hang their head over the door to watch the world, they're perfectly content with 3-4h of turnout. Most horses are happier living out as much as possible; some horses thrive on having a space where no-one can come and pick on them.

[lethargic_man]

Interesting, though let me clarify one point: I wasn't suggesting that everyone jet off to Africa to see megafauna in game reserves there, I was suggesting we could set up game reserves in Europe as an alternative to zoos.

[green_knight]

I didn't think you were (it's easier to bring animals to people than people to animals).

But the zoo to game reserve thing is a sliding scale.There are practical issues (the amount of land needed, which is not going to be available near population centres). There are also social issues; because if the only way to see animals is to have a lot of money (even now entrance fees of £15-20 price a lot of people out of the market), and if you don't have public transport, you're in most cases stuffed. Some zoos are accessible by public transport. Many Safari parks (where animals have much larger enclosures and you drive through them) are not. Making animals a little uncomfortable to give all people a chance to see them equally is a trade I'm willing to make.

And then there's the husbandry aspect. If you're ringfencing an existing range, you're starting from a better position than if you try to create a complex ecosystem from scratch. I'm familiar with a lot of the behavioural work done on horses - a species that humans have successfully kept for thousands of years and in millions of locations - and the cutting edge of that brought a number of surprises regarding what was the best and healthiest way of keeping them, and how far you can push the envelope in any direction.

If you want to do the same work for other species, you need to observe them closely, and you need to be able to control their environment to a great degree. And that leaves us back with zoos - you could argue that you need the work done in zoos to enable us to dismantle zoos respectively modify them to be more suitable for the animals they house. (And if that includes not having certain species in zoos, but only keeping them in places that provide a better environment, I'm ok with that. Maybe some species just have too many requirements, or get too easily stressed.

And there's another aspect of all this, and people think differently about it, and I have no idea what the current thinking in the zoo world is, though I guess they're opposed: one way you can ensure that animals are not metaphorically climbing up the walls is to give them something to do. By which I don't just mean exercise - you can't tire a healthy animal that easily - but stuff that makes them think. Quite possibly in conjunction with a human. This works for horses, and it works for highly energetic dogs like Border collies - they're highly destructive and often neurotic whether you keep them in a flat or let them run around a garden, but happy if you work them. But this is encroaching on the 'circus' and having animals perform unnatural things for a human's delight, and often frowned upon...