RESCUED OR CAPTIVE
Where do zoos get the animals from
Going to the zoo as a kid is one my fondest memories but I never thought of how these animals were brought here.Zoos apparently date back to as far as 3500 BC as excavations at Hierakonopolis in Egypt have revealed. Remains of animals including elephants, baboons, wildcats, and hartebeest were found.Zoos claim to be rescuing these animals on exhibit but more than half of the animals at the zoos are not endangered at all.Zoos breed their animals or acquire them from other zoos. Babies are great crowd -pleasers, but when the babies grow up, they don’t attract the same number of people, so zoos often sell them off in order to make room for younger animals. The unwanted adult animals are sometimes sold to “game” farms where hunters pay to kill them; some are killed for their meat and/or hides. Other “surplus” animals may be sold to smaller, more poorly run zoos or, worse, to laboratories for experiments.
Every year, thousands of animals enter the captive wild animal trade. Some of these animals are “surplus” from roadside zoos. Others are captured from their native habitats, or come from backyard breeders or the black market. These wild animals are sold at auctions, pet stores or over the internet.The trade in wild animals involves tremendous suffering at every stage of the process.
Zoos claim to breed animals for eventual release to the wild but breeding programmes are primarily to ensure a captive population, not for reintroduction.Lions are popular in zoos, but the vast majority “are ‘generic’ animals of hybrid or unknown sub specific status, and therefore of little or no value in conservation terms
Entertainment or enslaved
Animals aren’t actors, spectacles to imprison and gawk at, or circus clowns. Yet thousands of elephants, bears, apes, and others are forced to perform silly, difficult tricks under the threat of physical punishment; carted across the country in cramped, stuffy semi-truck trailers; kept chained or caged in barren, filthy enclosures; and regularly separated from their families and friends — all for the sake of entertainment. Many of them are even forced to perform until the day they die.Animals held captive at marine parks or in aquariums don’t fare much better. In captivity, orcas and other dolphins swim in endless circles in tanks that, to them, are the equivalent of bathtubs, and they’re denied the opportunity to engage in almost any natural behavior. Instead, some are forced to perform meaningless tricks. Most die far short of their natural life expectancy.
Fancy Pets
In the united states more tigers live behind cages than there are in the wild this is because most states have no laws governing captive wild animals.Texas has the world’s second-largest tiger population, due to private citizens’ propensity for keeping these big cats as pets. There is no wild animal census in the United States, and many states have lax oversight, so any estimates about the population of wild animals in captivity is at best an educated guess.It is expensive and difficult to keep wild animals in captivity. These animals oftentimes live in inhumane conditions, and pose a serious threat to public safety.
What Happens to The “Surplus” Animals
A Freedom for Animals study found that at least 7,500 animals — and possibly as many as 200,000 — in European zoos are ‘surplus’ at any one time.In early 2014, there was global outrage when Copenhagen Zoo killed a healthy young giraffe called Marius. The event triggered a worldwide debate on culling in zoos and it was admitted by zoo spokespeople that thousands of healthy animals are deliberately killed in European zoos alone each year.In conclusion zoos cause animals much more harm than good
