Animals Free of Cages

12/02/2024

What a miserable existence...

19/04/2023

and now for something closer to home from Auckland Zoo....

An eyewitness said the crowd thought the rogue swimmer was a zookeeper.

10/03/2023

09/03/2023

This sums up the irrelevance of Zoos nicely and in easy to read bite sized chunks.

We hear a lot of things to justify keeping animals in zoos. But are these justifications based on fact, or are they simply what zoos would have us believe? Here are 4 things we hear about animals in zoos, and why we should think twice about them.

09/03/2023

Do We Need Zoos?
The killing of Harambe, the silverback gorilla, at the Cincinnati Zoo has sparked a massive debate.

By J. Weston Phippen

Visitors pass a gorilla statue where flowers have been placed outside the Gorilla World exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo. (John Minchillo / AP)
JUNE 3, 2016
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Over the Memorial Day weekend, a 4-year-old boy climbed the guardrail at the Cincinnati Zoo and into the enclosure of a 17-year-old silverback gorilla named Harambe. By now, most people know how this played out. The boy’s mother had lost track of him, long enough that he crawled over a wall and fell 10 feet into a moat at the bottom. Harambe stood over the child, as if protecting him from the people yelling above, then grabbed the boy’s arm and je**ed him through the water. Tranquilizing the gorilla wasn’t an option, the zoo director would later say, because the sedative takes time. And no one could predict how a drugged animal that weighs 450 pounds would react. So they shot Harambe dead.

Zoos have changed a lot in the past 50 years. The openness of Harambe’s enclosure, the cliffs separated by a moat, were designed to lend it a more natural feel for viewers, and to simulate wild environment for the gorillas. It is a departure from the bars and sanitized tile floors of past zoo design. As people become more sensitive to the lives of these animals, they’ve understood how flat concrete and tight confinement can cause depression, even phobia, in everything from donkeys to snow leopards.

Someone at the Cincinnati Zoo caught much of what happened on video (not the shooting), and immediately afterward people blamed both the mother—why wasn’t she watching her son?—and the zoo director—was there no other option?

Few people have asked why a zoo, full of dangerous, or not-so dangerous animals, is even necessary. That might be because calling for an end to zoos has typically been the cause of poets and animal-rights activists. Most past arguments against zoos have focused on the insensitivity toward animals. As Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote two years ago in a piece for New York magazine titled, “The Case for the End of the Modern Zoo”:

I realize that to even raise this issue makes you sound like some kind of sour, rule-bound vegetarian, so let me make clear my position up front: I love zoos. My daughter is not quite 2, and the zoo brings out all of her best and least complicated emotions — awe, delight, empathy.

But concern for caged animals has caught enough mainstream interest that New York and California introduced bills that would outlaw killer whales kept in captivity. Their focus on killer whales is in large part owed to a 2013 documentary called Blackfish, but it proves that it has become a concern for more than a fringe of animal-rights advocates. So much so, that last March, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment said it would stop breeding captive killer whales. And if keeping an orca in large tank is unethical, then why not an elephant, a tiger, or a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla?

08/12/2021

a pertinent question!

Cruel or kind? Education and conservation are cited as reasons for keeping wild animals in captivity, but many critics say zoos are outdated relics of a less enlightened era. We hear what both sides say

15/12/2020

Good to see animal welfare practices are changing to reflect modern attitudes. Just have to wait for the Government to catch-up and get with the programme.

OPINION: A parliamentary commissioner for animals is needed, to advocate for farm animals and ensure the regulatory body is accountable.

01/10/2020

More news from the world of Zoos......

The Sumatran tiger left a valuable lesson for Hamilton Zoo's owner, that a predator's instincts can expose fatal flaws in safety procedures.

21/08/2020

How is this even possible? We don't appreciate how much damage to the eco-system fires can create. The only positive is that it gives the environment a chance to reset. From the ashes comes life again. It's just a pity that it happens at the expense of so much life.

The full scale of the 'worst wildlife disasters in modern history ' has been revealed.

29/05/2020

Big cats do not belong in Zoos or "family" run safari parks. I don't have much sympathy.

A zoo keeper is fighting for her life after incident with big cat.

18/04/2020

Not on!

With effects of COVID-19 being felt around the world, a spotlight has been shone over recent days on Phuket Zoo. The zoo itself has been closed since March 28th, but word is out about abandoned and starving tigers and animals ...