Zoos are cruel....

So true!!! The smart phone has made us dumber!!!

Maybe, but so is nature.

It’s the circle of life.

It's about education as well. The world is full of ignorant humans.

The problem is they do suffer worldwide. Animal cruelty is rife!!!

This is a nice thought, it’s just not true.

@6ate9 if I say are you volunteering to take the lead it's a genuine question. I am not inciting you to do that. I just think if you believe that's the solution explain yourself.

Because we live in a very complex and very delicate world in which biodiversity is essential to the survival of habitats and life. It’s a domino thing snd no creature sits alone unaffected by others.
It’s like those people who say they don’t get why people worry about fewer bees and other insects and such, as they’re creepy, biting, horrible things. Of course without them we’d all else would fail, crops, animals, us.
We’re all interconnected.
Now, sadly, with the climate crisis we won’t be able to save everything, but if we don’t try then at best it will be a sadder, less beautiful world, and at worst it will mean the end of everything.
Here’s a good starting point for educating yourself: www.worldwildlife.org/resources/explainers/what-is-biodiversity/

I think some people are missing the point about conservation that it's not just about keeping a particular species alive, it's about the positive downstream effects of releasing that animal into its natural habitat - releasing a panda for example has huge benefits to the surrounding forest as they act like pollinators, dispersing bamboo seeds for miles around them which also benefits other animals and can help promote or inhibit other plant growth. This can also positively impact waterways and benefit humans too.

The wolves of yellowstone are a well known case study of the conservation of one animal having huge benefits to the surrounding environment.

Funding can be a major issue for conservation, zoos are one avenue for running the right breeding and release programs. Zoos can also be educative and prompt people to donate to relevant charities outside of the zoo itself

I do agree that there's a large quantity of zoos that do not prioritise the animals' welfare or provide any tangible benefits to conservation. However there's also a host of very responsible zoos where the animals seem well looked after and there is adequate enrichment and space provided for them to act more naturally.

Having said that I don't think big cats and great apes are well suited for zoo life - I've never seen a happy lion or tiger in a zoo and wish they'd be given larger habitats to live in with a more natural mix of animals (basically a wildlife reserve)

Conversely, I've never seen an unhappy meerkat- some animals are better suited to zoo life and seem to actively enjoy it. The penguins at edinburgh zoo for example seem happy to me and I regularly go to watch them dip and dive in their massive swimming pool

If the money they put into ‘breeding programmes’ and running zoos was put into preservation in the wild, extinction threats would disappear.

@Cosimarocks
Actually you are right. They are all equally repugnant.

Would you like to have to perform against your will?

Well yes, I'm open to that!

Sorry, why are you highlighting dressage as the cruelest (and so presumably most dangerous) of the horse sports?

The problem is humans!!! Get rid of humans and then animals are free to roam!!!

No the ones already alive shouldn’t have to suffer. They should be cared for with the highest welfare standards. But I was just clarifying the reason for breeding programmes existing. The purpose is to eventually repopulate the wild, not to breed display animals.

Would it be alright to keep humans in captivity to breed? Is it alright to carry on ruining the planet, doing whatever we like and then let the next generation who haven’t been born yet sort it out?

Zoos also run programs to re-introduce species to the wild so its not just a matter of keeping the species going in captivity. And they run programs to support feeding when food sources collapse due to humans (i.e. pesticides and the like killing of insects that small mammals eat). Reducing biodiversity is a bad thing for everyone and zoos do a lot to try and address this.

Animals that are alive already have to suffer so their descendants, that haven’t been born yet can live in the wild!!!

And who ever thinks it's a good idea to have indoor cats who are rarely allowed outside.

Always been mixed on this. Zoo’s have changed radically since the days of chimps tea parties and tiny empty cages. That said I still don’t like the idea of them being caged, and find certain things particularly difficult, like the gorillas.
But many zoos now do incredible work in conservation, and there are animals in them that can no longer easily survive in their natural habitat.
I’m not particularly in to the theme park feel aspect of many zoos, at the same time if these places were only set up to help conservation and banned visitors they’d not financially survive. And too, if a child, let’s call her Jane, visits a zoo, see’s an animal, a chimpanzee maybe, they’d only ever read about and that then inspires them to travel to, say, Tanzania, and spend their life learning more about these creatures than anyone before, and then dedicates their life to saving them and campaigning for the environment and solutions to climate change, then isn’t that rather wonderful.

I like zoos, I get to see animals that I would probably never see in the wild and most of them are well cared for and some would be extinct in the zoos hadn't stepped in with breeding programs and conservation.

I don’t think it’s ever alright to keep animals in captivity. Humans don’t like being locked up against their will, so why do it to animals?

It’s not keeping them alive just to live in captivity, it’s keeping them alive so that we can release their descendants to the wild when it is safe to do so once the situation causing their extinction has been dealt with. It is about protecting the species, not the individual.

For some (but not all) species it is our fault because of loss of habitat etc. so maybe it is our responsibility to keep them alive. But then we are keeping them alive to just live in captivity. Hard one