If you’ve ever gone to a zoo for a pleasant day out only to fall into an existential depression, you aren’t alone. Zoos aren’t the wild. They aren’t even close. The vast majority of large, sentient animals wandering zoo enclosures have no way to fulfill any of the powerful drives that compel living things on this planet.

So why do we allow these carnival sideshows to keep existing? Well, there are a few decent arguments to be made both for and against them.

Why Did People First Start Keeping Animals in Zoos?

It’s hard to get around the fact that zoos have historically been places for people to gawk at imprisoned animals. As far back as biblical times, people have been capturing animals and keeping them alive artificially.

Ancient Menageries

People from the Egyptians to the Assyrians to the Israelites kept animals in royal “menageries” which functioned sort of like giant terrariums that kings could enter for their entertainment or enlightenment. These displays differed greatly in size and quality, but no expense was spared in their preparation.

The Romans especially liked to capture animals from abroad and display them at “triumph” parades before rubbernecking crowds as a sign of the empire’s unprecedented vastness. They also liked to unleash the most intimidating of these creatures on hapless gladiators and battlefield captives. This was as bad for the animals as it was for their victims, as they would often suffer mortal injuries during their desperate bouts with armed gladiators.

Modern Zoos

The first modern zoos in Vienna, Austria, Paris, France, and Kazan, Russia were opened in the 1700s. These establishments were intended both to entertain aristocrats and provide a platform for scientific research. Enclosures were small, however, and many animals died as a result of improper care. Though the Europeans had grown to see themselves as enlightened thinkers, their treatment of animals had transcended little beyond the ancient menageries of their distant ancestors.

What Is the Purpose of a Zoo?

If you ask any zoo official, they’ll probably tell you that zoos are important places for critically endangered animals to breed in relative safety. The science behind this notion, however, is rather murky. While captive programs have saved a few critically imperiled species, such as the California condor, golden lion tamarin, and arabian oryx, from the brink of extinction, most such reintroductions have failed.

Concerningly, some attempts to let creatures back into the wild have worsened their decline. Because animals in enclosures aren’t being selected for genetic fitness, they can spread harmful genetic conditions or unhelpful traits throughout a population, accelerating its downfall.

Biologists who choose to rerelease animals are essentially gambling with a species' survival — playing the role of god. Whether you believe in this kind of unnatural manipulation is an entirely subjective matter.

While zoos keep animals alive and sometimes even sustain their populations, captive managers doubtless have human entertainment in mind most prominently when they design their facilities. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, as entertainment isn’t mutually exclusive to education.

When the public learns about wildlife and wild creatures, they take their knowledge back with them to wherever they live, and some may change the way they think about or even interact with the environment. Zoos can be especially powerful educational tools for children, and no few children have been inspired by field trips to become biologists or conservationists.

How Do Zoos Get Their Animals?

A lot of people have big problems with zoos and little to say about wildlife sanctuaries. This is because most people believe that zoos take animals from the wild while sanctuaries only rescue them from unfortunate circumstances. In reality, reputable modern zoos don't capture animals from the wild. They instead rely on other means:

Trading Between Other Zoos

Since there are only a limited number of animals living in captivity at any given time, captive managers spend a great deal of time sharing and transferring individuals to other facilities. This is done purely for the benefit of the public, since it can split up animal families with close bonds. It does, however, facilitate genetic health across populations.

Wildlife Confiscations

Unfortunately, private citizens across the world can own exotic animals through both legal and illegal means. These private owners often realize the folly of their decisions only too late. After a serious incident or law enforcement confiscation, the luckiest of private exotic pets end up in zoos.

Injured Animals

Manmade dangers, such as those caused by traffic or hunting accidents injure thousands of animals every year. Some of these animals are fortunate enough to wind up in a wildlife rehabilitation facility to be rereleased. Those unfit for release end up in zoos.

Donated Exotics

Some people are foolish enough to try to keep wild animals as pets but wise enough to quickly realize their mistake. In these cases, private owners may donate their animals to zoos.

Do Animals Even Care About Being Confined?

The simple answer is that we’ll never know how animals feel in confinement. But we can infer much about how animals experience the world based on their impressive complexity.

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably come up with more than a few ways you differ from any other animal. After all, you speak, walk upright, wear clothes, and operate complicated machinery. You have complex thoughts, therefore, whereas animals have simple ones at best.

This way of thinking is easy to fall into, as we can’t see inside animals’ minds. You might be surprised at how many tasks animals actually do better than people. Chimps, for example, can identify patterns in numbers popping up on a screen faster than humans, suggesting they have better spacial awareness. Crows can figure out logic puzzles that children often struggle with. When octopi are amputated, their limbs recognize their original owners, suggesting that their nervous systems operate in an advanced, decentralized manner.

In the wild, rhinos defend territories of approximately one square mile

Isn't it a Mistake To Compare Animals to People?

Perhaps you’ve heard a teacher, professor, or tour guide warn you not to “anthropomorphize” animals, or assume that their experience of the world is the same as yours. It is indeed a mistake to assume that their experience is identical to yours, but it is equally a mistake to assume that non-human creatures are simple robots.

Animals constantly make advanced judgments about the world around them. They avoid danger and seek pleasant experiences. When they are hungry, they must invent ways to access food. After they give birth, they must protect their young. Sometimes their predicaments require creativity and critical thinking.

No matter how simple they may seem, even the most basic animals are so complicated that no robot or machine has ever even come close to replicating their behaviors. Science fiction has long posed the premature question: are human-like robots people? If you are a writer looking for something to compare your own experience to, you need not look further than the animal kingdom.

When Do Animals Suffer in Confinement?

To acceptably answer this question, we must determine whether confinement stifles one or more biological drives. What are these drives?

The biology 101 textbook answer is:

the need for survival
the need for food
the drive to reproduce

For certain species, however, we can confidently expand this list:

The need to be social
The need for exercise and stimulation
The need to accomplish tasks
The need to maintain biochemical balance

When these basic needs are restricted, animals suffer. I’ve worked with dogs and wolves for years, and I am quite sure that canines become equally if not more depressed than humans when deprived of company. When a wolf’s packmate dies, he or she howls mournfully. Characterizing this behavior as sadness is not anthropomorphizing, it is just obvious.

The same goes for other restrictions. Animals do not pace in circles in enclosures merely to entertain themselves. They are anxious as a person might be when deprived of the opportunity to burn calories, accomplish physical tasks, or otherwise find stimulation.

Aren’t Some Animals Better off in Zoos?

I can confidently tell you that Captivity isn't inherently evil. I have a feral rescue dog who is quite captive, and she absolutely loves it. She wouldn’t escape if she could — the outer world of cars, trucks, and competing predators is simply too scary.

Many captive animals tend to live longer, suffer fewer medical conditions, and eat more consistent meals than wild ones. When we force wild, non-domesticated animals into captivity, however, we impose our human perspective upon them.

The problem is that we humans have trained ourselves to constantly minimize sensory unpleasantness. We've built such cushy lives that obesity and other unintended health consequences abound. We may not, therefore, be the best judges of how other species should live.

Struggle and satisfaction are inextricably linked. Chasing after prey and competing for mates in the wild are brutal matters, but achieving these ultimate goals is fulfilling. While captive animals may lead relatively comfortable lives, they never get to fulfill their true natures, and there’s something sad about this.

Conclusions

Whether you love them or hate them, zoos are an unending source of fascination for many morally ambivalent humans. Though zookeeping methods have evolved considerably from the time of the ancients, their primary purpose has always been to entertain and educate people.

The modern zoo is a bit like a 1970’s philosophical story called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. In the story, a single, unfortunate child suffers perpetually in darkness for a utopian society to continue thriving.

Zoos are small places with relatively few animal residents, but those who suffer there do so with no say in the matter. Society gets to gawk and gander at strange and exotic creatures, from a godlike, rather than fraternal perspective. Perhaps each zoo should feature a diorama of the African plains, at the center of which is a large mirror.

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