Are Zoos Cruel?

[Thoran]

There's two kinds of zoo's. In one, there is an attempt to create an environment that is as close to the natural life a species would have in the wild... in these zoo's many animals probably don't know or care that they're confined. These zoos add to our understanding of the species out there and are IMHO a great net benefit to the environment. When I moved my family out to Southern California for a year, the first weekend there we got a membership to the San Diego Zoo and went to the Wildlife Park.

Heck, we might be IN such a zoo now and not even know it [img]smile.gif[/img] . Ideally such a zoo aspires to make itself transparent to it's inhabitants.

The other kind is about making money... and the less said there the better. This sort of zoo needs to be extirminated (and thankfully this is happening).

[Dodo]

Completely against them. I've been since the first time I ever went, and I saw a polar bear (in a tropical country for crying out loud) being zapped by handlers for moving out of a little box while they cleaned its cage.

As for educating children, how is showing kids they can be as rude to an animal as they want without it fighting back going to help us "wake up" and see that we're not the only intelligent life form on the planet? I haven't been to a zoo since, I care plenty.

I'd rather have the animals die out in the wild than bred and confined for generations to save their species. But that's not my choice to make.

[Black Dragon]

We personally do not really know much about zoo's, we've only been to one, and we were bored, they just are a big group of prison cells with animals in them instead of people, if we wanted to go look at things in cells, we should just be aloud to stroll through prisons...