Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by T
AURIQ MOOSA
Animals behind cages, starving and dying, is an awful sight. It’s an image that
underlines the callousness with which humans treat other creatures and
Ethics: “he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with
men”. However true this is, it does highlight that causing suffering in general
experience.
But too often, the c auses of suffering tend to smudge our ethical vision of what
truly is wrong. A
nimals in cages might automatically lead to us responding with
shouldn’t say “all captivity is bad” or, the corollary, “all animals free ‘in the
wild’ is good”. Also note, I will view “being in zoos” and “being in captivity”
Managing needs
Can we afford to buy this food? Should we sell this or get a better version of that? Do
we donate a lot to charity this month or in small portions every month? Etc.
Everything being equal, who we want to manage resources so that all can
benefit should be the most capable humans – not (the most capable)
non-human animals.
As research shows, animals in captivity tend to live longer than those in the
wild. Things aren’t equal for animals in the wild: most are prey to another,
more vicious animal. Every day is a struggle to survive, there is no guarantee of
shelter, of food, of nourishment and of protection. But when animals are at,
say, good zoos, vets can manage the animals’ lives better by providing them
rather than a so-called “natural” death. And predation causes great amounts
of suffering, since predators are not known for making death painless.
animals are still provided the necessary substances (this assumes we have
Indeed, left by themselves, animals could hurt themselves and each other (and
For example, as The Humane Society of the United States highlights, animal
too small area that cannot comfortably support the species (that humans made
it smaller is actually irrelevant to fact that it is, right now, too small). Too
many mouths, too little food, too little space. This happens often with, for
example, deer.
“Deer, like most animals, will self-regulate. If there is not enough food available
to support the population, the weaker individuals will die and the does will absorb
So, though Lin is correct in a sense, just because deer will “naturally”
We’ve already noted that the wild indicates a daily struggle for animals; it’s
not some Disney-covered place where rabbits frolic and rivers of rainbows
flow over mountains of candy. It’s incredibly vicious. By being in a space where
needs can be assessed and met, the conclusion to draw is that (many) animals
can be and are better off in captivity (assuming that the animals needs will be
met, they will be cared for, etc., and not prisoners who will be tortured and
killed)
So humans getting involved can help, as The Humane Society notes and as the
Yet a frequent defence of nature and against zoos is that zoos have
Zoos cannot provide the amount of space animals have in the wild. This is
particularly the case for those species who roam larger distances in their natural
habitat. Tigers and lions have around 18,000 times less space in zoos than they
would in the wild. Polar bears have one million times less space.
Note: This point doesn’t say animals are cramped or are forced into
However, CAPS do not tell us what “sufficient” means. Sufficient for what?
While we should respect the work CAPS does and support their goal for
One of the best responses actually comes from fiction, though the arguments
themselves are no less sound because they come from the mouth of a fictional
character.
The character Pi, who grew up in zoo, in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, famously
tackles this:
Only a familiar territory will allow [animals] to fulfill the two relentless
imperatives of the wild: the avoidance of enemies and the getting of food and
corral, terrarium, aviary or aquarium—is just another territory, peculiar only in its
size and in its proximity to human territory. That it is so much smaller than what
it would be in nature stands to reason. Territories in the wild are large not as a
matter of taste but of necessity. In a zoo, we do for animals what we have done for
ourselves with our houses: we bring together in a small space what in the wild is
spread out.
Indeed, he asks us: if someone came into our home, broke down the door and
indicated the vast open plains, would we consider ourselves liberated or, in
fact, prisoners? That the cage is big doesn’t make the wild any less of a cage.
The only question is which one is better for the creature, which will allow the
One might even argue that if an animal could choose with intelligence, it would
opt for living in a zoo, since the major difference between a zoo and the wild is the
absence of parasites and enemies and the abundance of food in the first, and their
Ethical treatment?
The overarching point is that animals can be treated well and better; giving
into magical notions of the wild is giving in to fantasy; to leave their lives
and soundly. Treating animals need not involve enclosing them at all, as vets
frequently go into the wild to treat wounded creatures all the time.
Yet, if we support those brave individuals who do go into dangerous areas to
entities on the planet – should intervene. What that means is precisely what
we must discuss: but to toss the idea of captivity or zoos wholesale under the
bus of moral outrage helps no one, least of all those creatures who could use
such responses.