Animal Abuse – What You May Not Know

The Zoo is a great place to spend a day with your kids, your friends, your sweetheart, and/or your family. We get to see animals up close that we may otherwise never see in person in our lifetimes. We can sometimes pet animals, feed them, and go to animal shows at the Zoo and watch these animals perform seemingly incredible acts. Sounds great, right? But what is happening behind the scenes? 

Most of us don’t even think twice about the welfare and state of these animals. We go to see them, we leave the Zoo, and go about our lives almost completely putting it out of our minds. We don’t think about how small the enclosures for these wild animals are. We don’t think about the fact that some of these animals are taught tricks for our amusement. What do they go through to learn those tricks? (I will get more into the trick aspect of things in a separate section of this post). 

There is an organization in the US called AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums), which requires its members to go through an accreditation process. They are an organization that has very high standards of animal care, science and conservation. There are around 2,400 “animal exhibitors” in the US alone, and only 212 are members of the AZA. That’s it. If you go somewhere to see animals and they have an AZA accreditation, you can be nearly certain that the animals are being treated well, cared for properly, and they are doing everything according to the high standards of this organization. But with these small numbers of only 212 out of 2,400 being members of this organization, it’s very likely that your local Zoo is not accredited by them.

There is another organization called WAZA. This is the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Sounds similar, right? As the name might suggest, this is a worldwide organization that also says they promote the welfare and conservation of animals. However, here is where we see our problem: there is no accreditation process to become a member of this organization. Becoming a WAZA member requires filling out an application, submitting letters of support from two other WAZA members, and paying a fee. Zoos, for example, must pay 2,500 euros, or nearly $2,800. If you do that, you’re a member. There is no process or real inspection before becoming a member that actually checks on the welfare of the animals in that facility.

If you go to a Zoo where they allow any physical contact with the animals, it is most likely not an AZA accredited Zoo. Why? Such contact can be damaging for animals’ mental and physical well-being and often requires training methods such as premature separation from mothers, physical restraint, and pain- and fear-based conditioning; according to reports from WAP (World Animal Protection). 

World Animal Protection’s report describes venues that offered encounters where visitors can stroke, kiss, and cuddle with big cats, shows where humans “surf” on the backs of dolphins, and performances in which elephants paint pictures with their trunks. These experiences are extremely stressful for animals. “Some facilities just kind of bill this as wildlife tourism, and it’s really nothing of the sort,” she says. “Wildlife tourism is the kind of thing where you go and you see wildlife in their own environs, in their own milieu—not where you go and you get to take your picture with the tiger, or you get to interact with a monkey that’s dressed up in street clothes, or kissing an orangutan, or something like that. That is not wildlife tourism; that’s exploitation.”

“Getting [animals] to the point where they’re completely safe around people involves a whole level of different training and breaking of the animal’s spirit,” D’Cruze says. “There’s a difference between a domesticated species like a cat or a dog that’s been changed over thousands of years biologically and behaviorally to be around people, and an animal that’s been broken to be tame.”

These are all really important things to remember. There are many Zoos that are now working really hard to try and take in animals that can no longer survive in the wild, or that have been saved from a Circus company, and they try to reintegrate them into the wild. There are many Zoos which only take in animals that can no longer survive in the wild.

Zoos play a major role in the conservation of animal species, but there is a difference between conservation/respecting the wild life, and exploiting them for our entertainment. This is something we all need to be more aware of if we continue to support organizations such as Zoos and Aquariums.