Should zoos exist?
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Hello, it's Hannah Gelbart here and this is What in the World from the BBC World Service. Going to the zoo to see a lion or a tiger or a giraffe can be awesome for us humans, but what's it like for the animals? What kind of impact does it have on them? That is what we're going to be diving into today as we ask, should zoos exist?

Here to talk us through it is our resident animal expert, William Lee Adams from the What in the World team. Hey. Hi, Hannah. First of all, can you give me a brief history of zoos? Like, where did the idea come from? Sure. So I think we need to start with a concept, and that's man's control of nature. If you look at ancient art from Mesopotamia or modern-day Iraq, Greece, China, and even through to the 18th and 19th century portraiture in England and France, you see royals, emperors, rulers everywhere.

killing animals. This is to say, I have authority. If I can kill a bear, then I can protect my people. But then what if you keep the bear alive? What if you collect them? That kind of creates a different narrative. Here you see it as a source of strength, saying we're wealthy, we have power, we can exchange these as gifts to other nations. So in the 13th century here in England, King Henry III

he received a polar bear from the king of Norway. He received three lions from the holy Roman emperor. And later he came into the possession of an African elephant. All of these were stored at the Tower of London, creating sort of a personal menagerie. And if you look at Queen Charlotte, she famously had a collection of 18 kangaroos she kept near her cottage at

and her love of animals was so famous that actually in Bridgerton, the Netflix series, she was portrayed fictionally and you saw her zebras. She must have had a big cottage to fit in, 20 kangaroos. Massive paddock. How have zoos of the past evolved into the kind of things that we see when we think of zoos today?

Sure. So a very canned history would be in the late 18th century, you had a zoo open in Austria. The public wanted to learn about animals. Then you had the French Revolution. You had revolutionaries ransacking the palaces of the king, the queen, aristocrats, and taking some of these animals to create a public.

zoo. In these zoos, animals were kept in cages. They had nowhere to roam. Looking back, we think it's quite cruel. Then you have World War II. People become more aware of animal welfare after seeing so many zoos destroyed. And that was a huge turning point. It raised awareness about

the fact that animals feel. Animals suffer and animals endure trauma. And that has led to a full spate of different types of zoos, urban zoos, petting zoos, safari parks where you drive through, game reserves where ecosystems are protected and illegal hunting is not allowed. How many people visit zoos

nowadays? Like how popular are they? So the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, they're based in the United States, they say there are more than 10,000 zoos and they're visited by 700 million people a year. So if there are 8 billion people in the world, that's around one out of every 11, one out of every 12 people on Earth visiting a zoo every year.

Now, I should point out that these estimates are very hard to come by. The fact is people define zoos in different ways. You have public zoos. You have urban zoos. You have petting zoos. You have circus-like roadside attractions. You have aquariums. Some people don't count aquariums if they're not connected to a formal zoo. It's very, very gray and difficult to find.

to define, but one source I found, the World Population Review, they say that the United States has the most zoos, 350, followed by Germany, interestingly, with around 316, I believe. Europe accounts for about half of all the zoos in the world. You mentioned education, a little bit about conservation. Let's get into some of the arguments for zoos. Why do people think that we should have zoos?

Yes, indeed. Education is the primary reason that zoos give for why they should exist. The fact is school children all over the world are often bused to zoos. I remember myself going to see lowland gorillas at Zoo Atlanta every single year. And the point of this was to introduce us to conservation. We heard the animal stories. We started to learn why animals are endangered. And zoos say we're inspiring young people to respect nature, to love nature.

A second point is that zoos often invest in research programs that help endangered animals. Now, as we know, pandas are notoriously reluctant to mate. The female pandas have a narrow window of fertility. They're solitary creatures and it takes two to tango when it comes to reproduction. But a lot of money in zoos, it goes to sort of find ways to encourage these animals to mate. A

A third reason that zoos give is that they actually contribute funds to breeding programs which can help reintroduce animals to the wild. A famous example would be the Arabian oryx. This is a type of antelope that's native to Saudi Arabia on the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries. It actually went extinct in the wild. But in the 1970s, because of successful zoo breeding programs, it was reintroduced into

into the wild. And the last point we often hear is conservation. The fact is many zoos skim some of their profits or they raise money in other ways to contribute to wildlife conservation abroad in countries that can't always afford to do it themselves. What does conservation funding actually look like in practice?

Well, I actually spoke to someone about that very topic. This is Tanya Landa. She's a lecturer in biology at the University of Oxford. There are actually really nice examples of reintroduction projects that have happened. The most famous, of course, is the California condor, where the San Diego Zoo took the population of only 23 in the wild, and now there are more than 400 in the wild.

over the course of the last 40 years of conservation efforts from that zoo. And then another one is the golden lion tamarind, where they were critically endangered in the wild. Then through a joint project between the Smithsonian and Brazilian researchers, they've managed to significantly increase the wild population, but also have helped to push forward the protection of a big area of habitat. ♪

So there is evidence that zoos have helped with conservation, with endangered species, education, lots of young school children go and visit them and maybe that'll be their first interaction with these kind of animals, even if they're not in the wild. So that can be a really educational, inspirational experience. But

But now we're going to hear some of the arguments against zoos. First of all, this is Nikita, who is 19, and she's an animal rights activist from India. So I don't think zoos should exist for several reasons. The first one being a zoo's detrimental impact on both the physical and psychological health of animals. Many studies and research have shown that many animals in zoos and aquariums display abnormal behaviors like head bobbing, pacing, stereotypical behaviors, signs of mental distress.

The second reason I would say is that zoos cannot mimic the natural habitat of animals in the wild. The third point I would say is that zoos are not always conservational tools like believed. Reported by Born Free and many other studies show that only 10 to 25% of animals, at least in the UK, are intangible.

in captivity are actually on the IUCN red list. The rest of them, more than half of them, are actually on the least concerning section. So the money's not going towards conservation. It's going more towards profit-driven schemes. So Hannah, as you heard from Nikita, passions run really high. And there are countless arguments against zoos, but I want to isolate the three most common. The first is entertainment.

There are a lot of people who do not think animals should be used as forms of entertainment. They are taken from the wild or indeed bred in captivity to serve humans. Again, a continuation of this idea of animals as a curiosity for human enjoyment. Sometimes you'll see roadside animal attractions where animals are made to do tricks and pose for photographs. That would not happen in the wild and people therefore say it is wrong. Indeed, the training of tricks, if an elephant is painting with its trunk,

That's not natural behavior. And it was often taught that through cruel means such as electrocution. The second argument I want to cite is profit. As Nikita hinted at, there are questions over how funds that zoos receive are allocated. One large-scale study here in the UK found that of the 13 most progressive zoos, they were only using 4% to 6.7% of their gross income, that's total money before taxes and deductions, on conservation projects.

The third reason, and perhaps the one that upsets people the most, certainly if you look on social media, is animal welfare, the treatment of animals who are often kept in cages that in no way reflect what life they would have in the wild. For instance, a polar bear, which is native to the Arctic, should that be kept in the temperate, warm climate of Arizona where it has to rely on a swimming pool to cool off? And these are the thoughts that really concern people.

What are the telltale signs that an animal may be in distress if they're kept in an enclosure? So zoologists often talk about stereotypic behavior or zookosis. And this is the physical manifestation of psychological stress.

These are behaviors that are habitual, repeated, and they don't seem to serve any purpose. For instance, a bear might do its head like this, revolve. An elephant might stand in place and sway side to side. You have giraffes biting bars, knowing it's not going to give them any nutrition, any food, but they habitually bite it.

And then you have self-harming behavior, ripping out your own feathers. Animals will mutilate themselves. They'll bite their tails repeatedly. They will bite their limbs. And again, polar bears in a pool, they'll just swim in a circle or an outline shape.

Some zoologists have compared this to sort of PTSD, where you have a traumatic event that leads to trauma later, but it goes further, they say. And it's where the water you swim in, the air you breathe, that becomes your trauma because it's the repeated trauma of just existing in these conditions. So, as you say, there are very strong arguments against zoos and people fighting.

feel passionately and deeply about this. So I want to find out a little bit now about the future of zoos and whether zoos might exist as we know them in the future. It's a tricky one because the term zoo encapsulates so much and there's so much variance and quality between zoos country to country, but even within a country or in the United States, even within a particular state.

But I think one thing we can point to is that the most well-funded zoos are often the leaders in terms of evolving. For instance, the Singapore Zoo is world famous. It is held up as one of the best zoos in the world. It has a sort of a tropical rainforest design, an open air concept where you create habitats for the animals that are larger than at other zoos. For instance, they have a great...

Rift Valley that mimics the conditions in Ethiopia. And there you see ibexes, you see baboons, you see special multi-species areas. There's a forest they have where they have lemurs living alongside butterflies, living alongside sloths, as they would

in nature, instead of cages you have moats and these moats sort of reflect natural boundaries you might see in nature. Or an animal says, "Whoa, I stop at the water." So it mimics, you know, nature itself. And people are often put further back. They're on sort of elevated walkways that are out of view. There's further distance.

There's that evolution that's already happening, but there are many different ways you can think of the future. And I actually spoke with one animal welfare advocate. This is Dulciano Winders from the Vermont Law and Graduate School. The reality is that zoos do exist and that we have a massive overpopulation of captive wild animals.

And so the question is really what model should zoos be using? And zoos should evolve to move towards a sanctuary setup. So a situation where they can provide lifetime care in the best possible circumstances for captive wildlife who cannot be released into the wild.

So they will move away from breeding and capturing animals from the wild to instead provide care for those who are already here with us. And that would include providing the best possible circumstances for so-called surplus animals, who even reputable zoos still kill or perhaps worse, send off to animal dealers with ties to canned hunt facilities.

And this would also be extremely beneficial to the many, many captive wild animals who are held at shoddy, unaccredited roadside facilities and could desperately use the care of a reputable facility. And Hannah, I just want to pick up on that idea of sanctuaries. We're seeing more and more of these on social media. It seems that people really respond to them. I recently went to Thailand and visited an elephant park there.

And here they had vast spaces to roam. These elephants were rescued from circus attractions, they were rescued from farms, they were rescued from places where they were made to do manual labor. Often they endured great abuse. Many of them are blind because they were beaten on the head. Many of them were orphans. Many of them were left in the wild or they have a disability such as an ankle that won't recover or a leg that's twisted.

So these animals, they can't be reintroduced into the wild. They would die, quite frankly. And so sanctuaries, what they do is they give them the open space and to kind of supplant their operating income, they open the grounds up to tourists and visitors. And when I was doing my research in which one do I want to go to, there was a whole spate of websites talking about what is ethical because you can go to an unethical sanctuary.

And I ended up landing on one which did a few things. It did not allow photographs with animals up close where you're touching the animal. It did not allow you to feed the animals. It did not allow you to bathe with the animals. And animals did not perform tricks because, again, they would not do these things in nature. And so instead, you stand on a viewing deck and hundreds of meters away, you see the elephants walking through the water, having their baths without you interrupting them.

This is considered more ethical because you're giving animals who effectively have nowhere they can live safely a home and then you're letting people in but not interfering with the animal.

And if someone who is listening to this or watching this wants to visit an ethical zoo or an animal sanctuary, is there anything they can do to try and find out, like to look it up beforehand? We are so lucky that on the internet there are so many resources these days. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums, they have a website that talks about ethical zoos, ethical sanctuaries. Many of those are in the United States and Canada. However, they are expanding their international section online.

Also, I do think that media, traditional travel media, newspapers, magazines, they respond to their consumers, and consumers are increasingly demanding ethical places to visit, ethical animal sanctuaries, and that's being reflected in the content. If you just have a quick search online, you'll find articles that list the pros and cons of various sanctuaries.

There is nothing quite like seeing some of the animals that you have seen in real life with your own eyes. But we're so lucky these days with all the wildlife docs and social media. So, William, thanks so much for coming into the studio. Thanks, Hannah. And thank you for joining us. This is What's in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart and we'll see you next time.