Library:A Postzoo Future: Why Welfare Fails Animals in Zoos (report)
A Postzoo Future: Why Welfare Fails Animals in Zoos talks about the ethical issues surrounding zoos and animal welfare. The paper argues that zoos should be shut down if they cannot meet rigorous standards for animal welfare. The paper also suggests that zoos should stop exhibiting animals who cannot and never will do well in captivity, stop killing healthy animals, stop captive breeding, stop moving animals around from one zoo to another, and use the science of animal cognition and emotion on behalf of animals.
Captivity causes major problems for animals, including long-term activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, repetitive and abnormal behaviors indicative of psychological trauma, changes to immune function, brain morphology, reproductive behaviors, circadian rhythms, and so on. It is prima facie unethical to hold animals in prolonged captivity because captivity imposes suffering and it is wrong to deliberately impose suffering on a sentient creature. Zoos exist on a morally tenuous foundation.
- Zoos should be shut down if they cannot meet rigorous standards for animal welfare.
- Zoos should stop exhibiting animals who cannot and never will do well in captivity.
- Zoos should stop killing healthy animals.
- Zoos should stop captive breeding.
- Zoos should stop moving animals around from one zoo to another.
- Zoos should use the science of animal cognition and emotion on behalf of animals.