If you love adventure then, Zoo is a great place for your family fun. You can learn interesting things about exotic animals you probably see on the TV or read on the internet. Zoos have their upside and downsides just like any other thing. This article highlights the pros and cons of Zoos.
Pros:
1. Survival of animals: In a zoo, the animals are confined in an enclosure to protect the endangered species. There is no danger of the animals being killed by poachers for their skin.
2. Essential benefits to animals: Zoos provide medical care and proper nutrition to animals which they could not get by themselves. The zoo staff are friendly to animals and can help in case of emergencies.
3. Learning about the animals: Zoo professionals can learn more information about a specific animal and also teaching them. People can learn about animals and nature.
4. Conservation programs: Captive breeding programs are established in zoos to perverse the reduced number of some animal species. This helps in preventing the extinction of some species.
5. Safety and security of animals: Construction of zoos provides a safer place for the animals to live in and increases the chances of survival because there is no pollution, diseases or destruction of the animal habitats.
6. Educational resource: Modern Zoo plays an important role in educating school children and families. Students visit the establishment to know about different types of exotic animal species.
7. Source of economic resource and revenue: Zoo acts as a tourist attraction site providing economic gain to the community. It provides job opportunities to zoo staff and also as a source of revenue to the government.
8. Veterinary care: Many zoos have a treatment room to examine the health of animals. A team of pathologists, technicians and other specialist are consulted to help maintain the health of animals.
9. Maintain natural instincts and movement: Modern zoo provides proper dietary and arrangements of physical requirements of animals to maintain their health and keep them mentally alert. This helps eliminate degradation and eliminate animal’s boredom in the zoo.
10. Extend animal life: Keeping the animals captive can increase the lifespan of those animals.
Cons:
1. Create dependencies: Establishment of breeding programs in the zoo create animal dependency on the environment make it difficult to adapt to a new environment if transferred.
2. Ethical dilemma: Putting animals in captive raise an ethical dilemma where animals cannot fully hunt on their own or migrate.
3. Recreational activity: Over the last decades, zoos are being used as a recreational activity rather than their initial objective of establishing a zoo to provide a scientific understanding of nature and its surrounding.
4. Changes in animal behaviors: Most of the animals are known for their migration nature and keeping animals like elephant and other predatory species captive can make them more aggressive.
5. Inadequate finances: Maintenance of the zoo is very expensive thus, many animal establishments struggle to maintain the animals in proper health.
6. No guarantee for animal survival: Breeding programs established do not guarantee the survival of the animals in captivity. The newborn species that survive rely on humans for their entire life.
7. Restricts the animal needs: Elephants are known to travel 30 to 50 kilometers in a day and confining them in a small zoo is unnatural. This makes it difficult to serve the animal.
8. Animal abuse: Most of the zoos do not emphasize studying the animal’s natural behavior and no proper protection is offered to them. Visitors can through some objects to the animal resulting in negative effects.
9. Killing of animals: Due to limited space in the zoo, surplus animals are killed or transferred to the new zoo.
10. Affects mental and psychological health: When the animals captured from the wild are forced to live in confined areas results in depression.
