Are zoos immoral?

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According to PETA zoos are immoral. According to them it would be more moral to take those animals to the wild where they won't know how to survive and let them die than keep them in the zoo where they are being taken care of.

I guess it depends what the animals do in the zoo?

PETA is not a reliable authority on morals. They are in favor of killing animals over letting them live with humans.

https://www.drovers.com/article/peta-has-killed-38000-animals-1998

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/peta-finds-itself-on-receiving-end-of-others-anger.html


If you want to have a conversation about how humane zoos are:
Each zoo will be different. Some may provide large enclosures that allow plenty of space for the animals to live contently. Well trained staff and measures taken to shield the animals from the stresses caused by human visitors, are other factors that could classify a zoo as fairly humane.

If these basic things aren't met, then I would say the facility is not humane.

I don't think zoos are cruel. All the animals are kept according to their habitats, and they are rather pampered. If keeping animals in zoos was cruel then so would keeping pets like cats or rabbits be cruel too.

People like animals.

Animals in the zoo are also protected from predatorial animals. Oftentimes animals kept in the zoo live longer than those in the wild.

Won’t someone think of the poor cat. ... cruelty to a feline ?

Zoos are also very helpful for education, so that children learn to appreciate wonderful animals from around the world and care about their ongoing existence in nature. The zoos I've been to are transparent with their strong ethics regarding animal conservation. Usually the animals themselves could not be released without dying, because they are either injured in some way or were raised in captivity and would be be unable to care for themselves in the wild.

Some species of animals are so rare that without zoos, they would be extinct. A lot of zoo money goes into saving endangered species.

Okay so there are great benefits to having zoo s. Providing these animals have no sense self ...
(Devils advocate opinion ) If as a animal you wish to spend your life behind bars . But they do generally get pretty enclosures . I think .

PETA euthanizes animals for no reason, so I could care less of what they think regarding animals. I do not support them.

It depends, what did the prisoners do to deserve being caged for life? Zoos serve a valuable role in promoting ecology and in preserving rare species from being hunted to extinction, but that doesn't mean they're morally right.

Pets are domesticated animals which have been selected for traits that make them suitable for keeping for companionship. Wild animals do not share these traits with domesticated animals so it's not reasonable to compare the two. If you'd like to research some of the differences between domestic animals and wild ones, look into the Russian domesticated foxes. They're adorable, they're immediately physically recognizable as not the same as wild foxes (despite only having been domesticated a few decades ago) and the project did a very good job at breaking down how selecting only for tameness has radically altered their behaviour, development and appearance.

Zoos aren't ideal, but run with an eye to conservation and public awareness I think they're probably a net positive. Which is more than can be said about PETA.

Most of the time, animals aren’t kept in cages these days—unlike 50 years ago.

Hmm I don't know... they definitely need to be properly supervised so that the animals are treated correctly, otherwise they're not okay, but well kept zoos...? I'm of the opinion that you can't just release animals that have been raised by humans in to the wild as they'd be unlikely to survive, but is it okay to breed more? Capture more? That's the real question...

Release the zoo animals in the wild, they will not survive, They won't know how to live naturally and won't know how to hunt their own food.

Zoo animals are usually born in the zoo and grow up in the zoo so being taken care of by humans is all they know.

When a zoo shuts down, the animals get moved to other zoos or else they are euthanized because they would die anyway.