Persuasive Essay On Why Zoos Should Be Discontinued

Why zoos should be discontinued

Many zoos have been on the news in the past, such as the Cincinnati Zoo. Everyone at the Cincinnati Zoo was shocked on May 28, 2016 when a child fell into the zoo’s gorilla enclosure. Shortly after the boy fell in, the 17 year old Western Lowland Gorilla named Harambe began to drag the 3 year old boy around his enclosure. Afraid of what was going to happen to the little boy, a zoo worker had no choice but to shoot and kill Harambe. This is just one of many examples of zoos going under fire for choices they have made. Some people like zoos because it gives them a chance to see animals that they might not be able to see on a normal day. However, zoos should be discontinued because they are cruel, ill-equipped,

Zoos are too small to support the size of creatures such as elephants. Animals like elephants need a lot of space for roaming and many zoos just don’t give them the space they need. For example, according to UPI NewsTrack “Sebek and Farnam called the elephant's' treatment ‘inhumane and unlawful,’ saying the zoo's facilities -- a one-acre enclosure and a barn -- are inadequate to meet the animals' need to walk extensively, and have resulted in their suffering chronic foot and joint problems” (Elephants 1). Elephants are very large creatures that are not meant to be in small cages. Zoos are simply not large enough to support their size; they are ill-equipped for large animals. Also, most zoos are not secure enough to separate dangerous animals and humans. For instance, according to an article about an accident at the Tbilisi City Zoo on Vice.com, “Initially, all of the zoo's seven tigers and eight lions were thought dead, but last Wednesday a man was killed by an escaped tiger, prompting Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili to criticize zoo officials for providing false information” (Nolan para. 1). In the case of this zoo, all the animals that went missing were just presumed dead. There wasn’t enough evidence to prove the deaths; the zoo wasn’t secure enough to keep a tiger in it’s enclosure and this led to the death of an innocent person. Zoos simply aren’t built well enough to keep

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McKirdy, Euan, and Eliott C. McLaughlin. "Safety by Design: How Zoo Enclosures Are Evolving." CNN Wire, 1 June 2016. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, Accessed 1 Mar. 2017.

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