How Can We Make Zoos Good?
At the Zoo Miami
“And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:28 ESV (emphasis added)
“I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don't like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.”
-Ernest Hemingway (quoted in The New Yorker, May 13, 1950)
Zoos and aquariums, once thought of as a normal and vital part of urban landscapes, have come to be controversial. The documentary Blackfish made many people question the morality of keeping animals in enclosures, and high-profile incidents in which people or animals were hurt in zoos (like Harambe the gorilla) have raised important questions. I am pro-zoo, but I’m only for specific kinds of zoos. There are good and bad zoos. I’ve been to very good, well-run zoos, and I have been to depressing dumpy zoos. Let’s consider how to make and run zoos well.
Allow animals to live out their natures. Good zoos allow animals opportunities to act in ways that resemble how they act in their natural habitat. This cannot be done perfectly, but zoos are continually finding ways to be better homes for their animals. Wild creatures don’t live in boxes, so good zoos have gotten them out of cages. Zoos approximate their habitats and give them room to do what animals do. This means that some animals cannot be kept in zoos; aquariums have not successfully kept a great white shark, and SeaWorld is phasing out orca captivity. Many zoos can’t handle elephants or giraffes. But there are ways to help most animals live much as they do in the wild.
This gets stickier when you start figuring out how to help carnivores live like carnivores without subjecting visitors to the bloodbath of the natural world. But creative zookeepers get animals to work for their food in ways besides hunting, and they have ways of keeping animals moving (as they would in the wild) rather than sitting around waiting to be fed.
It is also the nature of animals to mate. For some creatures, that’s a good thing, and endangered species can increase their numbers by breeding in captivity. But, with no natural predators, and with veterinary staffs to help when animals get sick or injured, most animals cannot be allowed to procreate at will, no matter how entertaining that might be for the zoo-going public. (You might solve this problem by allowing small animals to reproduce, and then transferring them to the lion enclosures, but that could be controversial as well.)
Zoos are not as straightforward as they might at first seem; they’re not just about preventing animals from escaping and keeping them fed. Animals should have habitats that mirror their natural worlds to some degree, room and opportunities to engage in natural activities, and food and care that enables them to live peaceful lives. Fortunately, smart people come up with some pretty cool solutions. All zoos should adopt the most humane practices.
Make them educational. Zoos need to be fun and entertaining and keep people coming through the gate. But paying zookeepers, important as it is, is not the main purpose of a zoo. Zoos have many opportunities to promote conservation and stewardship of the natural world and to inspire people to take action to protect vanishing habitats and threatened species. Education is a major mission of zoos, and zoos that flourish do education well.
I am a sign-reader; when I walk around a zoo or museum, I want to read every word on every sign to make sure I learn as much as I can. This drove my wife crazy even before we had four young children, and I’m sure she doesn’t appreciate it now. But even though some nerds will read whatever you put in front of us, the educational aspect of zoos should have some hands-on or interactive elements too.
Perhaps the best educational asset of any zoo is the zookeepers. Our local zoo makes keepers available at scheduled times of day when they feed the animals and interact with the public. They feed chickens to the alligators (not live chickens) and talk about wild alligators. They feed the lions with beef (offered on sticks through the bars) while they answer questions from children. You don’t have to be a reader to learn about the animals from the people who know and love them most.
The worst zoos I’ve been to have very little of the human element; they’re just animals in cages, which can be impressive, but lacks context and any kind of interaction. It’s ironic that the most valuable assets of zoos isn’t necessarily the animals, but the people.
Elicit awe and wonder. Zoos and aquariums are great places to experience the awesome creativity of God. I love going to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta and seeing their enormous whale sharks and beluga whales and incredible sea creatures. It is literally overwhelming to look at these huge animals and consider how small and strange we must seem to them. At the Zoo Miami, my kids love to stand in front of the lion habitat, with a huge cat standing a foot away, separated only by a pane of (hopefully very strong) glass. These are the experiences that stick with us long after we’ve gone home.
Many of us spend our days looking at screens and neglecting to interact with the real world or the people in it. We suffer from Fear Of Missing Out and constantly check our phones and computers. We need experiences that will snap us out of this enchantment and help us realize that we live on an incredible planet, at an incredible time in history, with incredible opportunities to engage with the world around us. Zoos and aquariums are excellent places to do that, if we allow ourselves to experience what they have to offer.
Health and safety for all. Zoos should be safe places for people and for animals. Safety can be a tricky issue when you are trying to put large numbers of people in close proximity to large, wild animals (some of the people are pretty wild too). On the animal side, you must have environments from which animals cannot escape (some creatures are incredibly crafty). They must be habitats where animals don’t normally hurt themselves or each other, and that alleviate the stresses of captivity as much as possible. They also need to be close enough that visitors can get near to the animals without being eaten. Being eaten makes you significantly less likely to patronize zoos in the future.
On the human side, you have to give people room to move without getting in each other’s way, places to get food and drinks (especially on hot days), and ways to protect children from being lost or falling into enclosures. You must have first aid, lost and found, some kind of rules enforcement, human resources, and of course, clean-up crews, because humans are the messiest creatures of all. Again, making a good zoo is a lot more complicated than most people realize, and it takes a lot of hard-working people to do it well.
Make them beautiful. On top of all that, nobody wants to visit an ugly zoo, so they should look great. That comes from a combination of good design, location, landscaping, and maintenance. Zoo leaders must have vision for how the zoo will grow and what will draw people in and make their experience memorable. Happily, there are people who love to solve these logistical puzzles.
Invite everyone. To make a good zoo, it requires a large investment of time, work, and especially money. So tickets to the zoo can be expensive, and food inside of zoos is usually not cheap. However, if we limit zoo experiences to people who can afford high ticket prices and $5 soft drinks, we are limiting their impact. We need zoo programs that provide an experience for people at all levels of economic opportunity.
Zoos are great places for field trips and youth events. They can offer coupons and discounts that open up opportunities for people who would otherwise miss out. They can offer volunteer positions and internships. And fundraising for zoos can be creative; if you show rich people a bunch of adorable animals, they love to open their wallets and support the mission (somebody out there must love naked mole rats, I suppose). Zoos need to be a part of the community in the fullest sense possible, available for the whole community to enjoy.
Give people a mission. In the verse at the beginning of this essay, God tells humanity to “have dominion” over the animals. Most people don’t really know what that means. Through the lens of the whole Bible, Christians understand that dominion is referring to the concept of stewardship, taking care of somebody else’s stuff. The Earth and everything in, on, and around it are God’s stuff, and He calls us to take good care of it.
That means it is humanity’s job to care well for the animals, plants, and ecosystems of the Earth. We may still use them for our benefit, but we should do so in ways that show respect and gratitude to our Maker for giving us access to His possessions.
One doesn’t need to be a Christian to believe we should take care of natural things, but Christians should be leaders in conservation because we’re motivated by this calling to stewardship. We can work together to care for this incredible planet, and zoos have a part to play.
Zoos can inspire people to care about animals and habitats near and far. Exhibits of local animals can include information about how to protect local ecosystems and ways to support conservation projects. Exhibits of animals around the world can tell people about personal habits they can change to affect nature around the Earth (like using reusable grocery bags to protect sea animals that choke on plastic). Zoos can connect visitors to projects where they can contribute, because conservation costs money. And they can keep people informed about progress and success stories in nature stewardship.
“Zoo animals are ambassadors for their cousins in the wild.”
Most of all, perhaps, zoos give people reasons to care in the first place. When we see creatures in pictures and on screens, they can feel unreal, like a special effect in a movie. But when you go to a zoo and are face-to-face with a majestic lion, you know that losing lions in the world means losing something incredible. Zoos help people care about all God’s creatures.
Zoos
Zoos can be done poorly or well. In America, zoos have taken many steps to improve care of animals, be a bigger part of the conservation movement, and be more than just “attractions” where people come and look at animals sleeping on concrete pads. I love well-run zoos and am blessed to live near two of them. But, there will always be room for improvement in how we care for animals, and inspire the next generation of stewards. The things listed here are just some starting points for making zoos humane and effective.
The next step for you is to find a good zoo and support it with your money, your volunteer hours, and your community support. And, if you find a zoo that’s doing things poorly, let it be known. Tell the zoo what you think, and tell others. We owe it to God to take good care of the creatures He’s made. He didn’t create anything by accident, and He loves even the strangest and ugliest of His creations. We can all play a part in making zoos good.