Zoos: prisons or santuaries? Zoos are just another prison.

A zoo is just another prison

Yes, there are some zoos that are quite like safe havens to the animals they keep and sometimes to such an extent that they keep the animals from extinction. But what about the rest of them?

Imagine being put in a place where you can barely move, where the sunlight rarely meets your eyes and where you can not call out to anyone who understands you or the restlessness inside you .Now imagine being left there for days without food and sometimes even water. Would you call this your sanctuary? Would you want to livehere in this hell-hole or would you rather go home- home where you are free? Only the problem is that no one is asking you what you want because to them you are an animal.

Papio anubis (olive or anubis baboon)

English: Cropped from :Image:Gary Francione.jpg.

English: Painting of the Trial of Bill Burns, the ...

This is how animals must feel when they are kept in poorly maintained zoos. Not only are they made to live in cages smaller than they can live in but are sometimes not even treated well by their keepers. There are many zoos all over the world were the conditions are so unhygienic that they are illegal according to animal rights. Often a times animals are left to starve and the sick left to die.

It comes in scientific reports that animals that are kept in zoos over a length of time are not able to adapt to their own habitats when set free as their living conditions are not at all like their natural conditions. Also animals are many a times not able to interact with others of their species and therefore have no chances of survival in the wild. Some zoos even go to the barbaric limits of giving the animals drugs so that they appear calm to the public.

We may...