A few months ago we got this question from one of our subscribers, Gaurav.
When I was a kid, one of my most favorite
things to do was to visit a zoo.
But as I grew older, I came across evidence
to the fact that animals in zoos often suffer from boredom.
Was the younger version of me wrong?
I wanted to dig into Gaurav's question
in part because as a parent of a young toddler
zoos are very much a part of my everyday life.
Going to the zoo clearly makes my kid happy.
And most zoos market themselves as a force for conservation
protecting endangered species and making us humans
better stewards of the planet.
But then there's that evidence Gaurav mentioned.
Videos showing what zoologist call stereotypies:
Repetitive behaviors like hair pulling, tongue flicking
bobbing and swaying that indicate under-stimulation and stress.
All of this left me with a couple questions:
What are zoos doing for humans, and for animals?
And are they doing what we want them to?
My first call was to Susan Clayton, a conservation psychologist
whose job is basically to go to the zoo and spy on people.
We watch people and we listen to people
and, you know, pay attention to what they say.
Parents will use that as an opportunity to talk to their children
about how it's important to try and keep species from going extinct.
But something much more concrete and more simple also happens.
Susan and her colleagues noticed that around primates in particular
visitors will frequently imagine themselves in the animals' place.
They might speak as if they were the animal.
"What are these people looking at me for?"
So you are temporarily imagining what it would be like to be the animal.
That does open the door to a greater empathy and concern.
Susan is describing an expansion of what philosophers
call our circle of empathy.
We might start by only caring about our family and close friends
but we can extend that circle to include other people
and even other species.
I was just wondering if that kind of resonates with you as far as thinking back
to your experiences in zoos growing up?
Yeah, absolutely.
Sometimes they would even allow us to feed giraffes.
We were allowed to touch some snakes and things like that.
I used to love going back to that zoo
so that they can create this bond and this empathy with animals.
So maybe zoos help us feel more empathy for animals.
But is that enough?
Emma Marris is a science writer
who spends a good chunk of her book, Wild Souls
trying to answer this question.
Do the benefits of zoos to wild animals and to conservation
outweigh any minimal amount of discomfort
or unhappiness that the animals in the zoo might experience?
Talking with Emma convinced me that
instead of just looking for pros and cons
I should look for evidence for two claims:
That keeping animals in a zoo somehow helps wild populations thrive.
And that visiting them has a measurable impact
on human attitudes about conservation.
Lucky for me
Emma had already spent a lot of time looking into this first question.
The idea that zoo animals are a sort of backup or reserve.
That sounds reasonable, right?
Basically, if a species was about to go extinct
we could replenish their numbers with these reserve animals
who had spent their lives in zoos.
The tricky part about that is that for a lot of species
especially the bigger, more cognitively complex species
putting them back out into the wild is incredibly difficult.
The key to knowing which ones can actually be released
is a concept called cognitive complexity.
A good way to think about it is to look at how long it takes
for a particular species to learn skills in the wild.
Orangutans stay with their mothers for up to 9 years.
It takes elephants the same amount of time to learn how to function
as members of one of the most complex social groups in the animal kingdom.
Orcas stay with their mothers until age 13.
For lions, polar bears, and gorillas, it's at least 2 years.
Once you realize how much these cognitively complex animals
have to learn to survive in the wild
it makes sense why the ones you see in zoos
could never join their wild cousins.
This idea of cognitive complexity
was just really game changing for me as far as
understanding why so few zoo animals are able to be out in the wild.
When you were talking about this, I had a few examples in my head.
I remember seeing the footage of a
baby gazelle that cheetahs often hunt.
So the mother would capture the baby gazelle
and let her cubs, you know, go out and finish it, like kill it.
This is very hard to replicate in a zoo.
For comparison, the California Condor
only needs 180 days to learn how to survive after hatching.
And a program to save them from extinction
by breeding them in zoos and releasing them in the wild
has been a huge success.
But these programs are incredibly rare.
According to the Association for Zoos and Aquariums website
there are approximately 8700 species represented in zoos around the world
and just 117 reintroduction programs.
This sort of notion that someday they're going to be like
"Oh, we ran out of elephants."
"Let's get all the ones from the zoo
and just pop them out into Africa and Asia."
Like, that's not going to happen.
They're never going to let them out.
They're going to die in those zoos.
For cognitively complex animals
it's really hard for me to see the benefits
and the drawbacks seem pretty obvious.
But what about the second item on the list?
Does visiting the zoo make us more conservation minded?
One study gave visitors a survey
when they first got to the zoo and asked them to write down actions
they could think of that would help save animal species,
then have them do the same thing after they'd visited the exhibits.
Slightly more people mentioned recycling
responsible purchasing and diet choices.
But the share of visitors who mentioned habitat protection actually decreased.
So I really didn't find much evidence that zoos in their current form
do much to help wild populations
or change people's attitudes and behavior.
But what if we could imagine a different kind of zoo?
My initial question was:
Do the benefits of zoos outweigh its cons?
But now, after listening to this
and the evidence that you have provided
now I feel that we must assess each species individually.
If zoos stopped breeding cognitively complex animals
for captivity
and then release those they have to wildlife sanctuaries
like this one in Tennessee
they could devote more time and space
to threatened species who can successfully be released into the wild.
Sometimes these are turtles or fish or freshwater mussels, right?
Like these are not necessarily your big blockbuster mammals.
To satisfy our very real desire
to see and hear and connect with non-human creatures,
we might need to extend that circle of empathy in a different direction.
So we see squirrels or robins or pigeons, and we're like meh.
But actually, the more I learn about these animals and insects
and the plants that are in the city, the street trees,
the more fascinating I find them.
Do you think we could design zoo experiences that people would want
that are based on these different species?
I used to love going to zoos and seeing the big animals.
I mean, not having them around would be kind of sad
for the younger version of myself, but I think I have changed
and that's because of education.
And I think people can also change if we...
if we educate them.
Thank you so much for watching.
I really enjoyed digging into this question about zoos with Gaurav.
And if you haven't watched it already
definitely go watch Joss's video about unions in the US.
That one was inspired by another question from a subscriber, Cameron.
We're really excited to make a whole series of videos like this
videos driven by your questions.
So, if you're up for going on camera and
being a part of a Vox video
hit us up!
We'll get some answers.
Link to the submission form in the description below.
Thanks for watching!