Dear readers, I am appreciative of your opinions for my last article. Last week I raised my doubt about whether we, at the same time of calling for protection, really consider about what the animals’ thought. Do they really want to be sent back to nature? Or do they want to live in zoo or the Sea World to be fed for? This is a controversial question may never be solved, I think. (We are not animals) However, in order to provide animal right, this is a question we cannot avoid to deal with.
I did some research for the reasons why animals should not be kept in captivity, and today I want to share with you. Taking orcas for example, one theory suggests that all captive adult male orcas have collapsed dorsal fins, likely because they have no space in which to swim freely and they are fed with thawed dead fish, which is unhealth. SeaWorld claims that this condition is common—however, in the wild, it rarely ever happens for in the ocean, orcas spend most of their lives swimming straight and quickly through the water, allowing water press on both sides of the dorsal fin. This equal water pressure allows the tissues to remain healthy and straight. However, in sea world, the tanks are too small so they can just swirl in clockwise and thus causes the fin to flop over to one side. According to professor Hanson, a wild male orca usually lives until around their 30’s, which lives ten more years than the orcas which lived in the tank. This is because the collapsed of the fins usually cause the whales collide to the walls since the head of the whales often injured in sea world. The second reason is that Orcas in captivity usually gnaw at iron bars and concrete from stress, anxiety, and boredom, sometimes breaking their teeth and resulting in painful dental drilling without anesthesia. Which youngster can live for 60 years accompany to his damaged teeth? Only the elderly lose their teeth and they are nearly die. Both the consequences of keeping the whales in the tank will cause a shorten life-expandancy to them. So that’s why we should send them back to the nature. For other animals, living in the zoo will do harm to their body health, either.
On the other hand, I still find some interesting story for the opposite statement that we should provide animals a shelter to live in. I read a book which calls 《Life of Pies》last summer, and it is a story which started from a zoo. The author tells me that a black bear escape from the zoo successfully at the very beginning. However, it returns back several days after, which makes me laugh for a long time. What it shows is that the black bear cannot find resources outside the zoo, which means that if we want to “protect” them, we should keep them in the zoo at least they are not starved, or they may die.
As you can see, whether we should keep animals in the zoo is still debatable. Do you change your position after reading my article? Welcome to share with me again!
