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'Death And Dying At The Zoo'

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Throughout the world, Zoos and Aquariums are a very popular attraction for people of all ages. Every year thousands of people wait in ongoing lines to visit their favorite animal they only get to see on television. Little do they know, they are feeding into another reality. It is a reality of unfairness, cruelty, and depression. The animals in captivity get no chance to live the way they were born to live. They are held in tiny, small spaces only for the luxury of humans, with no regards to the animals’ natural wants. Zoos and Aquariums are inhumane and have nothing but negative effects on the animals being held.
Animals that are held in Zoos and Aquariums do not get fair treatment nor freedom. The author of “Death and Dying At The Zoo,” Mary P. Benbow, uses a very powerful quote in her article to explain this. “Once an animal enters a zoo, it is essentially dead. Stripped of its behavior, social context and ecological milieu, a lion is no longer a lion, but a bag of DNA waiting for its next meal, a chance to copy its DNA or death,” (381). Visitors of the Zoos and Aquariums are beginning to become aware of this struggle. Barbra Woods, and author of the article called “Good Zoo/Bad Zoo: Visitor Experiences in Captive Settings” explains how people felt when they went to …show more content…
Micha Issitt, explains the cruelties of animals in confinement, explains how animals in captivity can be dangerous to humans and themselves. Ongoing research has given some explanations on why aggression may be a result of animal captivity. Conclusions were drawn that some animals may kill because of “stress and physiological” issues. He used an example of a tiger killing a zoo keeper in Germany, leading to the animal having to be killed (Issitt par. 4). A recent quote from an article that reviews human attacks by large carnivores uses statistics to help prove this

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