Brett Moser

Writing 1
11/6/14

3 Body Paragraphs
This essay I am going to explain to you why it is not okay for us to treat animals in zoos the
way we do. We need to come up with an alternative way then to keep these intelligent animals locked
up in a little cage or aquarium for our entertainment. Animals are locked up in their cages and losing
their lives. They are not living as long, not living as happy, and even losing their ability to go out and
survive on their own. These wild dangerous animals are being treated as little cats and dogs and that is
and should not be in there nature. Taking animals away from their habitats we destroying their groups
and their families. An alternative solution is letting all the animals live together in wide spread area
such as the Angkor Centre for Conservation of Biodiversity. This is an example where is has many
different animals corresponding in a wide area. This has been shown to by the ratings that many people
do enjoy it. Or even making the environment more realistic for animals so they dont as they are in a
zoo and maybe a little more realistic.
To start I am going to give you a definition of animal pain suffering and cruelty. David B.
Morgan says welfare is dependent on and determined by an animals physiological and psychological
well-being in its cognitive captivity and life's experience. What David B. Morgan is saying is that an
animals well-being is determined by it how it feels. Animal suffering is defined by David B. Morton as
a negative emotional state, this may derive from various adverse physical or physiological or
psychological circumstances, and which is determined by cognitive capacity of the species and
individual being as well as its life experience. In this quote Morgan is stating that that animals suffering
is caused by being upset from being scared and mistreated cause the creatures life to be sad and
depressing. Animal cruelty is anything that can cause an animal to be in pain to feel any time of pain.
Animal pain is not just something that is physically abusive but it can also be something that is
mentally or physiologically damaging. It can anything such as seeing something or someone that hurt

them before that scares them or even an event that scares them. We can tell this by if an animal is
skittish of a particular place or thing. We can tell this because after these kinds of events we can see a
change in their behavior. Things that can cause these for animals in zoos are being mistreated or all
the stress that gets built up from leaving there original habitat to go live in one that if much smaller
and unnatural to them. Many of these examples of these situations will be further explained in this
essay.
Next I will get into effects of these animals living in cages or zoos have on an animals. For
Bengal tigers The results of this study showed clearly that tigers kept in more natural and complex
enclosures performed less stereotypic pacing (unnatural behavior), and more exploratory (natural)
behaviors than those housed in less natural enclosures. Reducing the stress level in captive tigers will
enhance the animals overall physical and psychological well-being, which will in turn increase the
success of captive breeding programs. These results suggest that captive tigers should be housed in
large enclosures containing natural substrate and vegetation, water pools, ample shade, a variety of
resting locations, and a variety of enrichment items says LE Pitscko. He later states that just by adding
things such as adding items from their natural habit and adding sents from other cats it will decrease
their pacing. Whales that live in aquariums can never be released back into their wild habits after they
have been stuck in an aquarium. This is because being stuck in an aquarium can damage there sensory
receptors which they use to catch food and survive. Most of Orca whales have collapsed dorsal fins,
which is race to see in their natural habitat. It is a sign of an improper diet and also not enough room to
swim. There are also many other effects of whales and dolphins living in zoos. Orcas in captivity gnaw
at iron bars and concrete from stress, anxiety, and boredom, sometimes breaking their teeth and
resulting in painful dental drilling without anesthesia. Orcas are highly social animals who live in
stable social groups ranging from two to 15 individuals. In some populations, children stay with their
mothers for life. In captivity, orcas are forced to live with orcas from other family units who speak a

completely different language than they do and are constantly moved between facilities for breeding
and to perform. Such as, the mental, emotional and physical stress that a captive whale or dolphin
suffers can weaken their immune system and make them prone to disease. Even though captive whales
and dolphins are kept in an environment free of predators, pollution and other threats, they die young.
The death rate for infant whales and dolphins is also much higher in captivity. Also captive whales and
dolphins have been trained to perform tricks, day after day, for food as a reward instead of behaving
naturally. When not performing, they are often kept in holding tanks smaller than show pools.
Confining animals together that may not get on can result in stress and aggression with no possible
escape. Many dolphins dont even make it to the zoo, half of them die from the crane because all of the
weight crushes their organs. Dolphins originally live about 40 years but in captivity they only live on
average 10 years. Thats only a fourth of the time they would survive in their natural habitat. They die
so young because of all the stress that is caused and they form ulcers that often kill them.
One thing that really upsets me is that in some aspects of zoos, is that animals have feelings and
sometimes they do not get treated like they do. Instead they get treated like property. Animals feelings
of being scared, anxious or even overwhelmed can cause them health problems or just not being treated
with respect. Animals don't deserve to be stuck in a little box for people to look at for our own
entertainment. Picture a Polar Bear swimming figure eights, sometimes twelve hours a day, or even
stalking little children from his underwater window. It was bad that the Zoo staff had to put up barriers
to keep the frightened children away from his predatory gaze. What could have caused this polar bear
to become so aggressive or as the staff called Gus the bipolar bear Laural Braitman says that much
of the animal madness is caused by humans forcing animals to in unnatural habitats and the suffering
that ensues is on display most starkly at the zoo. She also goes to on to state Gus, for example, was
forced to live in an enclosure habitat that is 0.00009 percent of the size in his natural habitat. It's
impossible to replicate even a slim fraction of the kind of life a polar beat would have in the wild. Gus
was just a polar bear that was trying to get his feelings heard, even if it meant scaring a couple of kids.

Possibly trying to say he was missing his habitat or family that he was ripped away from. Instead of
people listening he was made as a show of the bipolar bear. The first Orca whale to every be put into
captivity actually was so uncomfortable that she rammed her head into the wall so hard that she ended
up killing herself. Can you imagine being so uncomfortable in a room that you just want to ram your
head into a wall? It is interesting that there hasnt been any casualties out in the oceans with whales but
when you put them in a small aquarium they get scared and attack and actually ended up killing a
human, its trainer. Tilikums food was withheld from him as a training technique, and he regularly
endured painful attacks by two dominant female orcas, Haida and Nootka. He was forced to perform
every hour on the hour, eight times a day, seven days a week. The constant stressand exhaustion gave
him stomach ulcers. He was transferred to the rundown Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia,
Canada, and forced to call his barren 100-foot-by-50-foot pooljust 35 feet deephis sad new
home.
Animals are just ripped away from their families and their habitats. Can you imagine one day
roaming around across free wild open meadows and then boom, the next thing you know, youre in a
little crate being shipped possibly half way around the world to be stared at by another species not
knowing if you will ever see your family or friends again. Can you picture in Gus's case, he gets stuck
in a little tank that is only 0.00009 of the size of his natural habitat? He will never experience the real
ice or catching fish for himself ever again. I would be just as distressed and angry as Gus was when he
was swimming figure eights or stalking children. I get freaked out when I can't move or even littler
things, for example when I wear boots and I wear to many pairs of socks I can't move my toes it freaks
me out. Now can you imagine how I would feel if my whole world was shuck down to 0.0009 percent
it was before? It is like an

animals is stuck spending the rest of his life in a jail cell for a crime or

something that he did not commit. Gus the polar bear is stuck in in his own jail cell, his aquarium with
no room and no privacy. There is a direct correlation with animals welfare and animals being with
their families. It is proven that when animals are taken from their families their happiness decreases

very much. Animals aren't happy to be shown off in a little box and ripped away from their families.
But can you blame them? Dolphins are shown to be social creatures. So when you take one of the
dolphins it splits up the whole community of the dolphins. It has been shown that if you take a dolphin
back after a couple of years that it will still reconnect with its family. Scientist believe that when
dolphins meet other pods or groups, they often engage in a sort of greeting ceremony
that suggests they are renewing old relationships. If I was taken from my natural habitat and or
family I would not be very happy with whoever took me or wherever they took me.
A question we must ask ourselves is it okay for us as humans to do think that we are better and
superior to animals. This is question of ethics. How do we feel that it is right to keep animals locked
up in a cage? What gives us the right to think that we are better than animals? We have to think that if
we think if it is okay for us to use them for our entertainment. We should think of animals as our equals
and less thinking down on them. Animals are intelligent creatures and we need to start treating them
like they are not. A common example of social interaction and high intelligence, is the constant play
that dolphins seem to engage in. Scientists report that juvenile and adult dolphins often chase each
other and toss items such as seaweed back and forth. Hal Herzog says that we find it easy to divorce
ourselves from this bloodbath. And that's bizarre, given that we treat animals well in other areas.
Britons keep 16 million pet dogs and cats. There are 5 million pet snakes and lizards here. As a society,
we cage and consume some animals, but treat others like valued members of our families. What is the
psychological basis of this hypocrisy? I agree with this, what makes some animals more important
than others? Eugene Khutoryansky says However, I still believe that it is accurate to say that all
human beings are created equal in the sense that all human beings deserve equal compassion, and
equal ethical consideration, in spite of their inequalities in these other areas. If we extend this type of
"equality" to severely mentally retarded humans, then we must also extend it to other species. This is
because the animals which we kill for food, clothing, and experimentation have a considerably higher

level of intelligence, and capacity for social interaction, than do many severally mentally retarded
humans who we correctly recognize as our equals. These two go hand in hand. Animals and humans
should all be treated equally. If we think of everyone know matter what as equals, then how can we
think of animals as lesser? I think it is horrendous how we treat animals because we think that we are
better.