Day 10: A big complaint

WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING FOR WHICH YOU FEEL STRONGLY

Most of my life I have said that I don't want to be a vet, but that I do want to work with animals, so the other suggestions have always been like, 'oh you gonna be a zookeeper then' and then I've always been like 'Eh, maybe, I don't really know, maybe an animal rescue or something'. Recently though I was having a conversation with a friend about life and where to go next and what job I should get and I started to realize that a zookeeper is nothing at all what I want to do, and here is why...

Zoos keep animals captive, but God made animals to be wild and free. I get that some animals are going extinct and are endangered and that keeping them in zoos can sometimes be of help, and don't get me wrong, I can love a good zoo trip, but after being in college and learning all about animal health and behaviour, when I go to a zoo now, I start noticing all these things in the animals that aren't healthy. I'll be in the rhino area or the lion area and I'll start seeing them pacing or going around in circles and it makes me so sad. When an animal paces, it can mean that they are bored or stressed. Pacing or circling, or other abnormal behaviours is a coping mechanism, but also a form of self-harm. I haven't seen these in zoos, but for more information, abnormal behaviours can include, abnormal eating, such as carnivores eating greens; it can also be animals excessively scratching or grooming themselves, biting on the bars of a cage; it can even include abnormal aggression where an animal gets in a fight for no obvious reason and there are more, but that's not what I'm here for. 

Back to the zoo topic. If an animal is showing abnormal behaviours, it means that they don't have enough space or aren't put in right social groups, such as, I will sometimes see tigers in groups of two in a zoo, even though they are solitary animals and even lions, though they will be put with other lions, in the wild they will live in a pride of like 14 or so, though I do know that you probably can't keep that many lions in the same enclosure, but you could at least give a small pride of lions a big space. 

You see for me, its okay to help the population of an animal species, like you can help them get better, but then set them free again. Rescue zoos are fine, rescue centers are fine, but zoos and safaris, places that keep animals that belong in the wild, captive, not okay, they are most likely not happy there. Animals that have been captive for too long and then cannot survive in the wild, yes, they can stay in zoos, but animals that are very capable of living in the wild, just set them free.

Well that's my complaint about captive animals over, hope you enjoyed or didn't, whatever, I don't really care.

BeeBee

xxx