Produced on Archival Quality Paper
An Ethical Defense of
Modern Zoos
Jennifer Helen Gray
Submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements of the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy
March 2015
Department of Arts
The University of Melbourne
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Animal Welfare in Zoos: Balancing Ethics and Conservation, Study notes of Ethics
The impact of zoos on animal welfare, the moral significance of zoo animals, and the debates surrounding animal rights. It also discusses the role of zoos in advancing our knowledge of animals and their needs, improving animal welfare, and their conservation efforts. The document emphasizes the importance of providing good welfare for zoo animals and the ethical considerations involved.
What you will learn
- How do well-run zoos maintain high levels of animal welfare?
- What are the ethical considerations for animal welfare in zoos?
- What debates surround animal rights in the context of zoos?
- What is the moral significance of zoo animals?
- How have zoos advanced our knowledge of animals and their needs?
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Produced on Archival Quality Paper
An Ethical Defense of
Modern Zoos
Jennifer Helen Gray
Submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements of the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy
March 2015
Department of Arts
The University of Melbourne
Declaration
This is to certify that:
the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, the thesis is fewer than 100 000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices.
Jennifer Helen Gray
367387
Date: 31 July 2015
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to my husband, Richard Seddon, for taking this journey with me and always being encouraging and supportive. Richard has endured countless discussions and lectures on the ethics of zoos with grace, good humour and sage advice allowing me the luxury of a sounding board to progress or terminate lines of argument. My supervisor, Andrew Alexandra, has guided me with significant ethical advice and endless curiosity about zoos, encouraging me to write more comprehensively and argue more coherently. Lesley Gray and Sally Sherwin caught many errors and eliminated much repetition. My colleagues in the service of zoos around the world, who have disagreed with me and pushed my thinking in applying ethical constructs to our day to day operations. And finally the animals we work with every day, they deserve more than we can ever give them. Thank you.
Foreword - Of Beetles, People and Zoos
‘Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.’ 1
It’s a sunny day at the end of summer. The light spilling through the window is warm, filled with tiny specks of floating dust. Battling to concentrate on A Small Treatise on the Great Values^2 a movement catches my eye. A small, black beetle is making its way across the table, seemingly with purpose and intent. I pause to consider where it thinks it is going, we are on the 9th floor, there are no plants in the apartment and nothing suited to small, black beetles, yet onwards he marches.
I lean over and look closer, it is not a special beetle by any consideration, but it is beautiful. His carapace gleams in the diluted sunlight reflecting shades of green and blue, a tiny moving rainbow. His eyes are incredible works of engineering. His limbs are covered in tiny hairs and seem to be sampling the air around him.
As he gets closer it is time to take a decision on the fate of this little, black work of art. It is up to me what happens next. Perhaps I should kill him. It would be very easy to do and take a few seconds. No-one would hold me to moral account for this action; after all there is nothing wrong with killing beetles. He has invaded my house, I am at risk that he is really a she, and pregnant, so before long I could be overrun with little, black beetles that may threaten my health or lifestyle. Yet I pause. There is no benefit in his pointless death. There is no real threat to me and there are other options. It talks to what kind of person I am; would I kill a living creature simply because I can? It seems to me like an abuse of my power, to kill another needlessly.
Instead I reach out my hand and place my finger in his way. The beetle stops. He waits a second then walks around my finger to the right. What just happened? Did this animal pause and consider an obstruction; did he weigh up his options and decide on a course of action? Of course not, our current wisdom holds that beetles are not
(^1) Milne A.,A; Winnie-the-Pooh; http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1225592-winnie-the-pooh. (^2) Comte-Sponville Andre; A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues ; Henry Holt and Company; 1996; New York.
sentient, they are not capable of thought and planning.... but doubt lingers in my mind. We believe their brains are too small for complex thought and yet we now have computers that fit on a grain of sand, capable of incredibly powerful calculations. Perhaps the beetle is no more sophisticated than a toy or an automatic vacuum cleaner, it just follows preset rules, there is an obstacle, look left and right, proceed where there is no obstacle.
I try it again but this time the beetle’s response is without pause, he encounters my finger and moves around it to the left. I am intrigued, it seems logical to assume that this creature has learnt. The first time when he paused he took a moment to consider the danger of a human finger, the possibility that his life was under consideration, perhaps momentary panic and fear flood his brain, but the second time he knew it was harmless.
The possibilities of endless research questions fill my brain. I am intrigued and want to know more. A new course of action presents, I can keep the beetle in a bottle and try out a number of experiments. I doubt any will change the world but they will help me in my understanding of animals, they will add to a body of knowledge. If I get bored I can even kill the beetle with the mind of a scientist, determining how long he can last in a glass jar without food and water. But again that seems wrong.
Scientists know that you must care for animals that you place in captivity, so I should rather keep him in a specially prepared habitat, with soft substrate where he can nest, with plants and logs so he can express his natural behaviours. If I catch a female beetle, or two, a healthy colony can be started. My friend’s kids will love the colony and watch the emergence of the fat pupae in spring; we can plot the life cycle and together discover the amazing complexities of little beetles. He may even be an endangered species; many beetles are disappearing as we replace their habitat with houses and agricultural uses. My colony may become the hope for the survival of the species. Each year I could place hundreds of beetles back in to the neighbourhood in the hope that they will be able to keep a foothold on the planet, surviving the attack of pesticides, introduced pests and habitat destruction.
or less important? It is hard to believe that they are less valuable when you stop and look at the amazing complexity of butterflies and understand just how delicate they are or you pause to consider the critical role that butterflies play in pollinating plants and maintaining the eco system.
For other species every decision is scrutinised by animal lovers and devoted fans. Elephants, bears, big cats and great apes evoke emotional reactions and scrutiny. Community members and visitors are interested in the care of animals in zoos, they ask about feeding the animals, how we exercise them and how we plan for the sustainability of these complex animals. We need to address suspicions of exploitation by ensuring transparency and access to information.
As humans our responses to animals are complex and often inconsistent. We love animals, we care about individuals, yet we eat animals, kill them in their thousands and destroy their homes for our own benefits. For many of these majestic animals, numbers in the wild are now less than numbers in captivity. Without action, intervention and help, they will simply disappear.
It is challenging to think about animals and our responses when we use a term like ‘animal’ to cover thousands of species with greatly varying capacities and evolutionary roles. In this thesis I have used the term ‘animal’ to include all living creatures excluding humans. Where it is necessary to speak of distinct groups of animals such as mammals or birds I make that distinction. In this application animals include fish, invertebrates and all the other usual suspects - mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians.
Like animals, zoos come in many shapes and sizes. The most basic definition is that zoos hold animals in captivity and charge people to see them. The motivations, skills and operations vary enormously. This thesis strives to shine light on the ethical challenges and responses for zoos, asking are even the best zoos ethical?
The story of zoos is a story of redemption. From their beginnings, based in colonial times and linked to displays of power and domination, modern zoos are emerging as an unlikely hero for conservation. The dire circumstances of many species
on our planet require unlikely heroes. The ethical challenges of working with animals are significant, only time will tell if zoos can continue evolving and thus remain ethical and worthy, or will they be closed forever, a quaint reminder of a time when we treated magnificent creatures as resources.
Tomorrow, I will visit Mali our five year old elephant calf. She is certainly sentient; if hurt she screams, evoking protective responses from her mother. She also expresses joy with trumpeting and trunk waving. She understands language and has learnt over 40 behaviours. She can express herself with body language and with a range of tweets, roars and squeaks. I was present at Mali’s birth. I lived through the concern and preparation for a complex and fraught time, I cried with joy to see her first wobbly steps and I have the responsibility to make sure that Mali is well cared for, for the next 70 years.
My responses to animals are personal, professional and academic. Few people are as well placed as zoo people to debate animal ethics, but few zoo people choose to enter this arena. Ethics in zoos are complex, compounded by the fact that there is no simple response that we can have to thousands of complex, intriguing and valuable species, represented by millions of individual animals each with a unique life story, each with unique needs and interests.
In recent years the debate around animals in zoos has attracted increased interest and scrutiny. Without clear ethical principles to guide actions, zoos and aquariums run the risk of taking actions that can and will be challenged, increasingly undermining the very core of their operations. Each bad decision is amplified through the media and social debate, each bad decision erodes confidence that zoos and aquariums are morally defensible.
By applying clear and accepted ethical principles to the operations of zoos and aquariums I hope that I can empower zoo people to consider their actions more philosophically and inspire them to take actions that are morally defensible.
1. Introduction to Applied Ethics and Zoos
In Are Zoos Morally Defendable_? Tom Regan concludes ‘not that zoos as we know them are morally indefensible but rather by admitting that we have yet to see an adequate ethical theory that illuminates why they are not.’ 3_
Do you remember your first visit to the zoo? You probably visited the zoo with your parents or your school. At the gates you danced from foot to foot, excited at the thought of seeing real, live, wild animals so close to home. You rushed through the gates with a map in your hands promising exotic experiences and amazing animals. At some point you would have come face to face with a magnificent creature, a tiger, lion or gorilla and stared, mesmerised, into their eyes, for the first time realising that there are other intelligent animals on the planet.
Then you grew up and stopped visiting the zoo, your infatuation with animals replaced by other humans, cars and mortgages. Until, with children of your own, paging through children’s books, you reconnect with the animals that grace the pages from aardvarks to zebra. As your own children begin to recognise and love animals you remember the zoo and return to a place loved from your childhood, eager to introduce your children to magnificent animals in a beautiful setting.
At the zoo you find that much has changed, the old cages are gone, replaced with new habitats. Fewer animals occupy larger spaces. Conservation messages have replaced zoological trivia. Campaigns urge you to change your behaviours and request your support. The anthropocentric shows and performances have also gone, replaced with keeper talks and displays of natural behaviours. But many things remain the same; the school groups still pour through the gates, parents share stories and ice- cream with their children, and tigers pace.
(^3) Regan, Tom in Norton, Bryan; et al; Ethics on the Ark ; Smithsonian Institution Press; 1995; Washington; pg 38.
As an adult visiting a zoo, at some time you will have looked into the eyes of an animal and wondered if it is right that we contain wild animals. You see the joy that your children get from the experience and understand the conservation work that zoos undertake, yet you know you would not like to be treated the way that we treat animals. You imagine a lion would be happier in the wilds of Africa behaving in the ways that lions have evolved to behave, instead of sleeping in front of thousands of screaming children.
Zoos reflect the often contradictory relationships that people have with animals; rejecting blatant welfare atrocities, defending our right to use animals for our own ends and yet feeling that something may be amiss in the ways that we treat and use animals.
Public zoological gardens emerged over the last 225 years; some as tribute to imperial power, some from a private passion for animals, some as a public good and some as commercial undertakings. At their most basic all zoos contain animals, in a relationship of vulnerability and dependence, and provide people access to see the animals, for their enjoyment or education. Today, zoos are enormously popular. It is estimated that over 700 million people visit zoos each year.^4 Good, modern zoos are vastly different from zoos of 100 years ago. As cultural institutions, zoos have observed changes in knowledge and sentiments and have adapted and changed. Zoos have advanced our knowledge of animals and their needs; they have improved facilities and applied rigour to improving animal welfare. With their passion for animals, zoos have been on the forefront of conservation efforts aimed at protecting and saving the rare animals of the world.
(^4) Gusset Markus and Dick Gerald; The G lobal Reach of Zoos and Aquariums in Visitor Numbers and Conservation Expenditures ; Zoo Biology 30; 2011; pg 566-569.
access to understand the complexities that are involved in zoo operations. Old practices are stuck in our memories and influence perceptions, thus it is important to set the scene of current practices.
Next I consider the body of evidence that there is moral disquiet with zoos (Chapter 3) and the importance of such disquiet. Mostly it is the animals that give grounds for concern, as we increasingly accept that animals should be morally considerable. While the use of animals in zoos is neither as significant nor as impactful as other uses of animals, at its core zoos use animals in ways that have the potential to cause pain or suffering and as such there are grounds for moral disquiet. Even if pain and suffering are not present, zoo animals are still used and that raises moral concerns.
The most widely accepted and agreed moral principle, with respect to the treatment of animals, is that sentient animals have an interest in their own welfare and as such a discussion on animal welfare provides a good starting point to consider the obligations of those who hold and work with animals. Animal welfare (Chapter 4), at its most simple, demands that animals should not be caused unnecessary pain and suffering. For well run zoos and aquariums, pain and suffering are not an integral part of operations. In fact zoos sell a promise of access to healthy, happy animals. While challenging and complex, it is arguably possible to eliminate unnecessary pain and suffering from zoo operations without destroying the core value proposition of zoos.
However, the interests of animals are far boarder than animal welfare. Animal rights theory (Chapter 5) considers other morally important interests that animals may possess and holds that animals are the kinds of beings that should be treated with respect for their autonomy and thus should be afforded the basic rights to life, liberty and freedom from pain and suffering. Zoos hold, own and use animals, constraining their freedom and deciding all important aspects on an individual animal’s life; their partners, their actions and even when to terminate their lives. The moral consideration of animals requires that zoos should act in ways that are consistent with the best interest of each individual animal, acting not as an owner but rather as a guardian for the individual. While easy to articulate, this approach requires an
understanding of the interests of each individual. However, most animals at zoos are currently treated as if there is a consistent species-level view of interests (elephants like swimming) rather than at an individual level. A standard view of any system of rights requires the ability to handle conflicting rights and animal rights are no different. Within zoos there are conflicts between animal and human rights, the rights of different individuals in a group and the rights of an individual conflicting with the survival of a species. Where rights conflict, we can draw on general rights principles to discover the best course of action.
Consequentialism (Chapter 6) considers the moral value of an action based on the consequences or outcomes against an agreed value system. It is proposed that zoos and aquariums provide experiences for both humans and animals and that these experiences may be positive, neutral or negative. Considering experiences as the value system, or consequences of zoo operations, I am able to apply consequentialism to assess zoo operations. An analysis of the positive and negative experiences generated at Melbourne Zoo is used to show the impact of a large, modern zoo. Even including the negative experiences of animals, Melbourne Zoo shows a net positive experience. Yet there are challenges for consequentialism, particularly when the costs are borne by different parties to those that enjoy the benefits and the party that carries the cost is unable to consent, as is the case in zoos.
A question remains. Even if the positive experiences exceed the negative experiences, what do zoos say about the virtue of humans in societies that support zoos and aquariums? Virtue ethics (Chapter 7) is getting a revival in terms of its ability to shed new light on complex ethical situations. While not delivering a strong case for or against zoos and aquariums, the virtue ethic discussion serves to add insight into the ethical assessment of zoos and the people that work in zoos and visit zoos.
Environmental ethics (Chapter 8) provides additional support for the role and importance of zoos in the 21st^ Century. Environmental ethics touches on both ethics and morality in new and novel ways. Environmental ethics asks us to consider if a life well lived allows for the destruction of environments and the extinction of species, hinting at the loss of value in our lives if we lived in a world devoid of diverse