Perhaps it Would Help to Think of Zoos as Retirement Homes

Some people don't like zoos.  Which is fine, everybody is absolutely entitled to like or dislike whatever they like (or don't like).  However some people seem to dislike zoos because they are mean to animals or some such thing.  Of course a badly run zoo most certainly is mean to animals, or at least it stands a good chance of so being but I have little sympathy with people who object to zoos on principle.

Whenever you hear somebody whining about the dignity of animals or how terrible it is for wild animals to be housed in zoos you should listen a little closer.  With a bit of effort you should be able to hear their brain actually decaying.  For starters if the animal is genuinely wild I would probably prefer it to be kept in a zoo.  Particularly if the only other alternative is to carry an elephant gun when I wander down to the shops.  While not many of them developed opposable thumbs or animal rights activists most animals were a good deal more successful at developing teeth and claws.

Animals do not tend to roam free because they are active libertarians.  Animals roam free simply as a function of where they were born.  If  a wildebeest is born on the Serengeti then it is going to roam free.  At least it had better if it doesn't want the grazing to be exhausted pretty quickly.  This doesn't really seem like my idea of freedom.

As for the dignity of animals, that's an easy one.  There isn't any.  Animals don't have dignity.  They have far more pressing concerns, like survival.  Any dignity we see in animals is imparted by our own imagination and is based on our (to my mind) arrogant delight in seeing human qualities in animals.  It is just as silly to claim dignity for an animal as it is to dress your pet dog in a sailor suit because he looks so cute.  A lion is a magnificent, handsome beast but do you honestly believe it is thinking about dignity at all when it is shoulders deep in the carcass of the wildebeest we met in the previous paragraph?

The most amusing thing about the concerns of animal activists in this situation is the cognitive dissonance involved.  By caring about animals, worrying about them and taking an interest in their well being they are essentially treating those animals as pets.  Nothing like that happens in the wild.  When humans were wild and uncivilised, just one animal amongst many, they didn't keep pets.  Animals were something you killed and ate if you could and hid from if you thought there was a good chance you would be on the wrong end of that transaction.  Even when we domesticated animals we did so so that we could eat them or exploit them in some other way more conveniently.  Actually being disinterestedly concerned about their well being is a very modern phenomenon.

I suspect that people look at the harmony of nature and see it as some sort of well organised collective with each according to their needs and blah blah blah.  Actually the harmony is created by everything doing their best to kill everything else and not quite succeeding.  The proof of this is simple.  On the entire planet there are only three types of animals that stand a chance of dying of old age.  These are humans, our pets, and the animals we put in zoos.