Every so often in the news, there is a story on parental abuse. Often these stories include a child or children being confined to a basement or a single room. We have all heard these types of horrific accounts, and most of us share a similar response of shock and outrage. We imagine the type of psychological damage done to these children and shudder at the thought of ever having to experience such a miserable way of existence ourselves. However, what we don’t realize is that we are participating in something very similar to such stories when we go to the zoo.
Let’s consider the elephant. In the wild, the Asian elephant’s home range can be as large as 200,000 acres while the African elephant’s can be a staggering 2.7 million acres. All this land allows the elephants to eat, explore and socialize properly. Now let’s consider the average zoo enclosure size for this animal. Most zoo enclosures for elephants are about one acre, with the larger ones being up to five. The difference between the size of these animals’ range in the wild versus their range in a zoo is astronomical. This is far worse than being confined to one room in a house; it’s like being confined to one corner.
It makes sense that we all enjoy the zoo. It provides us with an opportunity to see animals that we might have never been able to see in our lifetimes otherwise, like the elephant. However, we cannot keep sacrificing these animals’ happiness and proper lifestyle merely so we can pay a few bucks to look at them for a few hours a few times a year. This is not right.
It’s easy to go through the zoo without thinking of this issue. We can stare at the animals and eat our concessions and then go home without a second thought of what it’s like to live in a corner. But we shouldn’t, just as we would never ignore a child being confined to single room for his whole life. We need to petition to make a change. I know zoos will always exist. I’m not saying we need to put an end to them altogether, although I do believe that would be in the best interest of animals like the elephant. I simply want us to challenge zoos to at least enlarge these enclosures if nothing else. Let’s turn the elephant’s corner into a room, or even a house.