Iâve heard about this and I donât recall anyone being bitten. Injured by debris, yes, but no one got eaten.
Every legitimate aquarium and zoo (Iâm not counting things like SeaWorld, which are simply amusement parks pretending to be something else by the presence of a few animals among the rides) is a non-profit scientific institution. People donât understand, that much like museums, the part the public sees is only a small part of whatâs going on. A real zoo or aquarium employes numerous Ph.D level scientists and much of what we know about animals, their behavior, their genetics and their reproduction is due to the research that goes on there. Thatâs why we have them.
Thereâs a timely and interesting article in todayâs (July 6) NYT, âZoo Animals and Their Discontentsâ which discusses how captivity affects some of them emotionally and psychologically. Some of the research being done in zoos is exploring the depression some animals suffer there. Not all zoos are progressive in providing better and more natural habitats or ways to keep the animals mentally stimulated. Zoos simply arenât happy places.
Lots of us worry more about people than we do about whether a tilefish or even a shark has a socially exciting, self-actualized and fulfilling life when it comes down to it. Most wild animals spend their lives hoping not to get eaten while internal parasites and external make their lives very unpleasant.
Life for 99.9% of things on this planet consists of waiting to be a snack for something larger or something microscopic. If they are lucky, itâs a quick death, if notâŠwell, ever seen a wildebeest limping across the plain with a partially chewed off leg from a croc in a river crossing? Or one I once saw with a healthy chunk of intestines dangling out from a lion bite? Lived for several days but I donât think it had a good time. Saw pictures of a lion once on the other end: Starved to death from a jaw broken so badly it just dangled.
Nature is cruel and uncaring. Zoos are havens of peace and compassion comparatively.
That shark was pulling on their legs, just like l was pulling on yours. 
Lots of us can walk and chew gum at the same time. That is, lots of us can worry about people and animals and their health, safety, and welfare. I have a feeling that given a choice between living free in nature and living like a zombie behind bars most animals would take their chances in their natural habitats.
And if popular response to Michael Vick (especially in comparison to Donte Stallworth, Ray Lewis, or even Aaron Hernandez) is any indication, more people worry about animals having happy and fulfilling lives than we do about random humans.
Iâm guessing you donât agree with New Hampshireâs state motto.
I would guess that by your standards a lot of zoos in the world arenât âreal,â or âlegitimateâ zoos, especially those located outside the industrialized West.
Science may be something that is done at zoos, but history shows that thatâs not why we have zoos: ancient Egyptians werenât doing a lot of science. And large numbers of diversified zoos, each containing with hundreds of different animals from around the world, would seem like a hugely inefficient way to conduct scientific research.
Thereâs a difference between menageries (where royalty from ancient times kept exotic and dangerous animals as status symbols) and zoos. A zoo is short for âzoological park/gardenâ, meaning that their purpose is zoological research. In fact many early zoos werenât even open to the public; they existed solely for use of researchers. The London Zoo was once of these when it first started. Itâs open to the public now, of course, but itâs still primarily about research today.
I would guess that by your standards a lot of zoos in the world arenât âreal,â or âlegitimateâ zoos, especially those located outside the industrialized West.
In this modern globally Internet-connected world, there is a rather simple test. Find the domain name of the institution in question. Is the ending (bearing in mind that some countries have localized versions) â.gov/.org/.eduâ? If so itâs legit. If it is â.comâ it probably isnât.
I was bitten by a penguin in Berlin zoo. It was very realâŠ
It wasnât for naught. It made me think. Not that I hadnât thought of your point before, but it was a good reminder. I go to a local shop where they sell birds. Its hard to look at these beautiful creatures with clipped wings sitting in cages. I guess their lives get better once theyâre bought, but not much compared to what life should be for them. People are just so used to our subjugation of animals that most of us donât think twice about it. But its different with domesticated and wild animals. My dogs are very happy living in a house and running around in fields every day. A wolf would go nuts and eat my arm off. Well probably my internal organs first ;). Its long past time for us to leave the wild creatures of the world alone and stop catching them for our pleasure.
Itâs like theyâve never heard of transparent aluminum.
Well, a spy might get captured by someone who had a tank full of them with lasers on their frickinâ headsâŠ
Itâs like you didnât even read my warnings about Western ethnocentrism. But tell me all about, for example, the Dushanbe zoo, and whether it is a ârealâ zoo under your standards.
So, tell me about the Tiergarten Schönbrunn, the oldest âzooâ in operation. It started as a menagerie, but is now open to the public, and arguably itâs still primarily about exhibiting exotic animals to people.
When started, the London Zoo would have been one of a very few collections of exotic animals in the world, and one of the few ways for scientists to come into contact with them. In that context this system makes some sense. But in âthis modern globally Internet-connected world,â it would be much more efficient to perform science (if such is your primary goal) under a very different system of organization. Depth instead of breadth, less duplication of collections/âresearchâ between zoos, and even more field work is what we might expect to see from a science-based network of organizations.
The Pentagon probably has .gov at the end of its domain name. Is it ligit? Yes. Is it moral? You tell me.
Iâm surprised you didnât bring up the example I thought of, which was the North Korean zoo in Pyongyang (which reportedly even displays cats and dogs given that most of the public canât afford their own) . But to claim that âWestern ethnocentrismâ leads me to think that the primary purpose of zoos is science is to ignore the real advances in scientific knowledge that Japanese, (South) Korean, and even Chinese zoos have given us. There is real scientific exploration in non-Western zoos.
As for the âTiergarten Schönbrunnâ, the wikipedia page suggests that it was privatized in the 1980s. That doesnât suggest that it is a an legitimate zoo in the scientific sense these days at least. Not to mention that in German there is a difference between âTiergartenâ and âZooâ, just as there is in English between âmenagerieâ and âzooâ.
As for your suggestions as for what zoos can do to improve, check out the research top zoos like San Diegoâs and the Smithsonianâs do â they already do field work and collaborations between zoos.
Actually it has â.milâ. But it isnât for profit either. I have a lot more problem with Lockheed-Martin and Haliburton than I do with the actual military. And the profit motive is a primary reason.
Japan and Korea are part of what is sometimes called the industrial West, which is basically the OECD countries. Though there is significant Westernization by dint of their economic and scientific advancement, significant cultural differences remain in these countries, however, and these are only magnified in countries that are neither culturally Western nor industrialized.
Thatâs not in dispute. All zoos also display animals to the public, for public entertainment. Neither of these true statements tell us anything about why zoos exist, their primary purpose, or whether they are operating in accordance with that purpose.
So it used to be a legitimate zoo before 1980, but it stopped being legitimate when it was privatized? And itâs at fault for being called a âTiergartenâ when it was founded before the word âZooâ had ever been invented/used?
Does AZA accrediation make something a zoo? Probably not, since SeaWorld is a member. But then what do you say when the Calgary Zoo sends one of its elephants to SeaWorld-owned Busch Gardens and the others to DCâs National Zoo? Does that make the Calgary Zoo less of a real zoo?
I donât doubt that great zoos do great work. But they donât do great work with all the animals they have, and even at the best zoos much of their collection is to display animals to the public. What great research does the National Zoo do with their Otters and Prairie Dogsâto say nothing of the goats and cows in their petting zooâand why is that research/science best done in Washington, DC?
I got bitten by a parrot at Birdland in Bourton on the Water, and that isnât even a flipping zoo! 
