Hey Zoo! I Am No More Coming to Visit You.
My first experience.
I recently visited a Zoo.
One may ridicule me if I say that it was my first visit to a Zoo. But that is a fact. I have never ever, been to a menagerie or such a wild park, even as a child. I had it in mind, though, to visit one day, which happened now, at the age of 36.
So, we, (I and my husband) wanted to show our child, who is a 3-year-old toddler, some real animals.
You see living in a largely urban region, one doesn’t get to see and experience much variety of these critters around except camels (if you pass by a desert or visit some natural wild spots ) and cats (they are plenty, straying in the cities) and pigeons and a very few birds. Our daughter had seen various kinds of animals only in books and on television. And thus, we decided to visit a nearby zoo so she could see how at least some of these beings look in real.
It was a weekend. We chose to go to a popular private wildlife park in the region. Some of our friends, who had been there before, had informed us that this zoo contains quite a number of wild animals including tigers, lions, monkeys, chimpanzees, Giraffes, crocodiles, and alligators. Hence, we got excited that our Tot would be happy to perceive and have close proximity to most of her favorite animals.
Inside the Zoo, we indeed saw all of them. A few varieties of tigers and lions, monkeys, chimps, orangutans, snakes, alligators, tortoises, giraffes, and many more.
But I realized that I wasn’t feeling good. I felt a very unpleasant guilt taking all over my mind — to see all these living beings, having been held captive. Never did it occur to me before until I actually witnessed these living beings locked in cages and some of them even tied.
A short imagination appeared in my mind. What if all of us (humans) are, one day, in these cages or having ropes tied around our necks or wrists which are fastened to curtail our movements or sometimes, being pulled by other creatures by such rope, who make us move and do stuff, often forcibly and against our will. Just a fantasy of us living a life, having no control and free will, at all, to live it as we wish to, even to move around, staying caged or tied all throughout, and being entirely controlled by other living beings, made me shudder. And these poor beings are actually living this miserable destiny for decades now.
How depressing, disturbing, and frustrating it must have been for them to live as slaves of humans.
I remembered a movie I had once watched — War for the Planet of the Apes. In this movie, a rogue army of humans detains apes, who once lived free, in their own territory in the wild, as powerful and self-sufficient. So, this movie, at a point, demonstrated these apes feeling terribly miserable, downhearted, and frustrated for having been constrained as captives and having to work for the humans as their slaves, being completely controlled by the humans.
It was aching to see a mighty tiger, who belongs to the species, which is one of the apex and powerful predators on our planet, being pulled by a couple of staff in the park, using a rope that was tied around its neck — who was taking him around within the zoo, only for the visitors to experience it walk around in their vicinity. And if one closely focused on the tiger’s behavior and reactions during that time, while it was being taken around by those people, one could clearly see it was extremely furious and infuriated. It was obvious that those persons were really exerting force and pressure to pull the tiger and make him follow in their footsteps. One can attempt to feel, placing oneself in the tiger’s place, given the natural attitude and behavior of this animal, how it must be feeling at that point in time.
At another spot, an orangutan was brought out and was left free to interact with the visitors. It would grab any kid who would come close to it and would try to squeeze the kid or would pull them by their clothes or push them till they fell down. And every such kid, who has had such an experience with the orangutan, was clearly frightened and was running away. Though a lot of people gathered there thought that’s what this animal is supposed to do, I personally strongly felt it was its anger and that it was expressing its exasperation out on the kids.
A sense of guilt surrounded me. Suddenly I wanted to move away with my family from that place.
That day I realized that only to enable us (humans) and our young ones, to see and watch these wild species closely, we have caged and fastened them, depriving them of their freedom, free-wills and comfort. Which means we have enslaved all of these living beings, who have equal rights, just like us, to live freely in the habitat suitable for and preferred by them, only for our entertainment and amusement.
We wanted to show our kids real animals. But by choosing to give her this experience in a zoo, we made her see enslaved animals living in captivity completely controlled by us — humans. This was her first experience to see her favorite animals in reality and she did enjoy her time there. But her little mind must have also apprehended that the animals are meant to be controlled and used by us — humans. Isn’t this a wrong and dangerous lesson, she got?
Of course, we will do our best to make her understand and appreciate that all the living beings on our planet deserve all the respect from us and that it is absolutely wrong to detain or deprive them of their freedom, resources, and environment, and that we have no right to use and abuse them for our benefits but we can only love and help them.
But yes, the hard truth we learned is — zoos, contrary to their alleged educational role, are not the appropriate places to provide our children the opportunity to see real animals and birds. They do not teach our children about the natural attributes of these living beings but rather provide a distorted image and teach them how these beings must be treated (rather than used and controlled for our interests).
We no longer support this exploitative industry and would never visit them.
