37.
Zoos busily justify themselves on the
grounds that they provide "captive breeding programmes" and
"constitute a 'lifeline' for endangered species", implying a sort of
protective custody. But with diminishing habitats, there’s little likelihood of
a return to the wild either for present or future generations. In reality zoos
are in the entertainment business, and a lucrative one it is too. But I wasn’t
entertained; I was too ashamed to look too long at the animals or directly into
their faces.
I
saw things which haunt me still, particularly the once-mighty lion reduced to a
mere shadow of his former glory, living in a zone between life and death. There
was a clouded leopard with merely six square metres of flooring and no exposure
to any sunlight. Great apes were reduced to walking about like zombies. Kodiac
bears wore fur, rubbed to the skin from lying on concrete all day. I saw Back
Sans swimming in a shallow concrete tank with their wings clipped to prevent
escape. The mysterious Dancing Brolga was cooped up in a 4 metre high cage and
certainly not dancing. A 2½ metre-wingspan Andean Condor was imprisoned in a
similar sort of cage.
And then I visited the
‘Nightlife Show’. Inside a concrete bunker there was a row of glassed-in cages,
containing some of Australia’s nocturnal animals and birds. They are being kept
here in perpetual dim blue light (to simulate night in the bush). To give the
place a ‘realistic atmosphere’, these creatures endure a continuous ghostly
drone of a dingo howling. The design of this display must surely have arisen
from a particularly sadistic imagination.
Do we want children to grow
up immune to cruelty like this? If so give them a day out at Taronga Zoo.
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