Children love to see animals

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What message is given to school students taken to zoos, by their school teachers or parents? If I pity the animals, I also pity the kids for being forced to attend these places, on the pretext of educating them about wildlife. They get to see a lot of bored, caged animals, and that’s all.

In the grander scheme of things, I suppose it helps to desensitise them when it comes to their acceptance of animal factories. It helps them to see the intensive battery cages that hold thousands of hens, as okay places.

Our society certainly doesn’t want children to be too sensitive towards animals in case they stop eating them. By the time they grow up into adults the process is supposed to be more or less completed; by this time, the adult should be too obstinate to see what their own eyes are telling them. Just as they are supposed to believe that animal-based foods are essential for good health, so too they should know that zoos “save animals”.

So just what do we get when we pay to get into zoos to see a lot of imprisoned exotic creatures? We get what we see, namely a show of the worst sort of horror, the reduction of wild beauty to captive ugliness. We see how clever humans have been in capturing so many exotic animals and condemning them to a lifetime of incarceration. If you love animals don’t go to Taronga, it will upset you. If you like horror, the zoo is just the ticket.