228 accredited zoos published 5,175 peer-reviewed manuscripts between 1993 and 2013. [13] In 2017, 173 accredited US zoos spent $25 million on research, studied 485 species and subspecies of animals, worked on 1,280 research projects, and published 170 research manuscripts. [14]Because so many diseases can be transmitted from animals to humans, such as Ebola, Hantavirus, and the bird flu, zoos frequently conduct disease surveillance research in wildlife populations and their own captive populations that can lead to a direct impact on human health. For example, the veterinary staff at the Bronx Zoo in New York alerted health officials of the presence of West Nile Virus. [15]Zoo research is used in other ways such as informing legislation like the Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act, helping engineers build a robot to move like a sidewinder snake, and encouraging minority students to enter STEM careers. [37][38][39]

Controversy has historically surrounded zoos, from debates over displaying “exotic” humans in exhibits to zookeepers not knowing what to feed animals. [3] A gorilla named Madame Ningo, the first gorilla to arrive in the United States in 1911 who was to live at the Bronx Zoo, was fed hot dinners and cooked meat despite gorillas being herbivores, for example. [3][4] The contemporary debate about zoos tends to focus on animal welfare on both sides, whether zoos protect animals or imprison them.

According to a study of 26 zoos worldwide published in Conservation Biology, visitors to zoos increased their knowledge of biodiversity and specific individual actions to protect biodiversity. [11]Robin Ganzert, PhD, President and CEO of American Humane, stated, “zoos provide people, especially impressionable children, with the opportunity to see these remarkable animals up close. People won’t protect what they don’t love, and they can’t love what they don’t know. No matter how closely programs like Planet Earth depict animals, nothing will match the bond of seeing them in real life. Just look at a child’s eyes at the zoo when he or she encounters a tiger or similarly majestic animal.” [12]

I am a lifelong fan of good zoos (note the adjective) and have visited dozens of zoos, safari parks and aquaria around the world. I also spent a number of years working as a volunteer keeper at two zoos in the U.K. and my own interests now span to the history of zoological collections and their design, architecture and research so it is probably fair to say I’m firmly in the pro-zoo camp.

However, I am perfectly willing to recognise that there are bad zoos and bad individual exhibits. Not all animals are kept perfectly, much as I wish it were otherwise, and even in the best examples, there is still be room for improvement.

Education. Many children and adults, especially those in cities will never see a wild animal beyond a fox or pigeon, let alone a lion or giraffe. Sure television documentaries get ever more detailed and impressive, and lots of natural history specimens are on display in museums, but that really does pale next to seeing a living creature in the flesh, hearing it, smelling it, watching what it does and having the time to absorb details

Conservation – reservoir and return. It’s not an exaggeration to say that colossal numbers of species are going extinct across the world, and many more are increasingly threatened and risk extinction. Moreover, some of these collapses have been sudden, dramatic and unexpected or were simply discovered very late in the day. Zoos protect against a species going extinct. A species protected in captivity provides a reservoir population against a population crash or extinction in the wild. Here they are relatively safe and can be bred up to provide foundation populations. A good number of species only exist in captivity and still more only exist in the wild because they have been reintroduced from zoos, or the wild populations have been boosted by captive bred animals. Quite simply without these efforts there would be fewer species alive today and ecosystems and the world as a whole would be poorer for it. Although reintroduction successes are few and far between, the numbers are increasing and the very fact that species have been saved or reintroduced as a result of captive breeding shows their value. Even apparently non-threatened species and entire groups can be threatened suddenly (as seen with white nose syndrome in bats and the Chytridiomycosis fungus in amphibians) it’s not just pandas and rhinos that are under threat.

All in all with the ongoing global threats to the environment it’s hard for me to see zoos as anything other than being essential to the long-term survival of numerous species. Not just in terms of protecting them and breeding them for reintroduction, but to learn about them to aid those still in the wild, as well as to educate and inform the public about these animals

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,     When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee,     But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!

But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!