Stuff You Should Know - Are zoos good or bad for animals?

Episode Date: April 8, 2010

Zoos are popular because they allow visitors to see wild animals from all around the world, but how does living in captivity affect the animals? In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the pros and cons of zoos. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That makes this Stuff You Should Know. You know?

Went and saw Ronnie Millsap this weekend. Shut up. I swear to God. Really? Yeah. He's still alive. Oh yeah. He just released a new gospel album.

Is he the blind guy? Yeah. Okay. Where did he play? I've got to know. Spindale, North Carolina. Okay. I can say honestly that I've been to Spindale, North Carolina.

Did you go there to see him? Yeah. Yumi's a big fan actually. Wow. And he spent a half an hour talking about his life. That guy's had it rough, man. Yeah. You should check him out.

He's interesting. I mean, he was part of my childhood for sure. You should have gone. He played some old hits, but he actually has podcasts in case you. What? Yeah. He's got a podcast. Really?

Yeah. And then playing a song and like he'll talk to somebody like off camera or off mic or whatever. Like what did I forget or something like that? And then you'll hear something muffled and then we'll be like, oh yeah. Okay. He'll start playing. Is it called Mil-Sappen?

That's what I call it. I think it's called like the Ronnie Mil-Sapp show or something. I'd call it Mil-Sappen. Mil-Sappen. Yeah. Mil-Sappen with Ronnie. Yeah. And we met him too actually.

Of course. Eight people there. You could probably meet him. No, it was packed. We definitely skewed the median age tremendously. Oh yeah. There was a lot of old folks there. Sure.

But they went to Dollywood right afterward. We were definitely the only people from Atlanta there for sure. Cool. Yeah. Chuck. I love that intro. Thanks. Chuck.

Yes. Have you ever seen a chimpanzee masturbate? Yeah. I have. You have? Yeah. Sure. You're not the first person I've met who's seen that.

You saw it at the zoo? Yeah. I mean, is there any other answer? Then yes, it was at a zoo. If I say it was at my friend Roger's house. The authorities are going to show up at Roger's house. Sure. You have seen that.

I've never seen it. I think you have seen it on YouTube or something. See, I think that that is a normal behavior, as I understand it. They are primates after all, as are we. But I think that you could make an argument that there's such thing as doing it too much among chimpanzees. I mean, if you did notice that your chimpanzee was abusing himself a little too much, you could make a case that that chimpanzee was experiencing zucosis.

Wow. You just dropped the mic. Josh just left the room, literally. Thank you. Good night. He's gone. That's it. Yeah, that was my son.

He'll leave him on a line out. Yeah. Yeah. Zucosis, man. That's when animals and captivity start doing strange things, like a bear will pace in a circle for hours on end, or a chimp might abuse himself, or a cheetah might bathe itself too much, like self-groom how cats do, like holes in their body and stuff. Yeah.

There's even worse stuff too. A guy named Bill Travers, who's an actor from the UK who appropriately enough was in a movie called Born Free. He was an animal rights activist as well, and in 1992 he coined the term zucosis, and it describes some pretty horrific behavior. Like you said, a lot of it is found in the wild as well, but it's just too repetitive. It's over and over and over again. It's constant.

Yeah. Like animals groom in the wild, but they don't groom until they have sore spots on their skin. Yeah. There's other stuff that they don't normally do in the wild, like smear their feces on the windows of their enclosures, self-mutilation, like chewing their own tail or leg. There's a kind of bulimia that some primates exhibit in captivity where they vomit, eat their vomit, and then vomit again just over and over.

I don't, maybe out of boredom, maybe out of frustration or anger, but the point is, you see this among animals in captivity, you don't see this kind of behavior among animals in the wild, which indicates what some people would consider a problem with zoos. Let's get down to it. Discuss. Yeah. Are zoos good or bad? And obviously we've read the same article, so you can make the case for both, right?

Yeah. I guess we should start with good, since we've already indicated a hint of the bad. Just a hint. Just a hint. The good. Let's talk about some pros on the zoo side. Zoos have gotten a lot better in the last 4,000 years and a whole lot better in the last, like, 30 years from what I've seen.

Sure. Like when I was a kid and went to the Atlanta Zoo, it was the tile room with the gorilla in it. Yeah. And the monkey bars, or not the monkey bars, the cage bars. Right. Monkey bars were to play on, right? Yeah.

On the playground. They didn't have monkey bars. But I mean, if they're the bars to the cage for a monkey enclosure, they are technically monkey bars. I guess so. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Hey, yeah.

That's a good thing. Remember? It is. But they've come a long way in the last, like, 30 and 40 years and trying to create a more of the miniature habitats that they normally would live in. The fences are gone now, replaced with, like, moats. So they can't get to you, obviously, because that would be bad. Zoos have kind of kept in step with the progress of mental institutions.

Yeah. You know? In the last 30, 40 years, they've gotten a lot better. True. Apparently. They used to procure animals by going into the wild and taking them. Have you ever seen the Mystery Science Theater 3000 short, Catching Trouble? No.

It is so unsettling. It's a good one. You should check it out. Okay. Yeah. So they used to go out, procure animals, like they just go out to the planes and, like, get some giraffes and bring them home. They don't do that much anymore, although I do have some examples we'll get to later

where they still actually do that. Okay. Yeah. Now they have kept the breeding programs. Yeah. Or a lot of animals are born in a zoo. They never knew the wild, which you would make the argument that that's a lot better than having memory of, oh, I used to live in a 5,000 square mile range and now I live

in a 500 square feet area. True. And they also, Josh, are trying to help restore endangered species with breeding programs and releasing them back into the wild. So that's some good, right? That is good. Yeah. I mean, the California condor, right?

That's one that's usually held up as an example. Not too long ago, the California condor was on the verge of extinction and the San Diego in Los Angeles, who's got together and said, let's bring this vulture back. Let's get this vulture back up and running, okay? In flying. So they had it in flying. And they had a captive breeding program and they took the population, the global population of the California condor, which was just relegated to California, from less than two dozen birds

to 170. Yeah. And now it's self-sufficient. Even better, Chuck, is the Pear David's Deer, right? Yeah. Tell us that story. Well, this is a Chinese deer, so what I like to say. It is a deer from China and this deer had been bred in captivity or was extinct and

then they reintroduced it to the wild once they bred them in captivity. How did that happen? They went extinct in the wild, but they happened to have a few in captivity. Right. Okay. Yeah. And then they eventually released, I think, four into the wild for the first time in Los Angeles.

Another self-sufficient, self-sustaining. That's what they say. Which means they get it on. Yeah, they're a good-looking deer, too. So they don't have any problems. No. Okay. That just means it's a majestic animal.

Good-looking. Also, zoos often serve as a better home to animals that are part of traveling circuses. You remember our own aquarium here in Atlanta, rescued, I guess, the whale shark, both of their whale sharks. One was in Mexico, I think, and like a tank, it could barely turn around in. And now it's got the biggest tank in the world. We swam in it. We did.

It was cold. Big dudes. Yeah. And there's polar bears that have been rescued. Leo, the snow leopard, taken from Pakistan in 2007, was in great shape in 2007, and the Bronx Zoo said, give us that snow leopard. Bring him over here. Yeah.

That was my Bronx dude. Oh, I got it. Yeah. What else, Josh? Oh, they're care. We know a lot more now. We're about animals and what they need and the kind of habitat. So the care-taking of the animals in zoos has gotten way, way better over the years.

Yeah. Again, at the Bronx Zoo, they just released their, or they just opened their ardvark exhibit new and improved. And apparently ardvarks were notoriously difficult to keep alive and happy because their termite diet is really hard to replicate, but they've got it down to this insectivore chow and meat slurry diet, which sounds yummy. I wonder if it says, new and improved, now featuring live ardvarks, so like corpses. It's much improved.

No flies buzzing around them. Josh, a lot of zoos give back financially. The Bronx Zoo has channeled more than $3 million toward conservation projects in Africa. And sometimes they pair with groups like the Nature Conservancy to work, not even just within their zoo, but in other states to, I think, who's it, Toledo Zoo is working to restore butterfly habitats in Ohio. Yeah. And I have to tell you, the Toledo Zoo, for the size town of Toledo, the Toledo Zoo and

the Toledo Art Museum are world-class. Really? Great zoo. Yeah. It puts Atlanta Zoo to shame. And then you can go to Tony Packow's, right? Tony Packow's. Packow's?

Yeah. Hot dog? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The best hot dog on the planet from Tony Packow. It's good. Feed it to the ardvarks.

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You deserve more from your topical. To learn more, visit TopicalUpRising.com. In Josh, research and scientific research is obviously a big part of what zoos do nowadays. In 2002, zoos participated in 2,230 conservation projects in more than 80 countries. Which is pretty good. Yeah. We shouldn't just poo-poo that and go willy-nilly buy it. No.

You have to make the case that zoos are helping in some way, shape or form. Imagine the deer. A pair of David's deer that would not be around anymore, that species would be extinct if it weren't for conservation efforts among zoos. Condor, perhaps. California condor might be gone. Maybe. Lost of a vulture.

Apparently those things are huge. I read an article once where this guy was standing on a cliff in California and he heard this and then all of a sudden he just got really loud and boom right up in front of him, this enormous condor just flew up and it had been hunting, I guess, in this canyon and came up along the cliff's face and just flew like 10 feet in front of him. He said it was just huge and probably the most thrilling thing that's ever happened to him. Yeah, they're big.

I saw a bunch of them in Napa Valley on my recent trip. Nice. Tons of them. They're hanging around the vineyards because when you're plowing a vineyard, you'll dig up like rodents and stuff. The vultures follow along behind the tractor literally and go down there and eat up. Nice. Good for them.

Yeah. All right, Chuck, let's talk about the bad. We've got the ugly and the good down. Yeah. Let's talk about the bad. You mentioned that zoos are big on conservation, right? Some say they are. Well, in the U.S., if you are an animal exhibitor, meaning that you are showing animals for

money, you have to be licensed by the USDA. Yes. There's about 2,400 animal exhibitors in the U.S. Yeah, and they range from the San Diego Zoo to the place in Arkansas where you drive through and an ostrich sticks its head in your car. Right, and goes call the police. Yeah, exactly. About 200 of those 2,400 are actually members of the American Zoo Logical and Aquarium Association.

That's the AZA. The up-and-up probably. Those are the up-and-up. Now, the AZA has far higher standards than the USDA for its members, is stricter safety requirements, they force conservation spending among their members. So when you're not a member of the AZA, those other 2,200 animal exhibitors in the U.S. are spending nothing on conservation. And the other problem is the members of the AZA spend about 3% of their take at the gate

on conservation every year, which is not that much. I mean, it goes kind of far, but not far enough. Right. And also, I think 146 reintroduction programs took place in the 20th century. Yeah. 16 were successful. Yeah. Those are the stats you don't get.

No. We did 145 programs. And most of those programs were undertaken by the U.S. government. Right. So Zoos are getting a lot of credit, and taking a lot of credit actually, in the public mind, in the public consciousness, they very successfully carved out this place where, hey, we're here to save the animals. And the idea that they are a business that makes money off of people coming in and looking

at the animals has kind of been washed away, although it's still very present. The Zoos are very much businesses. Right. You know those condors? Yeah. Only about two-thirds of those were strong enough to live. Yeah. That's sad.

So you don't see that stat on the front end? No. They got plowed under the front end of the tractor, rather than flying in the back end. But they are, I mean, part of me says these 145 programs, only 16 were successful, but I mean, they were trying at least. So I will give them that. Well, yeah, but I mean, like, dead animals don't usually give you an E for effort, you know?

No. No. I think part of the other problem is, and I don't mean to hammer Zoos, like, I do see both sides of this coin. This isn't me just, like, yeah, we talked about the good, now let's really get to it. Again, there's that pair David Deere, it wouldn't have existed had it not been for Zoos, but I think by and large, if the reasons Zoos exist is because of encroachment on land. Like, there's no, there's a mind toward conservation, but there's not a mind toward preservation,

and that's really where the mind should be, the mind and the money, right? Right. I mean, if you take an elephant and put it into a little enclosure, it's going to go nuts. Sure. Elephants are actually, that's one of the big ones, as far as people, yeah, not trying to be a pun master there, but it's one of the big animals that people are trying to get out of Zoos, like, if you're not going to shut down a zoo, at least get the elephants

out of there. Yeah. And there's actually a website, Josh, called savewildelephants.com, and some Zoos are starting to get rid of their elephant habitats. And they should, honestly, I mean, elephants are used to traveling about 50 miles a day in large herds, and in the, in captivity, they're, you know, standing around in an enclosure all day. Alone, or with maybe a buddy or two.

Right. So they're very social, highly social animals that travel great distances, and no, they shouldn't be in captivity at all. Yeah. The Detroit Zoo actually got rid of their two elephants and closed down their exhibit, and the director of the zoo said Asian elephants should not live in small groups without many acres to roam, and they clearly shouldn't have to suffer the winters of the north. Yeah.

That's the other thing, you know, think about is, they're this elephant in the Detroit winter, are you kidding me? No, and even worse was a poor elephant called Maggie, the elephant, who in 2007, during a cold snap at her home at the Alaska Zoo, was kept for days on end in this little inside enclosure, because the zookeepers were like, she can't go outside, she'll freeze to death. Right. And there was a treadmill that was big enough for her, and she wouldn't use it. Yeah.

Apparently the public finally just went crazy over it. Because it's a treadmill. Yeah. Who likes a treadmill? Nobody. Nobody. I've got some more horror stories for you, Josh, if you want to hear. Yes.

Tatiana, Siberian tiger at the San Francisco Zoo in 2007, escaped the substandard enclosure that she was in, and was shot to death after she killed a person by police. So that happened. The Dallas Zoo, a gorilla named Jabari, tried to escape by jumping over the walls and moats, and was fatally shot by police. Witnesses later reported that teenagers were taunting the animal with rocks prior to his escape. Oh, I remember that.

Yeah. So these little kids throwing rocks at this gorilla, and then all of a sudden the gorilla escapes and the cops shoot it down. Yeah. I remember. This wouldn't happen if the gorilla was in the wild. Yeah. Did they get that kid, though?

Didn't it get its hands on one of the kids? I don't know. That's not in here. And at the Virginia Zoo, boy, they're really doing a great job. They had 10 prairie dogs die when their tunnel collapsed on them in their habitat. They had a rhinoceros drown in the moat that was trying to, you know, the moat that they use as a barrier. They had a zebra narrowly escaped death after jumping into the lion exhibit, which obviously

she had passage. And another zebra lost her life when she bolted from a holding pin, struck a fence and broke her neck. Jeez. So they're really, really doing a great job there at the Virginia Zoo. Well, I think that kind of demonstrates the problem. If zebras are too stupid to not run into fences and break their necks, then there shouldn't be fences around them.

I got another elephant stat too. Let's hear it, man. They studied records of 45 elephants, and they found that the median lifespan of an African elephant in a zoo is 16.9 years. Do you know what it is on the open plane? What? 56 years. Yeah, that's not good.

That's quite a drop. It is. Another argument that's made in favor of zoos often is that they educate the public. Studies have actually shown that people come out of zoos less informed than they were before. And with this kind of false sense of security that zoos have it under control and they don't really need to do anything for conservation or preservation efforts. So zoos could actually be counterproductive in that regard. Yeah.

And on that note, they say that the signs in the zoos, which you get, is a little information about their species and diet and where they're from. But if you notice, you never get any information on their normal behavior in the wild because you're not seeing it. So you're not really educating on how the animal really is. You're educating them on how they are in this small enclosure. And even then, it's just a sign like this zebra likes to eat this plant. This chimp loves to vomit, eat its vomit, and vomit again, and then smear its poop on the

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Have you ever just thought to yourself, why me? Why is life so unfair? What do other people see? When they watch me walk by, when I catch my reflection, people run, like I have a contagious infection. But it's not my mental health. I know that can be crushing. I'm talking about plaque psoriasis, but you didn't see that coming.

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In 2003, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and Lowry Park Zoo captured 11 African elephants. Elephants? Elephants. Sure. A species that is threatened and they captured them from their natural habitat in Swaziland and I guess brought them back to the zoo and then I've got one more really sad one that Jerry's going to not listen to. Okay.

Part of the problem in zoos, Josh, is that we like our cute little baby animals. Yeah. What happens to cute little baby animals? They grow up. They grow up and many times they get shuffled around after they're not cued anymore. Two different zoos moving around is not good for an animal. There was a chimpanzee named Edith born in the 1960s at the St. Louis Zoo and Edith was a big hit because she was a cute little baby.

Edith grew up like all animals do and wasn't as attractive. So they shuffled her to five different facilities over the course of the years, eventually landing at a roadside zoo in Texas and after an undercover investigation they found Edith in a filthy concrete pit, hairless, living on dog food. How sad is that? That's pretty sad. Jerry, did you hear that? She's not listening.

I mean, I don't want to throw the gauntlet down too much and say, think about this when you're going to a zoo. But think about this when you go to a zoo. Oh, yeah. If you see an animal pulling its own hair out, chewing its own tail off, or doing some other bizarre saddening behavior, you should feel that and you should tell somebody about it. You should contact somebody about it.

It's everyone's own choice how they view a zoo, obviously. But if it gets to you, then do something about it. There's plenty of organizations out there that somebody can join if they find that they are opposed to the concept of zoos. Absolutely. Pete also wanted to point out there are a few forward thinking zoos, progressive zoos that are trying their best to do right by the end. They're like Montessori zoos.

The Baltimore Zoo, good for you. Detroit Zoo, we love Detroit. Point Defiance Zoo in Aquarium and the North Carolina Zoo are apparently doing a pretty decent job of giving back. What was the last one? North Carolina. So, Atlanta's not in there, huh? No, Atlanta's not in there.

Grant Park, you been there lately? Years ago, two years ago. Yeah. Have you heard of the Lujan Zoo? No, but I'll bet it's in China. It's in Argentina. Maybe, L-U-J-A-N, maybe it's not Lujan. They have an awful zoo where you can go and sit on the back of a lion or get in the cage

with a tiger and pet the tiger or bottle feed a bobcat. And you can do this when you pay your 50 bucks. And it is a truly terrible thing because you're not supposed to ride lions. People aren't supposed to interact with these predators like that. If the Darwin Awards have taught us anything against those things, you have to sign a thing when you go in there saying that if I get killed, then it's not your fault. Then it's just thinning the hurt. But I don't usually do this, but there is actually an online petition against this place

at thepetitionsite.com, and they need 10,000 signatures and they're at 1,100. So even if you like zoos, you don't like the Lujan Zoo. No. It's not a good thing. And what about, Chuck, we talked about zoos. What about aquariums? What about SeaWorld? Should a killer whale be kept in a little tank?

Yeah. Of course, it's going to eat its trainer. At some point. Yeah, I've blogged about that. Yeah. It's a killer whale. Yeah. Which camp are you in?

I don't know. As far as zoos go, I don't know if I want to say every zoo should be shut down, but definitely a lot of these animals shouldn't be kept in captivity, like elephants. What do you think? I'm not going to answer that. This is all in my head now. There's always something going on on the Stuff You Should Know blog in there, Chuck. Sure, Josh.

You can visit the Stuff You Should Know blog anytime you like. It's open 24-7-365, and if you want to learn more about animals and captivity, just type animals and captivity in the handysearchbar at HowStuffWorks.com, which means, of course, it's time for listener mail. No, I'm getting in. What? No listener mail today. We have too many things to ask for.

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