This is Our Home

2024

For my final school project I decided to dedicate the semester to the pressing question of: can there be an ethical zoo? For 2.5 years I have worked with many companies that involve the viewing of live animals. I know from experience that many animals have always been in captivity or cannot be in the wild due to injury. On the flip side, I know that some animals are brought into these facilities for show. We even sell interpretations of these animals as plush, t-shirts and many more. These animals more than likely will not see this money made from their likeness. However, there is one fact that remains the same,  the community loves these animals. They have names, personalities and even favorite caretakers. At the start of my endeavor I was introduced to Colleen Plumb's work, Thirty Times a Minute. This project talks about certain movements that zoo animals do that does not occur in the wild. This occurs when they are stressed in their small spaces. I have even witnessed this myself and there are a lot of excuses for this behavior.With all of this information I ask myself, are zoos ethical?

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