Are ordinary zoo animals miserable?
JW: If individual animals are given habitats within the zoo in which they can express all their natural behaviours, they can live good lives. Unfortunately this is rare. Most of the public consider that a good zoo is one where large numbers of animals are easily seen – thus the general belief that the San Diego Town zoo is one of the best. Actually it is one of the worst as far too many animals are crammed together in misery (just look at their faces if you don’t believe me!) The San Diego Wild Animal Park in Escondido is much closer to being a good zoo as it has space. I should point out here that the bigger the animal the more difficult it is for a zoo to provide satisfactory accommodation. Even the San Diego Wild Animal Park has not nearly enough space for some of its species. I have seen zoo “exhibits” for small animals such as meerkats and naked mole rats which have been hard to fault and in which the animals are probably living as good lives as they would in the wild. But nowhere
