How Many Animals Go To Zoos Each Year

This is Sissy.

The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee

Sissy'southward life in the zoo arrangement began in 1969. That year, at the tender historic period of one, she was ripped away from her family in Thailand and shipped to the Half-dozen Flags Over Texas Amusement Park petting zoo in Arlington, Texas.

Non long later her arrival to 6 Flags, she was sold to the Frank Buck Zoo in Gainesville, Texas.

The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee

In 1981, a massive flood hit the region and she nearly drowned. She was found tightly property herself confronting a tree, with only her trunk visible. She suffered long-term trauma from the outcome and, for years afterward, the threat of a storm made her petrified.

5 years later, in 1986, Sissy was once again transferred, this fourth dimension to the Fort Worth Zoo for breeding purposes. It didn't go well. "She reportedly showed signs of aggression toward her new keepers and did not chronicle well with the other elephants," according to the website of The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, where Sissy now lives.

During her 2-year stay at the Fort Worth Zoo, she was never successfully bred, and was shuttled back to the Frank Buck Zoo.

Sissy with Vincent Reynolds of Frank Cadet ZooThe Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee

Sissy remained there for 10 more years without incident - until i day, a zookeeper was constitute dead in her enclosure, and Sissy was labeled a killer.

Sissy at the Frank Cadet ZooThe Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee

Sissy at the Frank Buck Zoo | The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee

In 1998, with that reputation, Sissy was transported briefly to the Houston Zoo before being hopscotched over to the El Paso Zoo, where she was brutally beaten with ax handles by her keepers.

Finally, in Jan 2000, afterward enduring decades of endless transfers and corruption, Sissy arrived at the Tennessee sanctuary, where she is expected to alive out the remainder of her life.

"Sissy's life touches me emotionally," Barbara J. King, professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary and writer of "How Animals Grieve," told The Dullard. "She suffered considering she was treated as a commodity ... [she] was idea of as solving a problem for zoos, merely the costs for her life are underestimated."

Margaret Whittaker, director of elephant programs at The Elephant Sanctuary, told The Dullard one of the most meaning costs of all those years of moving around is that Sissy never had a consistent group of elephants to bond with. "What impacted [Sissy] was years of social isolation that led to abnormal behaviors."

But, says Whittaker, Sissy is resilient, her behavior is quite flexible and her recovery "is astonishing."

King says the zig-zagging and vicious tale of Sissy's life is extreme in the zoo system. Sissy'southward story raises significant concerns about the life of zoo animals behind the scenes, however. Millions of Americans go to the zoo each yr. In fact, the number of zoogoers in some years exceeded the number of people who attended professional football games, basketball games, hockey games and baseball games combined. Simply how many of those people really looked at the animals and genuinely wondered: Where did these animals come from?

The ecosystem of zoos

"People have this idea that they go to a zoo and in that location is this individual zoo and here are the zoo's animals," Irus Braverman, professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and writer of " Zooland," told The Dodo. "But in fact, it is more like an ecosystem in a way, as bogus as information technology may be." Motility between zoos and the acquisition of animals is non only common merely the "heart and blood of zoos," she says.

Let's showtime with some nuts. Not all zoo animals are built-in where they're exhibited. Some, like Sissy - and potentially 18 elephants from Swaziland that three U.S. zoos are attempting to secure at this time - are yanked from the wild. Others are transported from ane zoo to another. Sometimes they are shipped for well-intended reasons, similar diversifying the genetic convenance pool. Maybe a solitary beast needs to have some visitor or a more than suitable climate. Other times, animals are shuffled about for more than questionable reasons that disrupt important social bonds and subject them to various other stressors. And before you think you've even seen all the animals at a given zoo, some animals are not fifty-fifty put on display, living out of sight of the public birthday.

Giraffes, sloths, antelope, bears, parrots, porcupines, monkeys, lemurs and lions live in fabricated landscapes their whole lives so the public can stare at them for a passing moment. One study revealed that people look at a zoo elephant for an average of just 79.5 seconds. Rob Laidaw, founder of Zoocheck in Canada told The Dodo that in some cases, information technology'due south a lot less: "For a lot of species, the fourth dimension can be as low as viii seconds."

Roadside zoos

There are basically 2 types of zoos in the U.S. A network of roughly 230 zoos and aquariums are part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and as such go through an accreditation procedure. But at that place are an equal number of other zoos that generally accept far less stringent regulations and are loosely overseen by the USDA. Many of these are colloquially referred to every bit roadside zoos.

"There are some 250 roadside zoos in the U.Southward.," Lisa Wathne, convict wild fauna specialist for the Humane Club of the Us (HSUS), told The Dodo. And where the animals come from - unlike the majority who live in the AZA system - is something of a mystery. "Nosotros know many roadside zoos breed animals," Wathne says. "We also know they trade and buy animals from other roadside zoos and dealers."

Since USDA files on animals owned by roadside zoos are non bachelor through public records requests, the movement, life and death of many animals in roadside zoos are often elusive.

These zoos, private owners, dealers and animate being breeders are all part of a largely hidden network, "and if they want something, they know who to call and can either take [an fauna] or find someone to give i to," Wathne says.

The exotic auction

I place where roadside zoos acquire animals are exotic animal auctions, where "exotic animals of every imaginable species - including big cats, bears, wolves, non-man primates, birds - are offered for sale to the highest bidder," says Wathne. The iii auctions widely known in the U.S. are Lolli Bros. in Macon, Missouri, the Mt. Hope Auction in Ohio, and the Triple Due west auction in Cookeville, Tennessee.

A 2014 story in the St. Louis Postal service Dispatchdescribed the scene at the well-known Lolli Bros. sale in Missouri. Inside the auction house were muzzle after cage of tortoises, hedgehogs and "tiny gliding possums," according to the article. Two marmoset monkeys were sold for $3,000. A vi-calendar month-old red kangaroo "held aloft in a infant blanket past its handler" was sold for $4,000. A leopard-spotted serval: $4,100. Infant monkeys in diapers were up for sale. Cockatoos. Camels. Zebras.

A babe blackness comport was brought into the auction past a human being conveying a leash.

Pretty much every animate being was for sale and people came from everywhere. The parking lot "bore license plates from Florida to Wisconsin, Texas to North Carolina," notes the article. The facility was plagued with issues, it says, including a number of beast welfare related citations by the USDA. "Terminal year, inspectors noted Bengal cats in enclosures so small they couldn't plow around; rabbits in cages with sharp corners; primates living in their own waste material; and unsupervised contact between the public and the animals."

Wathne says at that place are trends for roadside zoos, a kind of roadside species du jour. "Correct now it seems to exist giraffes, considering the public can feed them," she says. "And river otters - with some places allowing people to swim with the otters." Large cats and primates, she adds, are common because they're crowd pleasers.

"Actually, the only species I can think of that a roadside zoo probably could not go or would exist very difficult to get would exist polar bear, gorilla, orangutan or rhino," she says.

A zoo dwelling house is rarely permanent

It'southward been some l years since Sissy was brought into the U.S. and information technology's unclear how many animals, like her, are shuffled annually throughout AZA zoos. (Request for comment by the AZA was non returned.) But in 2009, some two,175 animals were shipped from the Smithsonian'southward National Zoo alone (most were invertebrates, mainly aquatic creatures such every bit cuttlefish).

And the standards that AZA zoos have for send exceed those of roadside zoos.

"When animals are moved from ane accredited zoo to some other, they are moved for a specific reason," Ron Kagan, director of the Detroit Zoo, told The Dullard. For case, when Detroit's exceptional Arctic Ring of Life was opened in 2001, "the Detroit Zoo received polar bears from a number of other zoos because its facility was much larger than the existing facilities at the time," Kagan says.

"I've been working in zoos for 30 years," Scott Carter, chief life sciences officer at the Detroit Zoological Society, told The Dodo. "I recall we've gotten amend almost some of the things nosotros practice. We spend a lot more fourth dimension workout animals to prepare them ... earlier we put them on the road."

The amount of care and time can indeed be considerable. In October, a xiii-year-old male Asian elephant named Kandula was moved from the Smithsonian'south National Zoo to the Oklahoma City Zoo for breeding reasons. The trip took 24 hours. Kandula was transported in a climate-controlled crate, co-ordinate to the Oklahoman.

In 2009, a five,000-pound Nile hippopotamus named Happy was moved from the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., to the Milwaukee County Zoo in Wisconsin, as well for breeding purpose. A team of 16 builders took the engineers' sketches and fashioned the steel crate," reported the National Zoo.

But even when precautions are taken, not all animals survive being transported long distances. In 2008, a 6-year-old hippo named Hazina died during a transfer from the Denver Zoo to the Calgary Zoo in Canada. "When staff at the Calgary Zoo tried to coax their new hippopotamus out of the crate that had held the 1,500-kilogram creature for the 30-hour journey from Colorado on Friday, they were startled to find the half-dozen-year-old couldn't stand," reported the World and Mail.

Less than 24 hours afterward, Hazina was dead. The hippo had been lying down for too long in the crate and had died due to the circulatory complications that came along with the transport.

Travel can indeed be difficult on an animal. "Whenever you move exotic animals," says Kagan, "information technology is stressful. And that is 1 of the biggest challenges for any zoo ... Whether it'due south an elephant or a tiger or a frog, every move has an element of stress, and some are bigger than others."

To exist certain, travel - and the stress that can come along with it - isn't restricted to state mammals. Naomi Rose, marine mammal scientist at the Brute Welfare Institute, describes to The Dodo how cetaceans are moved. "The animate being is generally placed in a sling that is lined with lamb's wool or other cushioning material. The pec fins go through custom holes on the side. The sling is and so suspended in a box the same size every bit the cetacean (so, smaller for bottlenose, larger for orcas), about one-half-filled with cold water (often with ice in information technology - overheating is a master take a chance during transport)." The box is moved on a truck to an airport and loaded into a cargo airplane, she explains, so it doesn't move during takeoff and landing.

In the top zoo facilities, says Rose, the animal is usually accompanied by a caretaker and a veterinarian.

Fifty-fifty inside the world of conscientious transfers, animals often end up at facilities vastly different from their wild homes. Simply recently, a 13-year-old lion named M'Wasi was sent from the Bronx Zoo to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York.

M'WasiYoutube/Rosamund Gifford Zoo

His enclosure - complete with a wall painted to await similar the savannah - is only a fraction of the size of his natural terrain ( a male person lion's pride territory can be 100 square miles). Moreover, Africa'due south climate is nix similar that of Syracuse, a city known for its long, frigid winters.

Wathne, who has been studying captivity problems for two decades, says she can't annotate specifically on 1000'Wasi, but he will probable spend a considerable amount of his life indoors. "Cold winter temperatures often strength animals to be indoors for very long stretches of time - sometimes for months on terminate," she says. "Even during temperate atmospheric condition, many zoos lock the animals indoors when the zoo is not open up to the public, which means that the animals end up spending the majority of their time in areas that are often nothing more than than pocket-sized concrete cages with no natural light or fresh air."

Lori Gruen, a professor of philosophy at Wesleyan College and the author of "Ideals of Captivity," told The Dodo this is the fate that befalls many animals from the tropical or equatorial areas, who cannot survive in the U.S. during colder months. "Most animals prefer to be outdoors and keeping them indoors, often from Nov to March (longer in colder climates) in spaces that are pocket-sized [and] without fresh air is a detriment to their well-being," she says.

Convenance

Breeding is an integral and circuitous role of all zoos, and information technology sometimes comes with costs. In 2012, the Seattle Times conducted an explosive series on elephant breeding in AZA zoos that explored these issues at length.

"Over the past 50 years, elephant deaths take outstripped births by a ratio of ii-1," reports the Seattle Times. The overall infant-bloodshed rate for elephants in zoos is an astounding 40 percent, the Seattle Times notes, "nearly triple the rate in the Asian or African wild." The report largely focused on a female elephant named Chai, from Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, equally an example of the zoos' efforts to brood elephants in captivity. Chai went through at to the lowest degree 112 artificial and physically aggressive insemination attempts, co-ordinate to the paper. At least 1 of her children died. Chai currently lives at the troubled Oklahoma City Zoo, where a 4-twelvemonth-erstwhile elephant recently perished.

Some aspects of breeding are less clear-cut. Some AZA zoos take painstaking efforts to boost viability inside the zoo organization and work conscientiously to promote a strong animate being welfare ethic. These programs may become increasingly critical to having sure species on World at all as they disappear entirely from the wild, say some conservationists.

The ones left behind

Although many zoo transports don't end in emotional or physical tragedy, what happens to the animals who are left behind in the enclosures at the zoo?

Scott Blais, founder of the Global Sanctuary for Elephants and original co-founder of The Elephant Sanctuary, has been involved with the transport of 50 zoo or circus elephants over his career. He told The Dullard that when elephants are separated from each other, the toll can last a lifetime. "The travesty of the relocations is far greater, causing the elephants to close off emotionally, sometimes leading them to ignore and condone new friendships."

Blais says that every zoo elephant at his sanctuary was labeled "antisocial" or "aggressive" when he first arrived. Simply, "in virtually every instance, this was not at all who they were. It was what captivity had acquired them to become," he says.

If the elephants take to be moved and if they are already in captivity, Blais believes, "it should be to a location that has the space to provide for them for life, and in a family dynamic that allows them to develop lifelong bonds."

This is how it would be in life, he says, in the wild.

In the end, zoos aren't the wild, of course. Some zoos try harder than others to indistinguishable the natural world equally much as possible. Some apes are managed with intendance and consideration. But, in another zoo, a giraffe could be stuffed abroad all winter in an indoor enclosure. An elephant could have been ripped from a close comrade in gild to be bred, while a bear at another facility could be languishing day and nighttime on a concrete slab. A bird could spend his whole life without always seeing the dominicus.

In the end, it'southward your dollar and you pay for your few minutes to expect at these animals in the zoo before you render to your home. The animals, meanwhile, volition be staying in the zoo system forever.

Source: https://www.thedodo.com/disturbing-truth-zoo-animal-1513305581.html

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