Animals Should Not Be Kept in Captivity Persuasive Essay

Did you know 6,000,000 living animals are estimated to live in captivity for human entertainment? Animals are an important part of nature and should have the right to live in their natural environment. This paper is going to discuss why animals should not be kept in captivity. 

Animals are not able to bear living in small, unsuited environments. Animals held captive in zoos are in very small environments such as cages, and they have no freedom. These animals have no freedom, and they are most likely going to live the rest of their lives kept captive in very unsuitable, artificial, and boring conditions. This is an issue because zoos are not able to provide animals with the required space that they need, which is accessible in the wild. Due to this, you will see most animals walking in circles because they don’t have the freedom to go anywhere else. Therefore, this leads to the animals getting depressed, bored, and even frustrated due to the lack of space. 

Animals have feelings and their behaviours change significantly when they are removed from their natural habitat and put in a place where they never imagined they would be. The consequences of this are that animals can get depressed, bored, frustrated, and have unnatural stress because they don’t have the freedom which they had in the wild. Other behaviours include repetitive pacing, swaying, head-bobbing, bar-biting, over-grooming or even excessive licking. These behaviours are caused by the frustration of natural behaviour patterns. A factor for why animals may get bored is because they are separated from other animals, and they don’t have any interactions with other animals. However, in the wild, they have interacted with other animals and many animals live together, such as lions. Lions are the only cats that live in groups, which are called prides. In figure 1 you can see the tiger is bored and looks depressed. 

Many animals suffer from living in small stressful environments and this can lead to negative consequences and shorter life expectancy is one factor. According to a journal published in the Journal Science, elephants have a lower life expectancy in zoos than they do living in the wild. The study had conducted a study looking at 300 African female elephants, and none of those 300 made it past the age of 50. Orca whales are negatively affected by captivity because in the wild the life expectancy of a female is 50 and some can live till 80-90. However, in captivity, the life expectancy dramatically decreases on average to less than 10 years. There are many factors that lead to the lifespan decreasing such as injuries, extreme stress,  diseases, and infections.