Sir, – At a time when our understanding of animals (their intelligence, the complexity of their emotions and their methods of communication) is greater than ever, and science is discovering previously unknown wonders everywhere it looks within the animal world, it would be hard to find a more naive article than that penned by Róisín Ingle (Magazine, Weekend Edition, April 21st 22nd), following her most recent visit to Dublin Zoo.
I visited the zoo a couple of months ago. I had not been there for some years and was interested to see if all the hype about the improved conditions for the animals was justified. I came away disappointed and depressed.
True, many of the animals have greatly enlarged and enhanced enclosures, and this is of course a good thing for those individual animals. However, there remains a very large number of animals imprisoned in desperately inadequate enclosures and the sense of boredom among all these animals is impossible to ignore.
Furthermore, the fact that all the animals in the zoo are “lifers”, forever condemned to a life in captivity, should never be forgotten.
Róisín Ingle seems either to be not particularly bothered by this, or else she has managed to ignore it completely.
It’s an easy day out with the kids, of course, especially as the zoo is an eating and drinking utopia. In between the downing of fizzy drinks and the chomping of factory-farmed meat, kids gawk for a minute or two at some poor unfortunate inmate before moving on to the next enclosure the instant they become bored. Spare a thought for the animals: they have nowhere to move on to.
Dublin Zoo exists and prospers because it cynically exploits the pulling power of large exotic animals. These exotics provide the bait, and the parents are reeled in easily enough. Meanwhile, the zoo’s once frequently heard and utterly bogus claims of “educational value” and “conservation of endangered species” seem to have themselves become extinct. – Yours, etc,