Species you hate to see in zoos
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Well as an animal lover that has dedicated my professional life to caring for them, I see that every animal is as important as the next....an ethic which I encourage all of my staff to adopt too. So the butterflies and cockroaches in our park are just as important as the tapirs and crocodiles. Even the mealworms and crickets we use as feed are treated with similar care. So the rarest animals we have happen to be certain breeds of goats and pigs, and we view them as being just as worthy of conservation as any of the more exotic taxa. Just because they're a "man-made creation", doesn't make them any less worthy of our care and attention...possibly even more so!
Andrew Swales
Well-Known Member
This rather unfairly distorts the point it is answering. There appears to be no suggestion at all that some animals deserve less 'care' than others, as this implies. I personally do not think that all animals are of equal importance, but 'importance' has nothing to do with 'care' or welfare...
Yes it does. It has everything to do with it....just as it has everything to do with the importance of not stuffing the domestics into some dingy little "petting barn", but affording them the same attention as the other more high profile animals in the zoo. And the work that the RBST does towards preserving these breeds is crucial as they have as much right to conservation efforts as anything else does. When I tell my punters that the large black pig they're looking at is far rarer than a giant panda, they are amazed! And also shocked into feeling a little guilty as they never really thought of that. Just because something isn't insanely cute or doesn't feature on a David Attenborough show, doesn't mean it isn't worthy of every effort to keep them in existence.
For this reason, we work tirelessly to convince zoos to stock a middle white instead of a pot bellied pig and a handsome bagot instead of a pygmy goat.
Andrew Swales
Well-Known Member
NO-ONE has suggested that some spp should be kept in 'dingy barns'. It might be your opinion, but I do not believe that all animals are equal, and a mealworm is as important as a panda. Its care/welfare is, but the spp isn't. Each to their own...
Do you actually clarify to those people that the pig is a domestic breed; of the same species as commercially-bred pigs, and not a distinct species that is found in the wild?
We should not confuse "breed" that has been produced by artificial selection, and is genetically close to other breeds, with species. To compare a domestic pig breed with a Giant Panda is not a fair comparison.
Yes of course we do. But just because it's a creation of humans, doesn't make it any less valuable. I guess this is just the difference between those that turn their lives to actually caring for animals, and those seem to collect sightings of rarities on here. After all, if you let live food die unnecessarily in most of the major zoos, then it's a disciplinary for lack of due care and husbandry.
Andrew Swales
Well-Known Member
Not ridiculous at all, Andrew. Was merely referring to an earlier point I made that all animal life has the same importance. Whether that importance is to feed another animal or to feed a person, the life of the animal is just as important.
An LVI keeper would spit blood at a mammal keeper that suggested their leopards were more important than the former's red knee tarantula. As animal keepers, that is the respect we have for each other. To read otherwise on threads like this is kind of insulting to zoo keepers....the people that run the places you so love to visit.
An LVI keeper would spit blood at a mammal keeper that suggested their leopards were more important than the former's red knee tarantula. As animal keepers, that is the respect we have for each other. To read otherwise on threads like this is kind of insulting to zoo keepers....the people that run the places you so love to visit.
The individual is OF COURSE deserving of respectful and humane treatment. However, a domestic breed has been developed by humans over a few centuries, and theoretically could be produced again, far more easily than a wild species that has evolved over millennia.
To stop this thread going further off the rails with argument, I think it might be prudent to note that it is apparent (from your last few comments drawing a distinction between yourself and zoo enthusiasts) that you are unaware of the fact Andrew himself comes from a zoo background - and that therefore your remarks about his motives are based on a misapprehension!
Well then he, and yourselves, should have more respect than to comment on a thread as potentially insulting as "Species you HATE to see in zoos". Hate's a very strong word and it's insulting in the extreme to suggest that species/breeds/whatever....any animal that a keeper spends their lives caring for has any less importance than another. Those animals mean the world to us.
Has it though?
From a purely philosophical point of view I think that every individual animal has the same intrinsic value. The same way, every species has the same intrinsic value, at least for me, no matter whether it is a Gorilla or a Pseudomonas. Each and every species represents an unbroken chain of evolution and survival, and for the intrinsic value it shouldn't matter which path they have "chosen."
However, that being said the instrumental value (for lack of a better word) of animals can differ. To a conservationist, an almost extinct animal such as a socorro dove is worth more than a brown rat. This also continues on the species level. I think that one of the 500 near-identical (yes, I known that's an exaggeration) species of Pardosa spiders is not as important in practice as an ecosystem engineer like an elephant is.
These viewpoints clash, and I know that. We do not live in a world were we can practice the pure philophical point of view, but we shouldn't discard it either.
@TLD: maybe split the thread if it goes off the rails too much?
Fancy reading back through the thread to see that I haven't cited *any* species I hate to see?
and indeed have noted that I enjoy seeing domestic collections at a zoo. Also you might like to note that a lot of the comments in this thread do call out the word "hate".Andrew Swales
Well-Known Member
FunkyGibbon
Well-Known Member
I really don't know where you are coming from. Am I really supposed to believe that a meerkat at a UK zoo is of equal importance to a Sumatran rhino at Way Kambas? In what sense is that true?
One might argue that they have an equal expectation and right to good welfare and conditions, and yet faced with the situation that rhinos have decent to good welfare and the meerkats were in an appalling exhibit I would still rather the rhinos were prioritised for improvement.
What you seem to be saying is that people who visit zoos have no right to have an opinion on them, or the animals they hold. I sometimes see goldfish in zoos that have been deliberately bred with hideous deformities because people think it looks good (if I was being more mischievous I might mention white tigers here). Are you really saying I can't say I hate to see this?
Yes. I am saying that. Because there are people reading this that dedicate their lives to making your day at the zoo as happy as they can. And those people love their charges more than you can know. I'd wager more than you actually love visiting zoos! So to go on a place like this and say you hate it is just internet trolling to be honest. You never know who you might be upsetting reading your comments, and is it really benefiting your life making those comments? But it's ok, 'cos you can hide behind your little gibbon picture and none of those people you're upsetting knows who you are. But you should know that really what you're saying to a keeper by insinuating that you hate the animals on their section is that you hate their children....their raison d'être. Not very nice is it?