I'm on the FunkyGibbon side of this debate. Whilst I agree with jbnbsn99 that accusing a zoo of poor welfare is serious, I disagree that we should never do it as a result. If animal welfare is that important, we should be demanding acceptable standards. Such passionate criticism is far more likely to precipitate positive change than dogged passivity. There are varying opinions, which I would always express as such, but there are also cases which any informed individual could identify as unacceptable.
Agreed. When we're talking about the term "worst," it implies that they are at the bottom of the barrel, the poorest of all conditions. In none of the concrete cases shown is anything that borders on truly atrocious however much hyperbole we want to throw around. To say something from a world-class zoo, like Henry Doorly, is "the worst" shows little consideration for what "the worst" actually means and shows a highly limited sample size on the part of the accuser..
When quibbling the difference between "bad" and "worst", it seems unfair to ignore the latter's context. You're criticizing it as an unqualified worst, but the thread title does qualify it. And since we're discussing the worst exhibit
you have ever seen, the sample size is not "highly limited". In fact, it's not a statistical sample at all; it's a population.
On the topic of sample size, though,
@Ituri is happy to condemn the turtle exhibit from a visitor and educational standpoint, essentially projecting his/her personal opinion onto everyone who sees it (n=1). Why, then, should we not even consider doing likewise for the inhabitants? Pointing out that you don't know the context is evasive, because we all know some zoos well enough to answer those questions. The important point, then: is it okay to raise welfare issues in those cases?
If we want to define bad, then it must be something that is unquestionably bad on all fronts. Something that doesn't meet any animal needs, can harm the animal, is dangerous for the animal and/or visitor. Past meeting these criteria, we get into shades of gray. Yes, exhibit x may be worse than exhibit y, but neither are bad in light that the animals are well cared for.
As FunkyGibbon argues, no it doesn't. By your logic, if I were to provide an animal with excellent all-round care but neglected to feed it, that couldn't be described as bad. Yes, welfare is a continuum, however that doesn't mean everything better than the anti-Panglossian exhibit is above criticism.
But you can't separate exhibits based on what you see and what you can't see. This is the crux of my argument all along. Often times, there are areas that the guests cannot see that changes the opinions on animal welfare. Just because you can see the animal holding in Milwaukee doesn't automatically make it bad. If you saw the animal holdings for most animals you might be surprised at how small they are (especially for big cats). Sometimes a small holding pen is absolutely needed for an animal, like elephants, so that the keepers can work with the animal for husbandry purposes. So again, without knowledge of how zoos actually work, it's wrong of you to judge simply based on opinions.
The evidence for your argument is qualified ("often times", "sometimes", etc.), but you extrapolate from that to a universal: so we can't
ever properly judge an exhibit. But, if your argument is that one can't judge welfare because one can't judge the full extent of an exhibit, clearly it's only partially true. As your qualifications indicate, "sometimes" one can and "sometimes" one can't.
Perhaps, though, your point was that husbandry is the great unknown from a visitor perspective. I agree, but compensatory husbandry practices are not a panacea. For instance, a large and growing body of evidence indicates visitor presence causes chronic stress in some taxa. Keepers can do as much as they like behind-the-scenes, but if a susceptible species is kept in an exhibit that clearly makes no effort to mitigate the problem, particularly over an extended period, you could legitimately criticize that exhibit on welfare grounds.
Essentially what we have is a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Simply stated, it means that those who know a little are far more confident in their assertion than those who know more. only those who are deemed true experts in the field come close to the level of confidence seen by those who only know a little. On this site, there are maybe five total members (
maybe) who truly fall into the expert category (hint: I'm not one of them).
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I think both you and Ituri are mistaken to conflate care (what is provided to animals) with welfare (how they experience the world). So, I fundamentally disagree that keepers alone can accurately assess an animal's welfare status. They may provide excellent care, but the only individual who truly knows if an animal has good welfare is the animal itself. What that means in reality is that assessments should be based on a rigorous "evidence-based" approach, using a range of welfare indicators. Keeper insights are invaluable to that process, but they should not be the beginning and end of it.
Take this clouded leopard exhibit, for instance:
Bornean Clouded Leopard Exhibit | ZooChat. Over the last 15 years, a lot of work has been carried out to understand cloudy needs and this basically meets none of them. I don't know whether the inhabitant is a rescue, but I would still feel confident calling the exhibit poor on welfare grounds. And to emphasize this isn't just an Asian phenomenon, here's the new clouded leopard exhibit at Denver:
Elephant Passage - Clouded Leopard Exhibit | ZooChat. It's better for several reasons, but still lacks vertical space. Again, I would feel confident saying it was poorly designed from a welfare perspective, just on that drawback. So, I've recognized a welfare continuum, without accepting better means good. You can disagree with my assessments if you like, but your position would not be an objective one.
I agree it's unhelpful to make unjustified declarations that an exhibit is awful, but identifying specific features which would be expected to compromise welfare is often possible. Indeed, it would be far easier if zoos were meeting their welfare responsibilities, because published papers should (as a general rule) be universally comprehensible. As such, we wouldn't be having this debate if every zoo had comprehensively researched factors influencing the welfare of their animals. Anyone arguing two acres is great for elephants whereas one acre is appalling, for instance, is probably ignorant of the evidence. But that kind of research is all too uncommon (with exceptions), so zoos have only themselves to blame when they cannot reasonably respond to this sort of criticism.
Incidentally, I don't think you're being humble at all. What you're actually saying is we should assume every animal in every exhibit at every zoo has good welfare. Please forgive me if I suggest that's naïve. I would also suggest there's a difference between supporting an institution and shirking one's ethical responsibility to ensuring it meets acceptable standards. Faith in a universal despite any and all evidence to the contrary seems, to me at least, the very definition of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
