Animal Inmates

Campaigners are calling for an end to elephants in captivity. But no animal belongs in a zoo.

June 19 is the International Day of Action for Elephants in Zoos. Around the world, activists will be holding demonstrations at zoos, calling for an end to keeping elephants in captivity. Canadians should pay attention to this, given the fact that the Toronto Zoo is listed by the U.S.-based group In Defense of Animals (IDA) as one of 2009’s “Top Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants.” Elephants normally live up to 70 years, but in the Toronto Zoo, four elephants have died prematurely in the last few years, a fate that IDA attributes to completely inadequate conditions and the freezing temperatures of our long winters.

Obviously, elephants are huge animals that traverse vast distances in their natural environment but are confined to tiny enclosures in zoos – a situation almost as grotesque as in another of Ontario’s most notorious prisons for animals, Marineland, where gigantic, would-be ocean-dwelling whales are trapped in tiny concrete tubs.

Surprisingly, one Canadian zoo that didn’t make it onto IDA’s “Ten Worst” list is Edmonton’s Valley Zoo. Its star attraction is an isolated elephant named Lucy. She was captured in Sri Lanka as an infant and has lived alone in Canada for years. Animal-protection groups Zoocheck Canada and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have sued the City of Edmonton, trying to have Lucy moved to a sanctuary in Tennessee where she would have more room and better conditions, as well as the opportunity to interact with others of her own kind. But Valley Zoo wants to hang on to Lucy, arguing that she cannot be moved because of health reasons, although veterinarians and sanctuary operators have come forward with proposals to transport her safely and the internationally known elephant biologist Dr. Joyce Poole has testified about the psychological impact of isolation on these highly social animals.

At Toronto Zoo, Zoocheck has proposed an interactive display that would replace the live elephants, using photographs and webcam broadcasts from nature reserves that would put visitors right in the middle of moving herds. While Scarborough Centre councillor and Toronto Zoo board member Glenn De Baeremaeker has spoken in favour of the plan, others remain resistant. Another zoo board member, Scarborough-Agincourt councillor Norm Kelly, has argued that we must keep animals imprisoned in zoos because "it’s the difference between watching a hockey game on TV and going down to the Gardens … There is something for seeing live animals that you otherwise wouldn't see. I think there's an emotional connection.”

Kelly’s argument is based purely on selfishness: animals are there to entertain us and have no inherent value of their own. His position seems to be that any amount of suffering we cause to other beings is acceptable as long as we get some enjoyment out of it. In order to satisfy the preposterous fantasy that we are making “an emotional connection” to the animals that we imprison, we consign them to lives of ill health, boredom, frustration, loneliness, and despair. That such attitudes should exist in societies where billions of animals are processed through factory farms and slaughterhouses is unsurprising, but such blatant contradictions should at least give us momentary pause before we assume that the “emotional connection” we’ve supposedly made with our prisoners is anything more than self-deception.

Of course, every compassionate person will support the campaign to release elephants from Canadian zoos. Elephants simply do not belong here. Zoos cannot provide the space for the social conditions required by these animals. Keeping them in captivity thwarts and frustrates their basic nature, and essentially is a form of cruelty and abuse.

However, beyond that, we need to ask why these zoos exist in the first place and why any animals at all are confined within them. Zoos claim to play an educational role in society, but this role seems to be greatly exaggerated. We learn very little about animals by staring at them in a cage for a few seconds before moving on to gaze at the next inmate. If we truly made an “emotional connection” with the animals we’ve made our slaves, our prisoners, and our victims, it would likely drive us mad.