Decisive essay

Hello!

I was so happy when I found this page. I need your help. I study English language (my second language) and a part that will decide about me passing the year or not is an opinion essay we have to hand in untill the end of semester (which is in a week :/ ). I usually have problems with coherence of the essays and especially grammar. So please, can somebody help me and revise my essay?


Thank you
Freya

The Cruelity of The Zoos

I have loved animals since I was a little girl. My parents sometimes took me on a Sunday trip to the zoo where I admired the amazing cretures exhibited in there. But I felt that there was something wrong with that picture whenever we were taking a walk on the paths between the enclosures with the animals in the zoo. Just when I grew up a little bit I found out myself that those animals are designed only for a life in the wild, not for a life in a zoo for the amusenent of humans. Keeping animals away from their natural environment in small enclosures is inhumane and cruel for various reasons.

The most obvious reason in which I see that the zoos are cruel to the wild animals is a lack of their living space. Scientific report has revealed that »mammals in UK zoos are on average kept in enclosures one hundred times smaller than their minimum home range in the wild. For example, the African buffalo was found to have an average enclosure size 10.000 times smaller than the minimum home range, which is the minimum space in the wild that the animal needs to live normally«¹.The enclosures that they live in do not match their natural range which they need for normal life activities. Animals which would naturally rove for ten or even hundred miles a day have to satisfy with a few square metres. I believe that this limiting of the wild animals is inhumane because it leads to their physical and psihological problems.

I, personally, cannot stand to see an animal to suffer and to be in pain. Once when I was in a zoo I saw a chimpanzee with an open wound on it's palm which was a consequence of the entanglement in the wire. So I believe that another aspect of why keeping the wild creatures in zoos is brute are the health and behavioural problems that can develop in captivity. Animals brought to the zoo are threatened by exposure of getting viruses from other species which they would otherwise never meet in the nature. In addition, many visitors of the zoos are trying to feed the captives which can lead to stomachache and other illnesess. Not only physical, but also psychological difficulties can appear by animal imprisoners. Behavior abnormalities, which are especially common in captive primates, are a sign of furstrarion and distress. This abnormalities animals usually express with licking, biting, vomiting, circling, bumping and repeating pacing. They behaviour can get so alarming that they become aggressive torwards their co-residents, keepers or even themselves. Their immune sistem is also weakened because of the psychological issues, which again, can lead to a bigger susceptibility for varoius phisycal diseases.

Not only the zoo owners and keepers are to blame for the animals' suffer in the zoos. The visitors often bother the wild beings and not seldom even scare them. Even though the zoo keepers try to discourage this behaviour visitors often disturb animals by tapping on the glass, flashing with cameras and shouting. One can only imagine how an animal must feel when it is bothered day after day by a passing crowd.

Those people who are pro zoo try to excuse the existence of the zoos by claiming that they play an important role in educating and in conserving the endangered species. But I disagree with that statement because if we take a deeper look into how much people really get educated by the zoos, we can see that the image of an animals we get is the distorted and inaccurate. To educate means to learn about animals what they really are and how they behave naturally. The public can not learn about real animals if they are closed in the enviroment where their instinctive behavioral patterns can not come to any expression. Some say that the boards standing by animals' cages containing general characteristics attribute to the education of the visitor. But can not someone, who wants to learn new things about animals, just look in the book or on the internet for information? On the other hand, it is true that there are few zoos that have an educational presentations included in their programs. But the precentage of those zoos is so low that they can not exuse the existence of other zoos without educational purpose which are in vast majority. Claiming that the zoos are important for keeping endangered species from becoming extinct is another pretext of people who are justifying zoos. But the fact is that out of an estimated 10,000 zoos worldwide, less than 500 hold endangered animals. The other zoos are there only for the entertaining purposeses of the people.

I believe that the people who are visiting zoos should be presented with what suffering really hides behind the bars. Children should be taught about the real wild life through the books, magazines and documentary series not through the observation of the animals in enclosures where their behavior patterns, which have taken million of years to evolve, can find no expression.