Imagine being locked away in a cage your entire life. Your only purpose to entertain the people gawking through the bars. Your role as a status of wealth for your ‘owner’. Unfortunately, this was the cruel, despotic, and merciless truth for many exotic creatures up to the 19th century.

With the turn of the century came the Victorian’s obsession with natural sciences. This admiration for nature and its newly founded approach to conservation swept across Europe. Zoos transitioned from menagerie spectacles of power and wealth to public institutions of wild life conservation and animal welfare advocacy. After two centuries of progress, we can justly refer to our zoos as the Modern Zoo.

A baby gorilla engaging with a young child as captured Pixabay.

Modern zoos have been cultivating a vast array of ways to aid in conserving wildlife and their natural ecosystems. The Zoological Society of London has worked tirelessly to respond to the, “…realization and documentation of the decline in wildlife…” That is why our modern zoos are crucial. They help with educating the populace about the planet’s ecosystems and how we can amend our wrongs.

The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria have a good point. Our children are the world’s next caretakers. The impact our zoos have on our children help them acquire an appreciation and understanding of the living world. How do they do this? The animals in modern zoos are ambassadors for their wild brethren. They build a connection between us and the real world. We’ve gone from gawking at these beautiful creatures to trying to understand and respect them.

Two dolphins playing as captured by Jens Huntemann.

The modern zoo, in addition to educating the populace, act as sanctuaries. Some of the species the Zoological Society of London care for are extinct in the wild due to habitat loss. They only survive and thrive due to the active fighting of the courageous caretakers of our modern zoos. Many zoos highlight the most charismatic and charming of species to bring awareness to their ecosystems. This helps fight against their destruction and in turn save the less charismatic animals and fauna.

Jenny Gray, a zoo ethics author, states in her 2015 doctoral thesis that, “I conclude that zoos and aquariums are ethically defensible when they align conservation outcomes with the interests of individual animals and the interests of zoo operations.” We are at a point in our history where our modern zoos are not only having a positive impact on wildlife conservation, they are arguably ethically justified. And they can only continue to grow and develop into modern zoos with our support.