[cb5r]

There are absolutely no positive benefits for people and especially children to visit zoos. Quite the opposite is the case:

By visiting zoos, children get taught at a very early age that it is OK to capture animals and use them against their will for amusement purposes / profit. They get presented the animals in a completely unnatural habitat. Most of these animals have developed mental disorders due to their situation.

Please feel free to read some of the research on this - there is plenty more:

References: - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261254556_Evaluatin... - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338313609_Psycholog...

[saiya-jin]

Look, we get it, you are deep into this cause. I agree with some of it, but as always situation is way more complex than simple zoos = prisons for torture.

There are zoos which have massive spaces for animals and generally animals are very well taken care of, there are 'zoos' full of animals that would otherwise be dead (ie taken from smugglers, illegal ownership, overpopulated, injured in accidents etc.).

You can't watch most of say african big animals in wilderness on your own, even if you go on African safari its very much modern zoo-like experience.

[localplume]

do you think the same for fish tanks? that when kids see fish tanks they think its OK to capture animals for their own amusement? What an insanely biased POV. zoos are fantastic for conservation and giving kids a view into a world beyond the one in which they live day-to-day.

[cb5r]

What makes you think that fish are in ANY way different than land animals or even humans? Why should they not suffer from being captured and not being able to live freely in their natural habitat?

In what way is my POV biased? What you describe is a purely egoistic attitude. Ask the question: Who does this serve?

Your answer might be: primarily the animals (this includes fish). But this is not true, as the only reason we would have to conserve any species in the first place is because we humans (almost) drove them to extinction by e.g. killing them for profit (e.g. leather, ivory, etc.), burning their habitat for animal feed (which happens when you eat land animal meat) or by overfishing (which happens when you eat fish). Either way, the reason is not valid because the root cause is driven by human behavior, which almost all people causing it could change it in an instant - but they choose not to. Why? Because their pleasure is more important than non-human animals' lives.

Hence, the answer is: the humans who pay for it. It only serves the entertainment of humans at the cost of the (non-human) animals.

Kids visiting a zoo for sure don't consciously think "its OK to capture animals for amusement", but they get subconsciously conditioned by the fact that it is portrayed as "normal".

My guess is that you never researched about how zoos work. If you did, I promise you will be shocked what happens behind the scenes in order to "give kids a view into a world beyond the one in which they live day-to-day".