Many of us have fond memories of going to the zoo as children, but zoo critics are vocal in their condemnation of keeping animals in captivity, believing there can be no such thing as a good zoo. Are the goals of entertainment, conservation, education and research more often in conflict than harmony? And are they ultimately irreconcilable with concern for animal welfare?
In this episode, George Miller talks to Heather Browning and Walter Veit, co-authors of What are Zoos For? about the ethics of captivity, the challenges of balancing animal welfare with the need for public engagement, and the potential for zoos to drive meaningful conservation efforts. We also get to hear about Walter’s recent memorable encounter with Frank the feisty king penguin.
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Scroll down for shownotes and transcript.
Heather Browning is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southampton, working on philosophical questions in animal welfare, sentience, and ethics. She previously worked as a zookeeper and zoo animal welfare officer in Australia and New Zealand. Walter Veit is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Reading. His primary research interests lie in the intersection of the biological, social, and mind sciences and empirically informed philosophy and ethics.
What Are Zoos For? is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £8.99.
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SHOWNOTES
Timestamps:
1:30 – Are you the kind of people who seek out the zoo when you visit a new city?
2:33 – How did you come into this field?
4:01 – What was the particular appeal to ask and answer this question of the purpose of zoos?
8:02 – How do you deal with the historical dimension of zoos?
13:03 – Do you have examples of people having moving moments being in close proximity to wild animals?
18:07 – What makes it so difficult to judge whether conservation is as compelling an argument as zoos maintain?
23:54 – How easy is it to establish what constitutes good welfare?
28:03 – Can you pick out a zoo encounter that really sticks in your memory?
Transcript:
(Please note this transcript is autogenerated and may have minor inaccuracies.)
George Miller: Hello and welcome to the Transforming Society podcast from Bristol University Press.
My name is George Miller and I’m the editor of a new series from BUP that launched last year: over the next few years What is it for? will explore the purpose of a range of institutions, beliefs, ideologies and other key elements of the contemporary world: from war to philanthropy; nuclear weapons to free speech; conspiracy theories to veganism.
The latest addition to the series is What are zoos for? by Heather Browning and Walter Veit. Heather is a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southampton, and also a former zookeeper. Walter is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Reading with a special interest in animal consciousness. So together they are well-placed to tackle the question of zoos’ purpose.
For many visitors, zoos are a place to have a fun day out. Any other functions may be a bonus, or may be irrelevant. At the other end of the spectrum are campaigners and academics who believe there’s no such thing as a good zoo, an ethical zoo. Captivity is wrong full-stop and no amount of justification with reference to animal welfare or research or conservation can counterbalance that.
We’ll get into those knotty questions shortly, but when I spoke to Heather and Walter a few weeks back, I wanted to know if they were the kind of people who sought out the zoo when they visited a new city:
Heather Browning: Definitely. I think it’s one of those things we do when we go to new cities. We tend to find the zoos there and go have a look. If we’ve only got a few days in a new place, that’ll be one of the activities we pretty much put on our list.
Walter Veit: We did a lot of travel in the last two years for conferences, and I lost count of how many zoos we visited, really.
GM: So, do you have a sort of mental checklist of zoos you’d like to visit? If a conference comes up in a particular city, is the existence of a zoo in that city a particular incentive to sign up?
HB: Yeah, I think so. It’s definitely an extra plus. There are some zoos around the world that I would really like to see. Singapore’s probably a good example of that. Singapore Zoo and the Singapore Night Safari are very famous, and that’s somewhere I’ve not been. That would certainly be something that would encourage me to attend an event held there.
GM: How did you both come into this field? To an outsider, it seems like quite a specialist field—writing a book about zoos from a philosophical standpoint. How did your interests evolve so that you came to be the people to write this book?
HB: Well, I worked in zoos for a very long time. Before I was a philosopher, I was a zookeeper. So, I guess my interest in zoos was very natural. At that time, it was more from the first-person, inside-the-zoo point of view, where I was working with the animals—making sure they were fed, cleaned, and had behavioural enrichment opportunities, and all those sorts of things. Then, when I came into a more academic role, I started reflecting on the things I was thinking and doing at that time. Looking at the current debates around zoos made me interested in writing something that could draw on that experience.
GM: Walter, what about you?
WV: I have nothing like that. I haven’t worked in zoos for many years, but certainly as a child, both of my parents wanted to become something like zoo directors. While they didn’t pursue that, they did take me to a lot of zoos when I was a kid. Those experiences left a special impression on me and probably led me to become a philosopher of biology and really interested in studies on animals.
GM: So, what is the particular appeal? Given your background, it’s clearly an area of interest, but what was the particular appeal to ask and answer this question of the purpose of zoos? What stimulated your intellectual curiosity about this particular brief?
HB: I think a lot of the dominant discussions, particularly within the philosophical literature about zoos, are typically very negative about their existence. They often come from the perspective of people who have visited zoos, often quite some time in the past. I felt that the perspective they were putting forward perhaps wasn’t entirely balanced, and maybe not entirely informed either. So, I thought there was an important space here for this discussion to progress in a way that was perhaps more informed by what happens inside zoos, particularly modern zoos.
WV: Yeah, and I think a problem you see not uncommonly in philosophy—in virtue almost of its disciplinary goal to offer these broad accounts of reality—is that when you see terrible cases of zoos, you can obviously come up with very good examples. For instance, some elephants in zoos have terribly small enclosures and are mistreated, used purely for entertainment. Or, you think of killer whales kept in conditions that depress them, sometimes to the point of aggression toward keepers. When you see these examples, and then you think there must be an answer that applies to all animals, it’s not unreasonable to conclude, “Well, in that case, perhaps zoos shouldn’t exist.”
But I think we wanted to push the idea that you can’t have a universal answer like that. What might be bad for one animal isn’t necessarily bad for all animals.
GM: And is that a reasonable snapshot of the current state of debate? That the preponderance of academic commentators tend to be on the abolitionist side, while a large sector of the public, including the zoo-going public, tends to see zoos as relatively unproblematic? Then you’ve got campaigners and advocates who might be actively protesting about zoos. Has the debate settled into that sort of terrain, or is it more complicated than that?
HB: I think that’s probably a fairly good snapshot of the way things stand, and I think the way they’ve stood for quite a while. There was a resurgence of animal rights and animal liberation discussions in the 1970s and 1980s, and zoos were part of that as well. Since then, I don’t feel like the discussions have changed a whole lot. Obviously, every so often, new examples of things people don’t like emerge.
Walter brought up the example of orcas being kept in captivity in aquariums. That gained a lot of attention—was it almost 10 years ago that Blackfish came out? People started really thinking about that issue. So certainly, you see these waves where the discussion ebbs and flows, and particular practices or particular animals become the focus. But in terms of the division between the more hardline abolitionists and the more moderate general public perception, I think that has stayed fairly stable.
WV: Yeah, I mean, I think the majority of people might not even ask the question, “What are zoos for?” That’s certainly something we hope to address here. But we also want to acknowledge that zoos have done good work in the last few decades to explore their purpose and try to rebrand themselves. Often, they emphasize things they do beyond just providing entertainment for visitors or simply displaying animals. Instead, they highlight research roles, conservation programmes, breeding efforts, and, of course, animal welfare as a very special focus of zoos.
GM: Heather, you mentioned that sometimes academics argue from impressions of zoos that might be rooted in the past and not up to date. It comes across in the book that, although we can’t judge zoos solely by their historical characteristics, there’s still a lot of historical baggage when people think about zoos. It’s impossible to completely divorce ourselves from their origins and historical characteristics. So, how did you deal with this aspect? In some ways, it’s illuminating to think about their evolution, but we don’t simply want to go back to the 19th century and condemn zoos because they started out as menageries for display and entertainment with no thought to animal welfare. How do you deal with this historical dimension of zoos?
HB: I guess we see the historical dimension as something really important to keep in mind when discussing zoos and how they move forward. Zoos need to think about how they run, what their practices are, and how they present themselves to the general public. If you forget your history, you’re doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. So, keeping history in mind is really important. Zoos need to reflect on the mistakes that were made, identify the problematic parts of their history, and actively move away from those. They also need to communicate to the public that they are moving away from those practices and working toward a new model.
As we argue in the book, we think that zoos should be for animals. Historically, zoos were very much for humans in a dominant way, where powerful rulers displayed animals for people to marvel at and affirm their own power. Moving away from that entirely, zoos now need to focus on what’s good for the animals and present them in a respectful way. This allows the public to engage with animals as individuals or species and form impressions of them based on their actual characteristics, not through a frame of human dominance that defined earlier zoos.
WV: When I did my PhD in the philosophy and history of science, it was really interesting to look at the historical development of zoos. For instance, many animals used to die in transit when being transported from one place to another. For royalty, having exotic animals on display was a symbol of high status. Luckily, we’ve moved away from that. The rates of animals dying in transport are much lower now, and contextualizing this development helps us understand where zoos are today.
GM: We’ve come a long way from zoos existing purely for human entertainment. Nonetheless, human entertainment remains an unavoidable part of what zoos are for. If you remove the entertainment aspect, then you’ve got a sanctuary or a different kind of institution. The entertainment aspect is intrinsic to the cluster of characteristics that define zoos. Is that the core problematic relationship—integrating the other important functions with this irreducible need to provide entertainment as a zoo?
HB: I think absolutely, that’s the key tension in zoos today. There’s this concern about wanting to provide the best possible environment for the animals. But at the same time, zoos are, to some degree, businesses. Whether privately or publicly owned, they need funding to operate. Keeping animals costs a lot of money, so you need to attract people. You need that entertainment dollar. People visit zoos instead of other forms of entertainment—they might go to the movies or a waterslide park otherwise. Zoos have to appeal to people by offering a nice day out.
That instrumental part—bringing in visitors—is necessary to keep running. At the same time, the things zoos care about, like education and conservation, can only be achieved if people attend and engage with what’s happening at the zoo. Providing something that’s entertaining and engaging to the public is a hugely important part of what zoos do. However, as we’ve said, this ties back to the problems of their history. Walking the balance between entertainment and doing things in a better way is one of the big challenges for zoos moving forward.
GM: And then, under that umbrella of entertainment, your book makes clear that there can be quite profound moments of cross-species connection. It’s not simply people gawping at animals—it’s actually allowing for those moments of connection and reflection. Heather, I think from your time as a zookeeper, you saw some really quite moving examples of people being in close proximity to wild animals.
HB: Yeah, that’s right. Part of my job when I worked in zoos was facilitating these encounters. People would come and do behind-the-scenes experiences where they’d get to meet an animal up close. You could see the way people responded to those experiences—almost every time, there was a sense of awe and joy in connecting with these animals. I think that makes a big difference in the way people engage with them.
In fact, Walter can tell the story as well, but it was his birthday recently, and as a birthday present, I bought him one of these encounters at a wildlife park not too far from where we are, so he could meet and feed the king penguins.
GM: Walter, that’s a perfect introduction to your penguin encounter.
WV: Yeah, and going in there, it’s not just that you feed them and get a bit closer than usual. The awkward thing for me was all the other zoo visitors coming for the scheduled feeding of the penguins and watching me. But I managed to block them out fairly well once I was in there, focusing on the penguins. One experience stood out—I was warned that one of the penguins is a bit touchy and likes to bite people when he doesn’t get the fish. Sure enough, I got bitten on my arm. It was very soft, so no real damage, but it was a special connection! It was ironic because I was thinking about what we wrote in the book. It’s still something that connects me to that penguin—I even remember his name. His name was Frank.
GM: So, you bear the mark of the encounter! Does that point to one possible problem, though? Some animals are more charismatic than others, and that may shape our view of zoos and their policies. When we talk about welfare, there are some animals intrinsically better suited to captivity and others that aren’t. You mentioned wolves, which are used to roaming over huge terrains, and polar bears—we’ve all seen videos of polar bears looking very unhappy in zoos. Is this one of the tensions you were talking about between entertainment and other goals? Can that factor have a shaping or deleterious effect on the animals kept and the way they’re kept?
HB: Yeah, absolutely. There are certain species that people want to see in zoos, and that’s shaped in part by what they’ve always seen—the big animals that are marketed as the ones people should see in zoos. But those aren’t always the species that do best in captivity. There’s been some really interesting research on the ecological and behavioral characteristics of different species that correlate with being better or worse suited to zoos.
As you said, wide-ranging carnivores are often among the less-suited ones. But they’re also some of the animals people really like seeing. So, there’s this balance between figuring out what people want to see in a zoo, which animals will be most appealing to them, and how to present those animals in a way that still ensures high welfare.
I think zoos have a role to play here in shaping and framing the narrative for people. They can present different kinds of animals and show why they’re interesting and cool. In a way, I don’t want to go to five different zoos and see the same tiger five times. Different zoos could specialize in animals found in their local regions or those that their specific setups are better equipped to handle. That way, zoos can tell a story about what’s cool about those animals. People might come to the zoo unaware of certain animals, but they could leave with a new appreciation for them.
Certainly, you’ve seen all over social media recently that the pygmy hippo, Moo Dang in Thailand, has become extremely popular. This isn’t a species that typically comes to mind as one of the top ten people think of when visiting zoos. But all it takes is one sensation—one narrative that people latch onto—and suddenly a whole new species can capture public attention. Zoos now have the opportunity, especially with social media, to use these kinds of portals as ways to connect people with new types of species. They can try to align these connections with the species it’s best for them to keep and help the public enjoy and appreciate them, showing why these animals are cool to see as well.
GM: When it comes to the stories that zoos tell about themselves, conservation has become one of the key elements. It’s often the justification they highlight when called upon to defend their existence or, more positively, when reaching out to connect with the public. Conservation is often at the top of their list, more so than entertainment or even research. You say in the book that conservation is potentially the strongest but also the hardest justification to pull off. I wanted to ask you to elaborate on that—what makes it so difficult to judge whether conservation is as compelling an argument as zoos maintain? Is it actually working, or is it sometimes more of a PR exercise?
HB: Certainly, the conservation goal is one that zoos strongly emphasize, and it’s probably the one that members of the public associate most with what zoos do. However, critics of zoos have, somewhat rightly, pointed out that what zoos contribute to conservation may not be as widespread or impactful as they claim. This critique often stems from an older-fashioned view of zoos as something like an ark, where endangered species are kept, bred, and then released back into the wild. Critics will point out that most species in zoos aren’t actually endangered, nor are most being bred for release. So, they ask, what are these zoos really doing?
I think this discrepancy comes from different ways of thinking about conservation and how to achieve it. Breeding animals and releasing them into the wild is one way to conserve species, and it’s something zoos have done successfully in some cases. However, if we viewed that as the primary purpose of zoos, we’d probably conclude they’re not doing a great job. But if we broaden our understanding of conservation to include supporting field projects and, perhaps more importantly, raising awareness and motivating behavioral change among visitors, we might see zoos in a more positive light.
Conservation isn’t something that happens solely because of what one zoo does; it comes from what everyone in their community does. In that sense, zoos can play a significant role in achieving these goals. Zoos are, I believe, the third-biggest contributors to conservation charities worldwide. They make an impact through in situ, field-based projects they support and have the capacity, through the sheer number of people who visit them, to be strong motivators for behavioural change.
GM: Yeah, so if we have entertainment as a kind of irreducible commercial imperative for a functioning zoo, and if we have animal welfare as another axiomatic requirement to be a zoo worthy of the name, do you see a mixed economy of other priorities? You talk about research, conservation, and education priorities, but it’s not the case that you envision a single blueprint for the best-case zoo. Should the world be accommodating enough to allow for different emphases? You’ve talked about different mixes of animals—do you also see a different mix of priorities within each zoo context as ultimately healthy?
WV: I think one thing we have to realize is that these different goals can trade off against each other. For instance, what would make a place with animals ideal for conservation might not involve putting it in the middle of a large metropolitan area. There are trade-offs. Similarly, for entertainment, it might be more entertaining for people if they were allowed to ride the elephants or, I don’t know, have water guns and shoot at the animals—but that would be a terrible idea. It doesn’t matter if children had more fun doing that; it would be ethically unacceptable. So, we have this careful balancing act between these different goals.
Because there are multiple goals, there are different emphases you might place on each one. For instance, as we highlight in the book, while zoos play important roles in research, that goal is still relatively unexplored. Some zoos have established very useful collaborations with scientific research institutions, but this is an area that could be developed much further. Compare that to the usual kind of animal research, which is often seen as far more unethical. In those contexts, animals live very short lives in small cages and are killed after the experiments because there’s no other place for them to go. Here, zoo animals might provide a better alternative—they might even gain enrichment from engaging in new activities. Of course, we have to emphasize welfare here to ensure they don’t suffer.
But yeah, I think Heather can say more about why the welfare issue is especially important.
HB: That’s right. I think welfare should be the non-negotiable standard that every zoo strives to excel at. Like we said, entertainment is also a necessity for business purposes. But different kinds of zoos—whether they’re large or small, regional or city-based, or located in different countries—are going to have a range of different strengths and opportunities in various areas. Trying to impose a single blueprint for all zoos, regardless of their circumstances, would likely be a recipe for failure.
We should view this as complementary. The zoo community as a whole should focus on all these goals, but any individual zoo doesn’t need to address all of them equally. Each zoo should focus on some of these goals, but not necessarily all of them or in the same proportions, depending on what they have the capacity to achieve.
GM: Yeah, I mean, we keep circling back to welfare in your account, which is absolutely understandable. I wondered, how easy is it to establish what constitutes good welfare for animals? You write in the book about talking to visitors who assume that animals live longer in the wild, and also about the widespread belief that animals must have better lives in the wild than in captivity. It seems unconscionable to many people to think that there could be a trade-off, and that the balance might actually favor living in captivity. So, behind this word “welfare,” how easy is it to establish what constitutes good welfare?
HB: Certainly, defining what is good welfare—conceptualizing welfare—is still an ongoing project. There are still disagreements among academics, members of the public, and others about what welfare really consists of. There are different theories. The one we prefer is that welfare is about how good or bad an animal feels. It’s about the range of experiences they have—broadly, pleasures and pains, but more generally all the things that make their life feel good or bad. This is a very animal-centered perspective, thinking about what kind of animal it is and what kinds of things it will like or dislike.
Another theory of welfare, particularly common when talking about zoo animals, focuses on “naturalness.” It holds that animals have good welfare when their lives are as close as possible to those of their wild relatives. This is something we challenge in the book. Scientists and zoo professionals often push back on this idea, pointing out that many things that happen to animals in the wild aren’t good for their welfare. Just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s natural to starve to death when food supplies are low, to be killed by a predator, or to be injured in an accident like a rockfall. None of these are good for welfare. So, naturalness on its own isn’t a reliable guide for what constitutes good welfare.
A lot of people who object to zoos will say, “It’s just unnatural to take animals from the wild.” But instead of dismissing naturalness entirely, we can incorporate it into welfare by focusing on the kinds of natural behaviors animals like to perform. Historically, zoos were very unnatural places—concrete cages and bars with little opportunity for animals to engage in their natural behaviors. This was bad for their welfare, not because it was unnatural, but because it made them unhappy and removed everything that allowed them to thrive psychologically.
Using naturalness as a guide in this way helps identify the kinds of behaviours—walking, swimming, climbing, jumping—that animals enjoy and that improve their welfare. Providing opportunities for choice and control in their environment, allowing them some sense of agency over what they do and when, is also essential. These aspects are tied to naturalness but aren’t ultimately grounded in it.
GM: I guess this is a field where ongoing research in zoos can feed back into improving the quality of life for animals and future generations in their care.
HB: Absolutely. Zoos are focusing a lot on this kind of research. Probably most of the research dynamics revolve around the welfare of the animals they keep—what’s good or bad for them. There’s animal welfare research across laboratory, farming, and other contexts, but zoos are ahead in some ways. They focus a lot on positive welfare: opportunities for agency, choice, and control. They’re not just asking, “How do we remove suffering?” but also, “How do we give these animals flourishing lives?” Zoos are backing this up with empirical data so they’re not just making assumptions from a human perspective about what animals might like.
GM: We spoke earlier about Walter’s encounter with Frank the penguin, and I wanted to end by asking each of you to pick out a zoo encounter that really sticks in your memory—something that frames this whole sense of what zoos can be and what an enriched relationship between humans and non-human animals might consist of.
HB: That’s really hard, with 20 years of stories to choose from! For me, one of the most emotionally striking things was the relationships I developed with certain animals. This comes back to the idea of wanting to connect with an animal—not just seeing it, but having it see you as well. Having a two-way connection with another subject, another being in the world, is very special.
As a zookeeper, you get a unique opportunity to build these relationships because you spend so much time with the animals. Seeing animals respond differently to you than they would to a random member of the public is really lovely. There was one capuchin monkey I worked with at the National Zoo and Aquarium in Australia, where I did most of my work. He was there when I started volunteering at the zoo over 20 years ago. He’s still there now, and whenever I go back to visit, even though I don’t work there anymore, he still recognizes me. He comes over to talk to me, makes their little vocalizations, and does eyebrow flashes. It’s so touching and moving every time it happens. I feel really lucky to have been part of his life.
GM: Walter, what about you?
WV: I think the encounter with Frank might have been the most special one. But I was bitten by a different animal before. I went to a zoo in Sydney, maybe for another birthday, and I got to feed a tree kangaroo. While feeding it, it confused my finger for maybe a sweet potato and bit me. That stuck out, but it wasn’t a negative experience. I didn’t think, “That animal is immoral,” or anything like that. In fact, it made the memory more special. How many people can say, “I went to a zoo and got bitten by an animal”?
Obviously, it’s not something to emulate. The animals are vaccinated, so you don’t need to worry too much, and it’s a rare occurrence. Otherwise, they wouldn’t allow those kinds of encounters. But it gave me a special sense of connection—very different from just watching animals from a distance. These kinds of close encounters offer something unique. Even when an animal approaches a window and watches you, it’s a moment of engagement.
A year ago, I went to a zoo in Melbourne and watched a seal spinning around for half an hour. A lot of children and parents were moving a jacket capsule back and forth, and the seal seemed very entertained. It was a close engagement where humans and animals entertained each other. It’s a very different view from thinking we’re just going to zoos to be entertained by animals. For the animals, we can be entertainment, too.
We talk about this in the book. During the COVID pandemic, it was quite negative for some animals not to have the stimulation of zoo visitors. Some animals don’t like too many visitors, but a complete lack of stimulation was clearly not good for them.
GM: Yeah, Frank had no one to bite!
HB: Exactly. People sometimes ask if the zoo of the future will have only holograms or animatronic animals, with no live animals to worry about. I don’t see that as viable. For all the reasons we’ve discussed, you don’t get the sense of connection or the two-way interaction you have with real animals. That’s why I think it would never be as popular as seeing real animals.
GM: I think that’s what we’re discovering with AI—the simulacrum can never quite replicate the relationship we have with real beings.
Thank you both. That was really fascinating. I hope people will be stimulated to read the book, which has so many interesting stories, ideas, and suggestions in it. That was a lovely introduction to your work.
HB: Thank you.
WV: Thanks for having us.