Name: Should zoos exist? | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2022-08-12T18:01:11.000Z
Duration: 6 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Zoos have changed out of all recognition.

There are quite a lot of different species around the planet,

The second conditional

which we wouldn't have today if it wasn't for zoos.

What do you think an ideal zoo would look like?

All through history, we've seen royal families,

powerful people, emperors, have collections of animals.

The king who was a good hunter was probably a good warrior,

but bringing back a live one showed even more power.

Virtually all the history of zoos is about human control of nature.

Queen Charlotte, her gift to everybody that she liked

And eventually we get the first modern zoo opening in London in 1828.

To be able to suddenly see a giraffe for the first time,

There wasn't really an appreciation of animals needing certain things

So you would see them in barren boxes, effectively,

just as you would see a specimen in a natural history museum.

divorced from habitat, divorced from evolution.

Well, as a rule, tapirs are rather stupid and unintelligent.

Animals were thought of as basically automatons

with no feelings of pain or any kind of emotional depth.

Now there's much more of an understanding

that we really need to look at their own type of intelligence

The schoolchildren that come here to the wildlife park,

all of them go away learning the messages that we know for sure

are going to make a true difference to the animals

The biggest threat to wildlife comes from people,

So zoos are very important because they provide an educational opportunity

for people to learn about what the impacts of their daily activities are

JON COE: The zoo, by becoming a public attraction, if it's done properly,

it seems to me like a pretty good idea. The animals have a good life.

Hopefully they get involved in conservation.

JON MINION: Pretty much all good zoos throughout the world

are participators, or they help to support and fund a whole host

the world would be looking very different right now.

Zoo populations of animals are insurance populations.

due to what's going on on the planet at the moment,

the only way that we can stop them from going extinct

As we learn to adapt to things like climate change,

we are going to see an increasing role for zoos.

You can visit zoos all over the world that are just awful.

You know, they're as bad as they were in the 1920s.

ROBERT YOUNG: In the US they don't have very strict animal welfare laws.

People can have animals in their back garden and call it a zoo.

There are more pet tigers in the US than there are tigers in the wild.

The legislation doesn't permit that kind of thing here in the UK,

Those are all signs that they're missing out on some important aspect

The complexity of providing a good life for some of these animals,

There is some evidence that people will know more facts

but follow up studies to see if they've actually changed their behaviour

there's not much evidence to suggest that is happening.

The official statistics show that 4% of revenue goes back into conservation.

I mean, that's minimal. That's very small.

and things that don't get released back into the wild.

then you can have an in situ conservation programme

that's based in the country where they come from.

Most five year olds are experts in dinosaurs.

and I think the same can be harnessed with animals.

There's many other technologies that are being developed these days,

I think the future holds something really cool

without the detriment of keeping them in captivity.

Virtual reality with wildlife encounters is really coming on.

Taking a virtual walk through a herd of elephants in the Serengeti,

I think, is going to be possible pretty soon.

It's kind of strange that we transport all of these animals

from far from home and keep them locked up

where you should see what nature has to offer on your doorstep.

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Should zoos exist? | BBC Ideas

massive

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