Animals may look cute and happy to see their zookeepers, trainers, and visitors in the park. However, animals have their painful dark side while they are in zoos, aquariums, and parks. It is important to avoid capturing animals from the wild because after being captured, the animals will: become aggressive and dangerous to humans and other animals, become bored and stressed in their cages or tanks, and may eventually have health issues.
Zoos, aquariums, and animal-themed parks are supposed to be there to help animals with proper care but never there to keep animals from the wild, even. Many people do not realize that some animals were taken away from the wild and can be very risky to take care of. Once the animals from the wild are taken to the zoos or aquariums, they will eventually not be getting along with other captive animals and become aggressive to each other. Animals who were born or been in captivity for so long will attack and hurt the animals who just arrived from the wild. For example, killer whales started to be captured from the wild and taken to captivity in 1961 (Smith).
Killer whales from many other pods were put into pools in aquariums or marine parks. If the marine park or aquarium pool is filled with killer whales, the killer whales may go cranky and stressed just by swimming around with a bunch of other killer whales into each other’s ways. It can lead the killer whales to attack each other due to a lack of space and stress (Smith). From their fights, killer whales, even babies, will have streak marks that are damaging their skin or blubber. Staying and swimming around the same tank for a long time can make the dorsal fins of the male killer whales to collapse and tilted (Smith).
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Captured wild animals may not only become aggressive to other animals, they will become aggressive to humans as well. Animals who got captured from the wild can get traumatized and paranoid from the day they were captured. Animals in captivity can become dangerous and there can be an unexpected attack from the middle of nowhere. The main reason why animals can get aggressive is by stress, anxiety, and hardships. Animals from the wild can eventually have enough with staying in their cages or tanks for a long time or doing some circus and performing tricks and may want to pay back to the humans by attacking them.
A killer whale, from SeaWorld Orlando, named Tilikum was captured from the wild and been put to an aquarium in British Columbia with two female killer whales. He and the two killer whales killed the trainer when she fell in the pool in 1991 (Garcia). After being sold to SeaWorld Orlando, an intruder broke into SeaWorld, swam in the killer whale pool, and was killed by Tilikum in 1999 (Garcia). In 2010, Tilikum’s last victim was his SeaWorld trainer, Dawn Brancheau, during a Shamu show. After the killer whale attack from Tilikum, Dawn Brancheau passed away, SeaWorld improved the safety by not allowing any trainers to be in the water with Tilikum, and Tilikum was not in any performances until further noticed (Garcia).
According to Lliff, many dolphins in captivity died without any information on how dolphins in captivity. Animal rights activists were trying so hard to get with the government to investigate the proper information of how dolphins in captivity (Lliff). However, the dolphin park manager and spokesperson kept letting everyone know that the animal rights activists are spreading misinformation and say that the dolphins were in proper care (Lliff). Dolphins may look like they are in a happy mood to be in the park with the visitors, but they have hidden emotions too. The problem was that not only that there was a dolphin slaughter and trafficking every year, dolphins were also captured from the wild and taken to marine parks and aquariums (Lliff).
Keeping wild dolphins in captivity will not last long due to stress, boredom, and anxiety. Dolphins who were born in captivity can suffer the same way as wild dolphins because of not only boredom and stress but also being rejected by their mothers to some captive-born dolphins. Movies and TV shows, such as Flipper and Free Willy persuade the audience that it is best not to capture marine mammals from the wild because there will be a struggle in captivity (Lliff). Thankfully, when Mexico banned dolphin capture and trafficking, the death poll of dolphins decreases (Lliff).
Animals living in captivity after being captured from the wild feels like jail time. Animals from the wild being put into cages or tanks for a long time can make the animals feel bored and stressed. Animals in captivity who are staying in their cages for so long can get bored by either staying in their area, doing nothing or by doing their unchanged daily routine of performing and training. Once the animals in captivity get bored, they will end up becoming to feel stressed and anxious and start walking or swimming around the cage or tank repetitively, hoping that something new will happen (“Central Zoo Looks to a Sanctuary Model”).
Sometimes animals in captivity can end up doing unusual behavior and habits, such as hurting themselves. Elephants, for example, in captivity are stuck in their cage with a very little amount of space to walk around while the elephants remained in the wild are roaming around the wilderness (“Central Zoo Looks to a Sanctuary Model”). Wild elephants in captivity can eventually hurt themselves whether to end themselves from their captivity misery, feeling anxious, or just trying to break their walls to make an exit and find their way out of there (“Central Zoo Looks to a Sanctuary Model”).
Wild animals in captivity can face health issues if not being taken care of properly by their zookeepers and trainers. There are times where trainers who trained dolphins or whales to do tricks for marine park shows and gives them fish as a reward. However, if the whales or dolphins failed to obey the trainers of doing their tricks for the performances, the trainers will not give them fish as a reward. There also times that nobody knows how often the aquariums, zoos, and marine parks cleaned the animals’ habitats. Not having the animals’ habitats cleaned up very often will create diseases that can spread from animals to humans and get the zookeepers and visitors sick.
Some people are questioning how big the marine park pool is supposed to be for huge marine mammals like killer whales. Whales tanks are supposed to be in a proper size, depending on how many whales to keep, for them to have enough room to swim. Since captive animals always stayed in their cages or tanks for a long time and repeating their daily activities, they can act differently or do something that is out of the ordinary (Learmonth). When an animal starts walking around, clawing or biting something in their cage or tank, or grooming themselves so much, these activities are the signs of stress and anxiety.
Zoos, aquariums, and marine parks with bad living conditions for animals, it will also lead the animals to have harmful health conditions (Learmonth). Just like humans who have been anxious and stressed by biting their nails or pulling their eyelashes because they are anxious, stressed, and worried about something. If an animal and human stress or worries about something way too much, they will have a higher chance of feeling sick and weak. Like humans, if captive animals feel bored, anxious, and stressed while being stuck in their tanks and cages, it will lead their bodies and immune system to become weak (Learmonth).
Stress and anxiety can lead humans to illnesses, and animals will face the same way. In captivity, animals who were kept in their cages or tanks can become anxious and stressed so much will have their immunes systems weaken and cause injuries, diseases, and illnesses (Marino and Frohoff). If the diseases and illnesses were ignored, the animals in captivity will not last long.
For example, in captivity, when dolphins and whales do not do any performances or training, they will become bored and stress by chewing off the concrete wall or whatever they can find (Marino and Frohoff). Chewing off the concrete wall will damage and ruin the whales’ and dolphins’ teeth to the point where they do not have any more teeth. Also, when being bored in their tanks, the dolphins and whales will swim around their small pool and get cranky and stressed. Having so many killer whales in one pool can make them become cranky and attack each other. Dolphins and whales, who are mothers and children, do not have any choice but to leave each other (Marino and Frohoff).
When the babies got separated from their mothers, both the mothers and the babies will become stressed and heartbroken so much that it will make them feel weak and become sick easily (Marino and Frohoff). Humans interacting with animals are not always easy depending on how humans treat animals in captivity. If humans interact with animals properly by showing kindness and respect and make sure the animals’ health is in good progress and have no injuries or diseases. However, not all humans are not nice to animals. There are times where humans ended up treating animals in a harmful manner and affect animal unnatural behaviors and health (Marino and Frohoff).
