Opinion: Zoos may be more beneficial than you think

When you think of a zoo, what do you think it’s for? Well, most people think a zoo gets animals for entertainment, however, there is a deeper meaning to zoos. All of the best zoos agree on four principal goals: conservation, education, scientific pursuit, and recreation.

These four basic goals of zoos help keep numerous animals from extinction and keep them happy. It also brings happiness and smiles upon the visitors. So yes, it can be for entertainment, but it is a double win. All that money the zoos earn goes back into the zoo so that it continues to work.

Having a zoo and maintaining it costs millions of dollars. So, they try to make the zoo a fun place for people so that they can earn enough money to continue helping the animals. Let’s get into the deeper meaning behind zoos.

Conservation

Zoos mainly work to achieve conservation of animals by spreading knowledge of a certain species’ current problem and giving advice on how people can help these animals by doing simple everyday things. They also breed endangered species in captivity where there are no predators. This has the possibility to stop the incoming extinction of the animal and even reverse it. Contrary to popular belief, zoos take in animals from their natural environment only if it’s absolutely necessary. Such occurrences are usually due to human-caused situations (political, environmental, or wildlife trafficking).

Education

When people visit the zoo, they learn incredible fun facts about many kinds of animals. There are classes and tours. This is very beneficial to children. Most zoos have student volunteers which help the kids learn new things about animals. They can soon fall in love with wildlife and become a biologist in the future thanks to the zoo. In summary, zoos spread fascination and the beauty of nature with the public and future scientists.

Scientific Pursuit

Zoos help many scientific breakthroughs to occur. From the outside world, zoos just look like a fun place to be for families. But behind the scenes, there are studies going on how to keep animals happy, maintain genetic diversity and identify and cure diseases in animals.

Recreation

Like I said before, zoos are a great place for children and adults. They bring joy to families and they may inspire people to become an animal scientist or a zoo worker. It is like a school that is fun! Zoos teach people about endangered species and try to get them to care about animals to a point where they too want to help preserve animals and the beauty of nature for future generations as well.

In conclusion, zoos are amazing. They are not simple cages with animals for entertainment. Zoos are more than that.

They help to stop animals from going extinct, teach people about animals and why they matter, bring scientific breakthroughs and new ideas and finally, zoos inspire people to want to care for wildlife too.