Ethical Use Of Captive Animals Essay

Humans always need to be entertained, and whether it is a football game or watching an orca unnaturally balance a person on their nose during a show they always have a natural need to be impressed. The use of animals for human entertainment has gone on for centuries now, and throughout the past century it has been done in the most unethical and immoral ways. While reading chapter 6 in the book Animals and Society I was able to understand and agree with the bias explanations of the author when explaining the use of captive animals in the zoo systems and marine parks. I decided to dig into the text more by looking at the detrimental stress, unnatural environments, and as a result to these daily struggles the overall lifestyle of the animal. Being an animal lover really helped me with this reading because it …show more content…
It has been known that animals in zoos and especially marine mammal parks have become emotionally unstable due to the conditions they live through in their “homes.” Looking closer to the animals in the marine parks we can see that they are treated poorly because they are needed to increase guest numbers. I have done a lot of prior research on the extremely detrimental stress orca whales have experienced in captivity, specifically at SeaWorld. The captivity of marine mammals was briefly explained in the chapter, but it was still the part that I connected to most. In an article the author Simon Worrall asked a SeaWorld representative, “Do you really believe it’s acceptable that we rip these animals from their natural families in the wild…then put them in concrete pools, for a corporation to make enormous profits and for people to be entertained?” (Former Trainer Slams SeaWorld for Cruel Treatment of Orcas, 2015) This quote really goes to show that these corporations don't care for the animals health or stress levels, and that they only care for how they will bring in more