Severe Animal Cruelty

Severe animal cruelty is a serious issue that is commonly thought to be an issue of the past – but is it really? Animal cruelty, even though it has decreased significantly over the past century, is still rampant. Through the use of hundreds of thousands of zoos around the world, those who have claimed to be stopping the capture and abuse of millions of animals have allowed it to go by unnoticed and even supported by the public. From premature death and bad health to unnatural habitats and the culling of surplus animals, wild animals have experienced extreme suffering due to human intervention just for the opportunity for the public to be able to see such ‘wild’ animals on a ‘fun family day out’.

Premature death and bad health are two major issues that animals who have been stolen from their natural environment suffer. Captive animals are forced to live in tiny, filthy, desolate enclosures that cannot come close to matching the amount of space, variety and freedom the same animals would experience in their natural habitats. Orcas, for example, are forced to live in an area the size of a bathtub compared to the hundreds of kilometres they swim daily in their natural environment. Through the lack of these basic necessities, many animals experience …show more content…
Captive animals who have outlived their ‘usefulness’ are often sold to hunting ranches, pet shops, circuses, exotic meat industries and research facilities. These ‘useless’ animals are often animals who have aged and are less active or baby animals who have stopped being cute as they bring in less visitors. In some cases, the surplus animals are fed to their fellow zoo inhabitants. Through this method, the zoos are able to gain more money to spend creating artificial environments to house more captive animals who will, eventually, suffer from “zoocolsis” and die