Cause And Effect Essay On Animals In Captivity

Imprisoned against their will Imagine a child being torn away from their family, home, and the life that they have always known. Picture them being shoved in a cage that was too small. Being beaten, terrorized, sliced open, and injected with chemicals they could not pronounce. Forced to obey and perform for the very kind that put them in that cage. They wait day by day hoping that somehow they will make it out and be free like they once were. Until they suddenly realize that their mind is slowly slipping away from them, piece by piece. Like a dandelion blown in the wind, where all the seeds drift off slowly into an abyss never to be seen again. And they are powerless to stop it. Animals …show more content…
Zoochosis is the term that experts use when describing exactly what behaviors animals in captivity display. These are symptoms of zoochosis; “pacing and circling, tongue-playing and bar-biting, neck twisting, head-bobbing, weaving and swaying, rocking, over grooming and self-mutilation, vomiting and regurgitating and coprophilia and coprophagia”(Ramos 4). For example, “a brown bear in the throes of obsessive-compulsive disorder takes three paces forward, rotates its head counterclockwise, slams it into a metal door, takes three paces back and repeats the pattern over and over” (Halberstadt 16). When an animal who is locked away is seen displaying this type of activity, it is typically given medication and the behavior is disregarded. This relationship goes on in a continuous cycle of animals becoming mentally insane, and being filled with drugs by the very people who took their freedom away to begin with. Molly, an aoudad is another example of how being imprisoned takes its toll on an animal’s mental state. Molly suffered from an injury and lost the use of her tail. The tail was used to bat away insects and signal