[bredren]

Zoos are are a terrible entertainment business.

All the primates and megafauna especially, it is a tragedy.

I'm certain they'll be looked back on with shame.

Even as zoos market videos of animals "eating birthday cake" on social media.

See also zoos' dark history entwined with ethnological expositions https://archive.is/xsuEU

[xvector]

Factory farms will be looked back on with 10,000x more shame and horror than zoos. Zoos barely scratch the surface of the immense and unnecessary cruelty we inflict on animals. We torture 70 billion land animals to death every year and the poor things will never even understand why - they're just babies, mentally speaking.

It's objectively the greatest evil humans have ever committed, and for our own pleasure at that. We inflict pure hellish suffering because "tAsTe bUdS gO BRRR!"

It's hard to even comprehend something more comically, absurdly evil, both in terms of motive and sheer scale of suffering.

At least zoos do trigger an empathy response and get people to care about animals more.

[mikrotikker]

Not to mention the many millions of horses killed in wars

[vbezhenar]

What? We eat meat. We need to eat meat. So we need to kill animals for that. Zoos absolutely not required for humans to survive.

[xvector]

> We eat meat.

Purely for taste.

> We need to eat meat.

False. 10-20% of the world population does not and we're just fine.

> So we need to kill animals for that.

No, you want to kill animals because you want tasty food. Not because you "need" meat. No one living in an industrialized country does. It's trivial to create a plant-based balanced diet (and a tasty one at that.)

> Zoos absolutely not required for humans to survive.

Neither are factory farms. They exist to satisfy "taste buds go brr." But that is not worth literally torturing[1] an animal to death.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko

[makerdiety]

Taste is an indicator of goodness. Therefore, good taste means high goodness.

[trogdor]

I’m not sure that’s a fair statement to make categorically.

Many zoos provide homes, food, and veterinary care for animals that would not be able to survive in the wild. For example, the mountain lion at Arizona Sonora Desert Museum is blind, and many of their other animals had been kept illegally by their previous owners, were confiscated by Arizona Game & Fish, and needed a place to live so they wouldn’t die.