There is more to treating animals in an appropriate way than keeping them healthy. Are we right to use animals as objects of entertainment?
There is more to treating animals in an appropriate way than keeping them healthy. Are we right to use animals as objects of entertainment?
It is wrong if animals have rights because:
From the welfare point of view it is wrong to keep an animal in a zoo if the animal has a less pleasant life than it would have outside the zoo.
Reasons why people think keeping animals in zoos is bad for their welfare:
There is more to treating animals in an appropriate way than keeping them healthy: It's possible (and used to be common) for zoos to keep animals in perfect physical shape, but in conditions that cause the animals to display serious behavioural problems.
But where a zoo is keeping animals in order to preserve a species that is under threat in the wild, and treats its animals in an appropriate way, then this is morally acceptable from the welfare point of view.
Some animal activists argue that the conservation argument is flawed. They list the following weaknesses:
The use of animals to entertain human beings is wrong because:
The use of animals to entertain human beings is wrong from the welfare point of view because:
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