Zoos Are Prisons With Gift Shops

Imagine being born into captivity. You did nothing wrong, committed no crime, but your life is decided for you, what you eat, where you go, who you’re allowed to see, when you sleep, whether you get to reproduce, and what happens to your body after you’re killed. For millions of wild animals, that’s not imagination. That’s a zoo.

Zoos are marketed as conservation hubs, educational institutions, even happy places for family days out. But peel back the branding, the mascot costumes, and the PR speak, and what you find is an industry built on confinement, deception, colonial legacy, and commodified life. The reality is bleak. No matter how many trees are painted on the walls, no matter how many enrichment toys are thrown in, or how “naturalistic” the enclosure appears, captivity is still captivity. This article is not an appeal for reform. It’s a demand for abolition.

Zoos are prisons with better lighting

A common defence of zoos is that animals are well looked after, provided with food, vet care, and stimulation. But that’s like saying prisoners are well cared for because they’re given three meals a day and a mattress. The issue isn’t how comfortable the cage is, it’s the fact there’s a cage at all.

Wild animals have evolved to live in complex, dynamic environments, often spanning hundreds or thousands of square kilometres. Elephants walk for miles every day. Big cats patrol vast territories. Birds migrate across continents. In a zoo, the average elephant enclosure in the UK is about 1000 times smaller than their minimum natural range. Tigers, apex predators built to stalk, sprint, and hunt, live in concrete boxes and are thrown hunks of meat.

Animals pace, sway, circle, mutilate themselves, vomit, and pull out their fur and feathers. Zoochosis is the industry term. Madness, to everyone else. And when the suffering becomes too visible? Antidepressants. Sedatives. Behavioural experiments. Anything to make them appear “calm” for the public. This is not care. This is management.

Conservation is the cover story

If zoos were serious about conservation, they’d be pouring funds into habitat protection, anti-poaching patrols, and community-led rewilding. Instead, they spend millions building new exhibits to attract more visitors. The figures don’t lie: less than 1% of animals kept in UK zoos are ever reintroduced into the wild. In fact, most species in zoos aren’t endangered at all. The vast majority are chosen not for conservation value, but for crowd appeal. Giraffes. Penguins. Lions. Pandas. Zoos don’t protect the most threatened species. They protect the most profitable ones.

Even when animals are bred in captivity, they are rarely, if ever, released. Most captive-born animals would not survive in the wild. They lack survival skills. They’re genetically bottlenecked. And their existence does nothing to address the reasons their species is endangered in the first place, logging, agriculture, hunting, and land theft, often driven by the same countries building new zoos.

Conservation in zoos is not about animals. It’s about optics.

Education is a myth

Supporters of zoos often talk about the educational value of seeing animals up close. But what exactly are people learning? That lions sleep 20 hours a day on concrete? That penguins live beside tapirs and camels? That it’s acceptable to keep polar bears in sweltering heat because they “look cute”?

In a study of 2,800 schoolchildren visiting London Zoo, the majority left with no measurable increase in knowledge, and some with less understanding than when they arrived. Most visitors don’t read the signs. Many enclosures don’t even label the species correctly. And the behaviours on display are almost never natural. They’re stress responses.

If seeing an animal was essential for learning, children would know more about lions than they do about dinosaurs. But they don’t. Because real learning doesn’t come from watching a depressed animal walk in circles, it comes from context, storytelling, and empathy. Things you’re more likely to find in a nature documentary than at a zoo.

Zoos breed, buy, sell, and kill animals

Zoos are businesses. That means supply, demand, and stock control. And animals are the stock.

Over 90% of zoo animals are born in captivity. They aren’t rescued, they’re bred, for display, not release. When their genes become overrepresented in the population, or if their sex is “inconvenient” for breeding plans, they’re considered surplus. And what happens to surplus animals? They’re shot, sold, or quietly disposed of.

The case of Marius the giraffe made headlines in 2014. A healthy young giraffe, killed with a bolt gun in front of children, dissected, and fed to lions. Because his genes were “too common.” Copenhagen Zoo, like many others, argued this was “natural.” The lions needed to eat. But that giraffe didn’t need to die. There were sanctuaries willing to take him. Offers from other zoos. None of that mattered. Because in this industry, life is a numbers game.

Zoo animals die young, or live too long

Captive elephants live less than half as long as their wild counterparts. Lion cubs have higher mortality rates in zoos than in the wild. Many aquatic animals die within weeks of being captured or transported. And animals who escape, even briefly, are often shot on sight.

But for some species, captivity prolongs life in the worst way. Animals bred for generations behind bars, denied everything that makes their lives meaningful, are kept alive not for their sake, but for the visitors’. So they can be stared at, photographed, poked, and mocked.

An obese leopard lying listlessly in a Malaysian zoo went viral. “Chonky!” the internet cried. The zoo assured the public he was being cared for. Monitored. Loved. What they didn’t say was that leopards don’t naturally get “chonky.” That wild animals don’t survive obesity. That he was once sleek, agile, powerful, and now he’s a meme.

Zoos lie. Constantly.

They lie about conservation. They lie about education. They lie about behaviour. They lie about success rates, breeding programmes, and deaths. They tell the public that animals pacing in circles are “playing.” That animals rocking back and forth are “dancing.” That killing animals is “humane management.” That it’s all “for the species.” They brand themselves as sanctuaries, as research institutions, as “world leaders in animal welfare.” But the truth is simple: if zoos told the truth, they’d go out of business.

Because the truth is uncomfortable. The truth is concrete walls and chronic stress. The truth is antidepressants and cages. The truth is dead “surplus” animals, shot and fed to others. The truth is greenwashing and animal trade deals and visitor selfies with sickly cubs.

And the truth doesn’t sell tickets.

Zoos are colonial relics

The modern zoo was born from empire. A place where exotic animals, symbols of conquest and dominion, were paraded for public amusement. London Zoo opened in 1828. It also housed humans. Yes, humans. People from colonised nations were kept in “ethnographic displays,” forced to perform their “native behaviours” for gawking crowds.

That practice has ended. But the mindset hasn’t.

Zoos still separate animals from their homelands, strip them of autonomy, and present them as curiosities. Animals from Africa, Asia, and South America are displayed for Western entertainment, managed by Western institutions, and used to justify Western funding. The decisions about their lives, if they breed, who they’re with, how they die, are made thousands of miles from where they belong.

The zoo is not a sanctuary. It’s a showroom.

Zoos create more problems than they solve

They contribute to the exotic pet trade by normalising wild animals in captivity. They weaken genuine conservation efforts by siphoning funding away from habitat protection. They interfere with field science by promoting misleading research based on captive behaviours. They reinforce speciesism by teaching that animal lives are entertainment. They damage mental health of children by disguising cruelty as fun.

And they pollute. Constantly.

Heating polar bear enclosures. Flying animals across continents for breeding swaps. Feeding hundreds of carnivores with slaughtered livestock. Running cafes full of meat and dairy while claiming to protect endangered species. All of it leaves a footprint.

When conservationists on the ground are scraping together funds to protect real ecosystems, zoos are spending millions on fake ones.

Even the “best” zoos are not good enough

Chester Zoo is hailed as one of the best in the UK. And even they’ve admitted their elephant enclosure needs expanding. The UK’s new welfare reforms, praised as “ambitious”, are little more than modest space increases, bans on tethering birds, and limits on touching rays. That’s the bar. But what if we raise it?

What if we say animals deserve freedom, not just stimulation? What if we say life behind glass is not a kindness, no matter how well-meaning the keeper? What if we stop measuring welfare by how well animals survive in zoos, and start asking whether they should be there at all?

The future is wild

Real conservation doesn’t breed animals into cages. It protects their homes. It funds rangers. It challenges deforestation. It supports indigenous communities. It empowers local people. It restores what we’ve broken. Real education doesn’t teach children that animals are exhibits. It teaches them respect. It teaches them that wild animals are not ours to use, to pose with, to breed, to barter, or to kill.

Real sanctuaries don’t exploit. They rescue. They don’t breed. They rehabilitate. They don’t sell tickets. They give refuge.

Zoos cannot be reformed into these things. Because their foundation is wrong. Their logic is wrong. Their justification is wrong. It’s not about better cages. It’s about no cages.

Abolition, not rebranding

The zoo industry doesn’t need tweaks. It needs an exit strategy.

▫️ No new breeding.

▫️ No new acquisitions.

▫️ No more wild captures.

▫️ No more expansion.

▫️ Phase out exhibits.

▫️ Retire animals to sanctuaries.

▫️ Redirect funds to genuine conservation.

▫️ End the lie.

If you care about animals, don’t fund their captivity. Don’t let your kids grow up thinking zoos are normal. Don’t accept the idea that exploitation is justified if it’s “for the species.” No other justice movement allows that logic. Neither should ours.

Wild animals belong in the wild. Not in prisons dressed as playgrounds.

Zoos are the past. Let’s leave them there.