Kiwi birds, Harambe and Elephants

Who regulates the zoos?

Photo by Elio Santos on Unsplash

Knowing an animal is nocturnal and highly sensitive to human interaction — yet forcing it to be petted by a hoard of human visitors during daylight hours including waking it or dislodging it from a dark place while it is trying to sleep, seems like a form of torture. This past week, the Miami Zoo had its own awakening from its darkness of understanding when a viral video of its mistreatment of a flightless kiwi bird, drew a firestorm of anger from half way around the globe.

The Kiwi Bird

Māori people who are the indigenous people of New Zealand have much respect for the Kiwi bird and it is part of Māori cultural and tradition. The story told by the Māori about how the kiwi became flightless explains that because of its selflessness and bravery to help the world it lost its wings but is forever honored.¹ Today, its feathers are used for cloaks for those Māori held in high honor. Non-indigenous New Zealanders, too, are very proud of their unique bird, and have made it the unofficial national icon.² You can imagine the horror of Māori people and New Zealanders when they viewed a video on Youtube showing the zoo tormenting a kiwi with zoo visitors that had paid for a petting experience. The kiwi clearly wanted to hide in the dark and sleep; but the paid zoo petting program drove the attendants to coax the kiwi into a dark box to sleep, only to lift the lid and pluck it out for petting and prodding.³

The outrage in cyberspace got the attention of the Miami Zoo and they apologized and ended the program within a few days of the criticism.⁴ But this raises the question, what about the other animals that might not garner international outrage? Who is looking out for them?

Who Oversees the Zoos?

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums⁵ in the United States is the private sector accrediting body for zoos and aquariums. They develop standards for zoos and make an annual check to make sure their accredited members are adherent to them.

The Accreditation Commission evaluates every zoo or aquarium to make sure it meets AZA's standards for animal welfare, care, and management, including living environments, social groupings, health, and nutrition. Every animal at AZA-accredited institutions undergoes a thorough welfare assessment at least once a year. We also make sure that animals are provided with enrichment, which stimulates each animal's natural behavior and provides variety in their daily routine. The Accreditation Commission also evaluates the veterinary program, involvement in conservation and research, education programs, safety policies and procedures, security, physical facilities, guest services, and the quality of the institution's staff. And because a zoo or aquarium needs a strong foundation in order to continue to meet high standards, accreditation also evaluates each institution's finances, its governing authority, and its support organization. In other words, we look at everything!⁶

The accrediting committee is made up of fifteen experts, and one of their tasks is to review incident reports each month. Incidents would be reviewed like the shooting of Harambe, the senior male Gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo that had to be killed when a small boy fell into the enclosure, despite the Gorilla’s lack of aggression, the zoo staff determined that his mere strength was life-threatening.⁷ Five years after the death of the gorilla, emotions are still raw about the incident, but conservation efforts to save gorillas in the wild have doubled since then.⁸ The incident of the kiwi will also no doubt be reviewed by the committee.

The Columbus Zoo lost accreditation due to the use of animals for entertainment and the acquisition of animals from questionable sources, as well as mismangement of funds by management. The founder, Jack Hanna, often appeared on late night talk shows with the exotic animals, decades ago.⁹ The Zoo lost accreditation in December 2021 but then was re-inspected after changes and was re-accredited 18 months later.¹⁰ Losing accreditation means loss of the public trust, inability to exchange animals with other accredited zoos and exclusion from many grants.

There are other accrediting organizations Zoological Association of America, a smaller and newer accrediting body,¹¹ and the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks & Aquariums (AMMPA), an international association and accrediting body specializing in marine mammals, and includes zoos.¹² The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums is a membership organization that encourages high standards and cooperation.¹³

The law of zoos

While the Association of Zoos and Aquariums provides accreditation and develops standards, there are many other zoos of all types that do not fall within the accredited elite of zoos and aquariums. These as well as the elite are regulated under the Animal Welfare Act, implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Anmal Welfare Regulations (promulgated from the statute) mention only the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums which is the AZA.¹⁴ While the AWS does not adopt the standards of any of the associations, they use them for opinions or reference.

The Animal Welfare Act, defines zoos to mean “any park, building, cage, enclosure, or other structure or premise in which a live animal or animals are kept for public exhibition or viewing, regardless of compensation.”¹⁵ Further “exhibitors” can include “carnivals, circuses, animal acts, zoos, and educational exhibits, exhibiting such animals whether operated for profit or not.”¹⁶

Looking Back at Evolving Morality in the Treatment of Animals started with Indigenous Peoples

The first development of habitat to better display animals was that of Hagenbeck in Germany who wanted better ways to display his exotic animal show. However, this development came after his very lucrative business of displaying indigenous peoples similarly in the context of their native regalia, as he thought this would bring more viewers.

Hagenbeck’s use of the display of indigenous people in their native regalia beginning in 1874 helped support “the idea that the efforts of the colonial societies were advantageous both to the indigenous peoples whose lands were being occupied and to the Europeans who were occupying them.”¹⁷

The commercialization and display of Ishi, a man who was the last of his indigenous tribe in California in the early 20th Century is one of the most shameful stories in anthropology. The idea that society once found this acceptable while justifying the practice as better for indigenous people to be in captivity with all that our “civilized” society can offer, is sickening and shameful. Outrage was slow in coming, but by 2022, the anthropologist who captured and displayed Ishi lost his place of honor in academia.¹⁸

The end of circuses came only within the last few years, with the treatment of its animals too harmful to be tolerated by a society that had grown to be more sensitive to captive animals that were coerced to perform in ways they may not enjoy. I do not doubt that there were many trainers with bonds with their animals that were good, but there were enough bad visuals of elephants being mistreated who we increasingly see as emotional and intelligent¹⁹ that led to the closure of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Circus in 2017 after a 146 year run.²⁰

Photo credit: Trainer Alexander Lacey gives a lion named Masi a hug. https://time.com/the-last-act-of-the-greatest-show-on-earth/

At least since the 1980s, almost all zoos have been evolving from a collection of cages to a more natural habitat environment for animals.²¹ Most people recognized cages as inhumane especially as we learned more about the intelligence and sensitivity of the animals we were so interested in seeing. If zoos did not change, they closed.

Now, even those habitats are often too confining and display animals that are clearly bored and unhappy. So new designs have evolved that are meant to allow the animals more freedom, such as roaming away from their enclosures like these tigers in the Philadelphia Zoo’s tiger overpass.

The zoo in Wichita, Kansas allows visitors to view elephants from a boating experience to remove the barrier between visitor and animal and still give the animal more freedom.²²

The pressure for merging education, conservation and animal displays has led to augmented reality and even animatronics to talk about the natural world.²³

Photo credit: https://www.glmv.com/echo-digital-is-there-a-place-for-animatronic-animals-in-zoos-aquariums/

Our future zoos may ultimately evolve into places of augmented reality which would draw us further away from what we really need, and that is to understand our oneness with nature and that we are actually part of the natural world. You only really get that sense when you look a tiger in the eye, or see an otter swim close to the glass to get a better look at you. For all that animatronics can do for entertainment, they cannot replace the natural world.

The zoos and aquariums of the future

The trend now is to have a large component of zoos dedicated to conservation, such as raising endangered species, caring for rescued wildlife and providing consulting and support for conservation efforts. These are important roles for zoos and the momentum to do more of this is continuing. It is part of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums accrediting requirements, and it will likely become more essential in accreditation.

Zoos and aquariums hold more than 15 percent of endangered species in the world from the IUCN list (international endangered species list) and with conservation as part of almost every mission statement, zoos are established invaluable contributors to conservation, worldwide. But despite the hundreds of millions of dollars toward reinstating endangered species, most of these efforts have failed. “Of 145 reintroduction programs carried out by zoos in the last century, only 16 truly succeeded in restoring wild animal populations to the wild.”²⁴ Animals in captivity change and adapt to their environments and then being released into the wild can be disastrous. This step is crucial and more work needs to be done on transitioning from captivity to the wild.

If our evolving morality can reach the point of respecting and protecting animals in the wild before they reach the stage of endangered or extinction, then we have succeeded. This suggests that the educational mission that is also supported by zoos and aquariums may be what is needed for this and future generations to reach that new level of societal morality.

1. https://polynesia.com/blog/maori-legend-how-the-kiwi-bird-lost-his-wings

2. https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/birds/birds-a-z/kiwi

3. Warning: this is disturbing.

4. https://www.npr.org/2023/05/25/1177960273/zoo-miami-kiwi-encounter-new-zealand-controversy

5. https://www.aza.org/

6. https://www.aza.org/becoming-accredited

7. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3618549/PICTURED-three-year-old-boy-fell-zoo-s-gorilla-enclosure-prompting-keepers-shoot-Harambe-creating-revulsion-world.html

8. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/entertainment/2021/05/28/rip-harambe-twitter-reactss-cincinnati-gorilla-5-years-later/7479869002/

9. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2021/10/06/columbus-zoo-loses-accreditation-plans-appeal-after-leadership-issues/6017990001/

10. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2023/03/27/columbus-zoo-and-aquarium-regains-aza-accreditation/70052110007/

11. https://zaa.org/accreditation

12. https://www.ammpa.org/about/who-we-are

13. https://www.waza.org/

14. https://www.guidestar.org/profile/55-0526930

15. AWA, 9 CFR (AWR, Sec. 1.1, 2020) at https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-9/chapter-I/subchapter-A

16. AWA, 9 CFR (AWR, Sec. 1.1, 2020) at https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-9/chapter-I/subchapter-A

17. Nigel Rothfels, Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo p.9 (2008) at https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801889758/

18.

19. https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/blogs/understanding-emotional-lives-elephants

20. https://time.com/the-last-act-of-the-greatest-show-on-earth/

21. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-10-27-me-58307-story.html

22. https://time.com/4672990/the-future-of-zoos/

23. https://www.glmv.com/echo-digital-is-there-a-place-for-animatronic-animals-in-zoos-aquariums/

24. https://wildwelfare.org/the-conservation-mission-of-zoos-nabila-aziz/