A moral question about zoos

A moral question about zoos 

Peter A. Hempel (07/16/26)

Ever since I was a kid, I have enjoyed visiting zoos and looking at all the animals. There have always been some people who complain about the idea of zoos, but they are the same people who tend to complain about pretty much everything. 

However, I recently had a somewhat new thought. (When I was in grad school, this was the point where my fellow grad students would exclaim, “Uh, oh, Hempel’s at it again.”)

Let’s take, for example, the case of lions. Lions are apex predators, fine tuned for hunting, for bringing down prey and killing it and eating the entire carcass. 

There are wildlife reserves, particularly in Africa, large enough to let animals live out their normal life cycle, protected from human hunters and poachers. 

But in the zoo, the lions are denied the fundamental essence of their being, their chance to hunt prey, and bring it down and kill it, and to teach their cubs the skills they in turn will need to master. 

At meal time, they are thrown generous hunks of raw meat. But there is no hunt, no thrill, no skill, no challenge, no chance to be a real lion. 

Snakes, on the other hand, tend to be fed live prey, like live mice, but lions, who are much closer to us in so many ways, are thrown into an old age home from which they can never escape.

 Don’t lions have rights too? Here in New Jersey, we have more than enough deer everywhere in the state. Wouldn’t it be much more beneficial for the lions to have some live prey to go go after? 

Certainly, feeding time at the zoo would be a much different experience for the visitors.

And the deer in turn, would get to experience the essence of what it means to be a prey animal – their own true nature.

And both sides would get the exercise they need to stay healthy. The conclusion, at least in the case of lions, is not predetermined. Lions are successful in bringing down their prey only about 20% of the time. So the prey definitely has a chance to save itself through speed or fancy footwork (the fittest), and the lion has to earn its (and its cubs’) meal. No welfare state, no lazy lions (or prey). The Darwinian work ethic playing out for all.

But mainly, we, the people, would have the satisfaction of knowing that the lions were free to be lions, expressing their own essence in the way that God and all of us should want.

Maybe we need a “Live Prey” movement. I’m sure the campus protesters will join in maximo voce.

I’ll handle the T-shirt concession.