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When I visited Japan recently I went to the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo because I had never seen a giant panda and they had two.
Let me just say, as barbarous as a lot of American zoos are, Japanese zoos are fucking dire. Most of the enclosures were just concrete pits with no shade. Idk if they just don't have the same sort of animals rights pressure as we do or what, but it didn't seem like much effort was put into the animals' welfare at all.
My understanding is this is because unlike a lot of zoos, the ones in Japan are essentially glorified public parks instead of research/conservation institutions. So they have vastly less funding, oversight, and the animals are legally public property, like a bench or something.
I'm sure that's similar to how American zoos were in the recent past, but those changed because of public pressure.
Most of the US zoos I've gone to are pretty awesome.
According to Japanese meteorological authorities, the maximum daily temperatures in Tokyo averaged 90 degrees in the month of July. But when the month’s average humidity level of 77 percent was accounted for, the average heat index, a measure of how hot it really felt, rose to over 110 degrees. [...] Lions are more used to a dry heat environment.
My eyes widened from shock, then I remembered it's Farenheit. Then after conversion they widened again.
Zoos should not exist anymore. Imagine living on a very recluse space without any privacy... this is torture
Addon: Less than 100 years ago it was common place having humans from diffetent continents exposed on zoos too
https://historicaldaily.substack.com/p/1994-colonialism-on-display-the-last
Actually 1994 in France, don't have to go back too far
The ultimate act of dehumanization, according to the same unionist, was that the performers were housed near the animals and received medical care from… veterinarians.
holy fucking shit 
Mega ultra racism wasn't that long ago kids! Now we just have mega ultra racism lite! The people that ran this are still alive and have addresses and vote! 😵💫
Many are critical for conservation and research efforts. It is an unfortunate byproduct of their existence that people want to see animals housed there, some of which certainly cannot ethically be part of the public spectacle. There are some species you can ethically provide all of the needs for and still display without major disruption to the animals' lives
Many of those working in 'conservation' also kidnap the animals they breed from the wild in the first place and have a profit incentive to create as many babies as they possibly can to pass around to other zoos owned by the same people. The Portland, OR Zoo method of killing elephants and selling them to traveling circuses.
I mean I definitely understand where you are coming from, but if you can successfully start a breeding program which removes the profit incentive of removing wild animals from their natural habitat, while also supplying other zoos with that animal so that they too do not have to remove them from the wild, that is an objectively good thing.
Selling to a circus is a different story, as is using elephants as an exhibit animal, since, as I stated previously, there are no circumstances which you can ethically display such an animal
that is an objectively good thing
creating new forms of animal agriculture is not an objectively good thing
If it objectively lowers the demand to harvest wild animals from their natural habitats, which necessitates increased human encroachment and habitat fragmentation, then yes actually it genuinely is objectively good.
At the very least, it's an objective improvement so long as your goal is alleviating animal suffering at large. Human pressure on any given biosphere not only puts more animals at risk of falling into the category of animal agriculture for the sake of preservation, it also is the greatest single threat and suffering indicator for wildlife in observable history.
Is this a thing in current year in other settler nations like Australia and New Zealand? I'm not even going ask about Britain.
I'm not familiar enough with institutions outside the US, but I wouldn't assume any better in general. Focusing back on the US, I like to remind people that Seaworld was and is still AZA accredited. People like to point to that as some sort of stamp of quality. It's "we must sell hunting tags to generate the revenue we need to conserve the animals being hunted" type shit.
If this were some country on the tail end of constant western racism the headline would read ‘3 lions dead due to neglect, critics accuse JAPANESE of animal cruelty’
they also killed a seal.
What