SFL/METU
Dept. of B.E.
Testing Office
Pop-Quiz Take-home
April, 2017
PRE-INTERMEDIATE A GROUP
Study the text below carefully. You are going to have a pop-quiz on it next week.
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Look up all the words that you don’t know.
Be sure to understand all the references.
Read it carefully at least three times.
Try to guess what kind of questions you will be expected to answer.
You will be given a new copy of the text during the quiz.
You will have a short time to answer the questions in the quiz.
AGAINST ZOOS
1
In ancient times, rulers kept wild animals for entertainment and as a sign of their power. The Roman
emperor Trajan, for example, organized 123 days of games in order to celebrate his conquest of Dacia.
During these games, 11,000 animals were killed, including lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses,
hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, crocodiles and serpents. Such ancient rulers or such games no longer
exist, but we still keep animals in captivity. Why?
2
Why do we still take animals out of their native habitats, transport them great distances and keep them
in alien environments where their liberty is severely limited? When they are taken from the wild and
confined in zoos, animals are deprived of their freedom to do many things. They are prevented from
gathering their own food, developing their own social orders and generally behaving in ways that are
natural to them. If we want to keep animals in zoos, we must justify this choice. In other words, there
must be some important benefits of doing so. What might some of these important benefits be? Four
of these benefits are opportunities for scientific research, amusement, education and preservation of
species.
3
The first reason for having zoos is that they support scientific research. However, we should note that
very few zoos support any real scientific research. Few zoos have staff scientists with full-time research
duties. This is because scientists prefer to study animals in the wild rather than those in zoos.
4
Amusement is another important reason for the establishment of zoos, and most people visit zoos in
order to be entertained. Even the best zoos, like the San Diego Zoo, have dancing bears and trained
birds. Providing amusement for people is seen as a very important function of zoos. They say that it
attracts people’s attention. However, entertainment is not a good enough reason to keep animals in
cages.
5
This brings us to the third reason for having zoos: their role in education. It is sometimes said that
entertainment keeps people interested, and thus zoos make education possible. However, there is little
evidence that zoos are very successful in educating people about animals. Stephen Kellert's paper
Zoological Parks in American Society indicates that zoo-goers are less knowledgeable about animals
than backpackers, hunters, fishermen and others who have an interest in animals. They are only slightly
more knowledgeable than those who claim no interest in animals at all. Moreover, zoo-goers express
the usual prejudices about animals; 73% say they dislike rattlesnakes, 52% vultures and only 4%
elephants. It is a fact that most zoos make no real effort at education, but more importantly, the public
is indifferent to the zoo's educational efforts. Studies indicate that most animals are viewed only briefly
as people quickly move past cages. The typical zoo-goer stops only to watch baby animals or those
who are begging, feeding or making sounds. They mostly use expressions such as “cute”, “funnylooking”, “lazy”, “dirty” and “weird” to describe animals. Of course, it is undeniable that some
education occurs in some zoos, but this doesn’t answer these questions: What do we want people to
learn from visiting zoos? Do we want them to learn facts about the physiology and behavior of various
animals? Or attitudes towards the survival of endangered species? Or compassion for the fate of all
animals? Does education really require keeping wild animals in captivity? Should we not obtain the
educational benefits of zoos through documentaries, photos, lectures and books?
6
The fourth reason for having zoos is that zoos preserve species that could become extinct. As the
destruction of habitat accelerates and as breeding programs become increasingly successful, this
rationale for zoos becomes more popular. However, zoos actually remove more animals from the wild
than they return — which is only a few. Still, zoo breeding programs have had some important
successes. For example, they have saved the Mongolian Wild Horse and the European Bison from
extinction. Recently, however, some problems have begun to be noticed. According to research, lack
of genetic diversity among captive animals is a serious problem for zoo breeding programs. In some
species, the infant mortality rate is much higher than the rate among animals in the wild. Zoo authorities
are not unaware of this problem because they don’t keep adequate breeding and health records. Zoos
do not take this minimal step although they claim that they preserve endangered species. There is
another problem with zoo breeding programs: they create many unwanted animals. These extra animals
are unnecessary to the program and are a financial burden. Some of these animals are sold to individuals
or institutions which lack proper facilities. Others are shot and killed by hunters in private hunting
camps. To solve the problem of unwanted animals, some zoos are considering “recycling” excess
animals. By recycling, they mean killing them and feeding their bodies to other zoo animals.
7
There are two further arguments against zoos. First, captivity does not only take away animals’ liberty
but is also detrimental to them. The history of chimpanzees in the zoos of Europe and America is a
good example. Chimpanzees first entered the zoo world in about 1640, when a Dutch prince bought
one for his castle. The chimpanzee didn't live very long. In 1835, the London Zoo obtained its first
chimpanzee; he died immediately. Another was obtained in 1845; she lived only for six months. All
through the 19th and early 20th centuries, zoos obtained chimpanzees from the wild who quickly died
within nine months. In the 1930s, it was discovered that chimpanzees were extremely vulnerable to
human respiratory diseases. Moreover, to find chimpanzees for zoos, hunters usually shoot the mother
and kidnap the child. On arrival, many of these animals are kept under terrible conditions. Chimpanzees
are not the only animals to suffer in zoos. In 1974 Peter Batten, former director of the San Jose
Zoological Gardens, conducted a study on 200 American zoos. He documented large numbers of
neurotic, overweight animals that were kept in small, cold cells and fed unhealthy food. Many had
deformed feet and wounds that were caused by unsuitable floor surfaces. Almost every zoo that Batten
studied had high death rates because they didn’t take care of the animals properly. Many of these same
conditions and others have been documented in another study by Lynn Griner over the last 14 years at
the San Diego Zoo. This zoo may well be the best in the country, and its staff is clearly well-trained
and well-intentioned. Yet, this study documents widespread malnutrition among zoo animals, high
death rates from the use of anesthetics and tranquillizers, serious injuries and deaths during transport.
The study also revealed frequent occurrences of cannibalism, infanticide and fighting due to
overcrowded cages. Although the San Diego Zoo has learned from its mistakes, it is still unable to keep
many wild animals in captivity without killing or injuring them, directly or indirectly.
8
The second argument against zoos is even more important. Zoos give us a false sense of our place in
the natural order. They make us feel superior to other species. They make us think that other species
are there at our pleasure, to be used for our purposes. However, if we want to survive, we must learn to
live together with other species. To do this, we must forget what we learn at zoos. It is clear that both
humans and animals will be better off when zoos are abolished.