Poor animal. Sensitive and intelligent creatures, locked in isolation for this long would drive any human completely insane. WHY are humans such god awful miserable bastards?
Humans are the most effective predators ever. If we don't actively protect all "large" animals, we will just murder them all with our lifestyle. By accident.
Now, how do we get people to care about all these wonderful creatures?
My answer is that we make sure that all humans respect and expect to care for animals. That means that children need to see these animals.
To me, that's a zoo. Yes, that's enslaving the animals, but seeing an elephant makes me much more likely to give two shits about keeping it alive.
The problem with this attitude is my kids already love elephants and hate zoos.
My daughter cried the first time she saw an elephant at the zoo, and asked me why they were all in cages.
She called it an animal prison and I kinda agree.
The younger generation gets plenty of world information from the internet now, they don’t seem to need or like the idea of zoos like we did growing up, before you could just see any animal any time you wanted with a pocket computer.
Arbitrary reasons. All the reasons people gave you are abritrary and I am sorry no one here told you the brutally honest truth. Cows are slaughtered by the millions in one country but are sacred and protected in another. It is all justifications humans come up with so we can live with our choices.
…she shared her small enclosure with a male orca named Hugo for the first decade of her captivity. In 1980, Hugo died from a brain aneurysm after an extended period of banging his head against the tank's spectator glass during fits of depression.