Human–Animal Interactions in Zoos: What Can Compassionate Conservation, Conservation Welfare and Duty of Care Tell Us about the Ethics of Interacting, and Avoiding Unintended Consequences?

Abstract

Human–animal interactions (HAIs) in zoos can be rewarding for both humans and animals, but can also be fraught with ethical and welfare perils. Contact with animals can be beneficial for all parties involved, and can indeed lead to pro-conservation and respect for nature behaviours being adopted by humans after so-called “profound experiences” of connecting or interacting with animals. Yet, human–animal interactions may also increase certain individuals’ desires for inappropriate wild-animal ‘pet’ ownership, and can convey a false sense of acceptability of exploiting animals for “cheap titillation”. Indeed, this has been reflected in a recent research review conducted on animal–visitor interactions in zoos from a number of different countries and global regions. These are unintended consequences that ”modern, ethical zoos” would try to minimise, or avoid completely where possible, though most zoos still offer close-contact experiences with their animals. Three ethical frameworks that may be beneficial for ethically run zoos to incorporate when considering human–animal interactions are: Compassionate Conservation, Conservation Welfare and Duty of Care. These three ethical frameworks are concerned with the welfare state and outcomes for individual animals, not just the population or species. Human–animal interactions in zoos may be acceptable in many circumstances and may be beneficial to both animal and human participants; however, they must be closely monitored through welfare tracking tools. The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) has published guidelines for human–animal interactions that are mandatory for member institutions to adhere to, although whether these guidelines are taken as mandatory or suggestions at individual institutions is unknown. Some suggestions for relevant extensions to the guidelines are suggested herein. Melding Duty of Care and the two Conservation ethical frameworks would be ideal for assessing the ethical acceptability of such interactions as they currently occur, and for considering how they should be modified to occur (or not) into the future in zoological settings.

Visitor Attitudes Toward Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor) at Two Australian Zoos

“…The potential lack of awareness of visitor effects on little penguins is consistent with the neutral visitor attitudes toward positive and neutral visitor effects found in the present study (i.e., neither agreed nor disagreed). This could be addressed by effective communication and educational strategies to raise visitor awareness about visitor effects or alter visitor attitudes and perceptions of interacting with zoo animals (Chiew et al, 2019b ; Learmonth, 2020 ). However, we were not able to directly correlate the attitudes of each visitor with their behavior and did not examine visitors' attitudes specifically toward the behaviors that they, as visitors, engage in toward little penguins.…”

Identification of Animal-Based Welfare Indicators in Captive Reptiles: A Delphi Consultation Survey

“…In the absence of a body of literature where there has been dedicated study and confirmation of the types of behaviors that represent positive emotions in reptiles, the identification of indicators of positive emotions is likely to be performed by analogy with mammalian counterparts [15]. Behaviors that are likely candidates are social affiliative and play behaviors [15], positive human-animal interactions that prioritize consideration of what the animal wants from the interaction [44,45], the expression of goal-directed or anticipatory behaviors [46,47], and the use of qualitative behavioral assessment, where the expressive body language of animals is assessed [48].…”

Animal-Visitor Interactions and the Visitor Experience: Visitor Behaviors, Attitudes, Perceptions, and Learning in the Modern Zoo (Preprint)

“…There are also many ethical (and welfare) issues with "close-contact" encounters with animals in zoos that must be explored/addressed if these experiences are to continue in modern, ethical zoos (Carr, 2018;D'Cruze et al, 2019;de Mori et al, 2019a;2019b;Learmonth, 2020;Rapp et al, 2017;Rose, 2018;Spooner, Farnworth et al, 2021;Whitehouse-Tedd et al, 2018). These ethical and welfare issues have been explored in-depth in Learmonth (2020), and most zoo and aquarium associations have established guidelines that must be adhered to by member institutions that are offering these sorts of close-contact encounters (AZA, 2011;WAZA, 2020). Palmer and Sandøe (2016) and Palmer, Kasperbauer and Sandøe (2018) likewise explored ethical issues such as these, and questioned valuedriven decisions about current and future collections of animals that zoos are housing.…”