Abby Lipscomb

atl5355@psu.edu

Zoos tend to be a very popular destination for family outings, dates or school field trips and it is easy to understand why. Going to the zoo feels like you are traveling the world as you are surrounded by all the exotic animals from countries all around the globe. 

And a lot of these animals look just like our pets at home, except much bigger and more vicious. This similarity sometimes causes some people to develop this yearning to be closer to them, pet them, play with them and show them how much we love them like we do to our domesticated cats and dogs at home. For some people, this urge becomes so great that they decide to actually act upon this instinct despite it being a very, very bad idea. 

This act does not only put the human being in danger but it also puts the animal in danger. Zoo animals are wild and cannot be treated as pets because they simply are not. These animals are contained in enclosures that are kept at a distance or behind elaborate safety measures so that they can run and play freely and without untrained civilians bothering them. They have not gone through the centuries of domestication that our house pets or farm animals have gone through.

And just like if someone were to be harmed by an aggressive pet, zoo animals run the risk of being put down if they were to attack a person trying to touch them, whether the animal thought they were playing around or in danger. In most cases, the animal is killed in the process of trying to get the person being hurt. 

A recent account of this happened at the Naples Zoo in Florida when a man stuck his arm into a tiger enclosure and was mauled by the animal who was then killed by a police officer. The blame over the tiger’s death was placed entirely on the man who put his arm where it did not belong, but no charges were able to be pressed, much to everyone’s disappointment. 

While it is tragic that a man almost lost his arm, it is even more heartbreaking that an innocent animal had to be killed because of some adult man’s stupidity. The tiger had no cognitive thought and was simply acting on instinct at seeing a foreign object in its territory or maybe what they had thought to be prey. 

It is ridiculous that it had to suffer fatal consequences due to a man ignoring safety borders and going into the animal’s den. 

These actions are becoming way too much of a common occurrence. I have heard and read too many stories about people ignoring safety precautions in favor of their own wants and then suffering great losses due to it. Though, now the animals have started suffering as well.