Should zoos keep elephants and orcas?

I would concur that the titling of the thread is tending to the negative (of the animal welfarist lobbyists around) and simply is not the right one here! To me it should read: Can zoos keep elephants and orcas (in captivity)?

From that latter hypothesis forward, the thread provides the open forum for us to discuss and determine what their individual management needs would be and how these may be best translated into / met by good species / individual husbandry, management and facility standards and requirements.

I would say there is a case for both the current contenders - elephants and orcas - notwithstanding what the whole PETA / Zoo Check sanctuaries mob would have us, media and the (vocal minority) political arena believe. Alas, their stance is more often than not non-transparent, unrespectful and pre-determined to a formulated - and in my humble opinion unrealistic and unconstructive - aim amd / or goal.

I would concur that almost any species can / could be maintained in captivity. Where it comes down to is to be able to replicate the housing facilities in captivity as closely as possible to the natural wild state and reflect their respective ecological requirements and roles in captivity.

Admittedly and naturally quite a few species have till date never been kept in captivity, but that is not saying we can overcome the challenges needed to do so! Further, if we are to save our precious biodiversity on Earth it is a definite need rather than a wished for utopia. Beggars cannot be chosers and we can in my opinion better do without the unfactual, emotionally based reflections and formulate our philosophies and opinions on animal and plant life in captivity on the basis of real data and scientific know-how and empirical fact-finding.

Perhaps for captivity only extreme and very hostile environments like vulcanoes, deep sea regions, underworld habitats (as in the deeper earth / land mass) and deep cave systems may be the biggest challenges / challengers to if, how and in what way we may exhibit individual taxa.

 

Totally agree with you, I wanted to say this but wasn't sure how (I wanted to do it right), thanks for speaking up. By the way, am I the only one who's amused by the fact that Tillikum and Ulisses are now older than Keiko was, even by the most conservative estimates of their ages? Uli is on track to make it to his forties if I'm not mistaken. Tillikum will be 35 this year (I have arbitrarily assigned them both a December 1st birthday.)

 

I share the opinion of many other people in this feed: with the proper space, enrichment, and social cohesion requirements, elephants can do quite well in captivity. Additionally, elephant habitat is disappearing very quickly, and the decrease in their numbers is pretty much obvious at this point, which makes a strong case for maintaining a captive breeding population.

On the other side, all of the evidence suggests that orcas do not really benefit directly from being kept in captivity. For the purposes of educating the public about their plight, yes. But a whaling trip or a popular movie can do the same thing. The space and tank filtration requirements for orca enclosures means that they will always be too small, and there will never be a meaningful captive breeding population because too few facilities will/can afford to keep them. Also, while the oceans are indeed becoming polluted and trawled, they're not technically disappearing.

The growing consensus is that orcas should not be kept in captivity, and based on the evidence I've seen, I would agree with that.

 

The argument that a whale watching trip or a movie would do the same thing is the same argument used for any number of other zoo animals. Also, while the ocean itself may not be disappearing, their habitat is due to overfishing and an increase in boat traffic. Having space to swim is meaningless if there is barely anything to eat.

Pool size requirements are greatly exaggerated by people that falsely believe that orcas swim as far as they do for some inbuilt desire to travel rather than simply because they need to find food.
The current pool sizes in parks with successful breeding populations are already sufficient for their physical health, and those spaces will only continue to grow. Tank filtration requirements are irrelevant as filtration systems continue to improve along with every other piece of technology. The systems currently in place anywhere with modern equipment,with or without orcas would have been unimaginable 40 years ago.

The breeding population is already fairly large for the number of facilities that exist and it will only increase because of the lowered calf mortality and the fact that you can't really keep them from continuing to breed short physically of separating them by gender. So that's not really an issue. Inbreeding might be though, but so far inbred animals haven't shown too many more health issues than the others for whatever reason.

Consensus is irrelevant to whether something can be done. Whether something should be done is about personal feelings on an issue and consensus about that is more about the ideals of a group of people than anything else.

 

HyakkoSachi: The two points you make in the first paragraph make sense, and I concede that both of those are true.

On the others, I have several counterpoints to offer. First, I don't believe that orcas swim extremely far distances because they desire it, but it does mean that they are adapted to a high level of exercise and movement, which is severely limited in their enclosures. The difference between making this argument for orcas and making it for land animals is the scale; the tanks where captive orcas are kept are incredibly minute fractions of their normal range, even compared to wide-traveling land animals like elephants.

Secondly, while tank filtration systems may indeed improve over the next few decades, they are not irrelevant. The larger the tank is, the more difficult, expensive, and energy-consuming it is to filter the water.
Third, inbreeding IS a problem with orcas, and for all of the successful births that SeaWorld openly celebrates, there is also an uncomfortably high number of stillborns, and the genetic variation in captive orcas is low even by normal zoo standards. Perhaps the living captive-bred orcas don't show any adverse effects because the ones that suffered genetically-induced health problems didn't survive.

Finally, I did not mean to imply that I agreed with the consensus because it was the consensus; I meant it as two different statements. I stated that I saw it as being the consensus, and I also stated that I agreed with it.

 

The current pools are a bit smaller than ideal, I will admit that, however what I take issue with is the idea that because something is difficult and/or expensive it is impossible or shouldn't be done. Anyways, there's really no signs of negative health effects on living animals so far. The need for space is mainly because more space allows for a wider variety of behaviours.

The reason why successful births are celebrated is that calves born inn captivity currently have a better survival rate than calves born in the more threatened wild orca populations. We don't have statistics for wild stillbirths but for all we know numbers could very well be close to the current captive statistics, as captive stillbirths have been going down in numbers as captive births have risen. The stillbirths don't seem to be due to inbreeding, as most of the stillbirths have been from wild caught animals.Seeing as wild caught orcas in general don't have as high survival rates as captive born animals it seems more likely that capture stress may have impacted their reproductive systems like it impacts their lifespans.

 

Elephants yes if done in a good way, Orcas no.

 

I think the big question isn't whether Orcas CAN captivity, but whether they SHOULD.

 

Which is the title and topic of the thread...

 

It's easier to discuss whether something can be done than it is to discuss whether something should be done.

Whether something should be done depends on so many things such as your culture, politics, other personal beliefs.

It's not the sort of thing you can just say is objectively good or bad.

It's also kind of a pointless question, since they're already being kept in captivity. It's like asking whether we should invent nuclear energy or domesticate mink. These are iffy questions but they've already been done so the arguments will be circular and without satisfying resolution.