Entertainment: Evil or Enjoyable?
What's the ethical line on liking to view exotic animals?
Enjoying seeing exotic animals is okay, but being entertained by seeing exotic animals is bad. At least, that’s the common assumption that underlies a lot of the discussion around captive exotic animals in the United States the last few years. You hear it reiterated by animal advocates, newspapers writing about local businesses, and even repeated by zookeepers themselves when discussing industry politics. The problem is… does that differentiation even make sense? Entertainment and enjoyment are not necessarily distinct concepts; there’s a lot of overlap in many situations. So how did we get to where one is okay and one is evil, with no grey area, and is that a useful way to think about the ethics and morals of animal industry?
The rhetoric of this type first picked up momentum during advocacy against the circus: wanting to be entertained by exotic animals was deemed unethical. In the years since Ringling took its animals off it’s road, this type of messaging has become increasingly popular and increasingly generalized. And boy, has it gotten murky in the process. Enjoying seeing animals is generally okay, but not if the animals are doing anything to specific to facilitate that enjoyment. If it verges on being an entertaining experience - even if the animal isn’t doing anything except existing - then it’s much more likely to be considered bad. Education is most always okay, as long as there’s proof it’s actually teaching people things and not just entertainment branded as a learning experience. Edutainment walks a line between being ethical and not, often depending on the species involved and how it’s being conducted. The optics of the setting matters, too: facilities branded as theme parks or entertainment facilities with an animal component come under far more ethical scrutiny for the same exhibition practices than more traditional facilities with more educational or conservation-focused theming.
Much of this rhetoric focuses not only on the ethics of the facility doing a certain type of exhibition, but on the ethics of the people who choose to engage with it. There’s often an implication in the way things are talked about that guests who engage with certain types of exhibition are inherently unethical themselves for doing so. Taken as a rhetorical whole, there’s an implication that wanting to engage with animals for enjoyment as a primary purpose is somehow a more base and unethical reason than for higher-minded, loftier purposes like education and saving the planet. If you, a guest, go to a facility to learn about conservation and be educated about the natural world and happen to be entertained by what you encounter during the visit, that’s fine; but if you go for the purpose of being entertained by the animals and happen to learn something along the way, that’s somehow less ethical overall. It matters not just what you do, and what practices you support with your money, but what your intention is.
Here’s some common examples of things people say about the ethics of interacting with different types of exhibition:
Wanting to see exotic animals at a commercial facility because you value them and want to learn about them or support conservation is okay - situationally. It better be somewhere they’re not “exploited” for “profit.” Even though all USDA licensed facilities are technically conducting commercial activity by exhibiting animals where people pay money to see them.
Wanting to see exotic animals because the experience itself is simply fun - often considered much less ethically appropriate, because animals shouldn’t be put in situations where they’re used “just” for someone’s pleasure.
Wanting to see exotic animals at rescues because you value them and want to feel the warm fuzzies of seeing them living their best lives in a better situation - the most ethical and least exploitative. Even though you paid a ticket price just like at a zoo or safari park, and the marketing centers the animals’ experience of trauma in a way that would be completely unacceptable if humans were the subjects.
Wanting to see animals do tricks - horrible! Unethical! Awful! Unless they’re at a facility that calls them “natural behaviors” and does “educational presentations” rather than “shows” where people have fun seeing animals do extraordinary things. Then we’re back in the land of ethically okay again.
Wanting to visit a facility that breeds animals in captivity - either very ethical or very unethical, depending! Breeding just for exhibition is unethical or exploitative, but breeding as part of conservation programs is generally okay; the care of the animals involved or the probability of the animals contributing to wild populations is irrelevant, as long as there’s ostensibly a higher purpose for the babies than being on display.
A lot of the confusion around what comprises ethical or non-exploitative animal exhibition originates from the public’s lack of understanding of how animal industries in general operate. It’s then exacerbated by intra-industry messaging and politics, where in the public view, ethical and moral topics are addressed as entirely black and white (nuance doesn’t lend itself well to snappy branding campaigns). Add to that the prevalence of inaccurate or misleading animal advocacy rhetoric repeated by both the mainstream media and even some industry entities. No wonder the public is confused!
From one messaging stream, people are being told that everything involving the exhibition of exotic animals is probably abusive; from another, they’re being told that only these specific people are doing things ethically - but that assurance is often based on branding or accreditation participation, not a discussion of actual practices or philosophy. Facilities that aren’t considered in the “ethical” category by mainstream discourse end up having to fight to justify what are often the exact same business and animal care practices others in the industry get a free pass for; facilities that are considered “ethical” have to continue to prove that their practices are still better than those of the facilities they’ve been contrasted with, or risk being attacked. The result? Industry entities have been boxed into a corner where a ton of time is spent putting down other facilities or businesses in order to look better themselves, rather than actually engaging with - and assuaging - the underlying reasons for the public’s concerns about exotic animal exhibition as a whole.
The fallout of this mixed messaging gets really sticky when it comes to this entertainment/enjoyment dichotomy. How does an industry whose revenue stream is dependent on proctoring a pleasurable guest experience navigate the risk being villainized for making visiting an exotic animal facility “fun” or “entertaining”, rather than just “enjoyable?”