The San Antonio Zoo has just started their fourth-annual “Cry me a Cockroach” fundraiser, during which people can purchase a live cockroach, a frozen rat, or vegetables, which zoo staff members will feed to animals on Valentine’s Day in the name of vengeful exes. Participants will receive a customizable certificate and an email with a video of an animal at the zoo eating their choice of prey. Participants can also opt to notify their ex that a cockroach, rodent, or veggie was named in their honor, and they will receive a digital Valentine’s Day card with a personalized message.
San Antonio Zoo CEO, Tim Morrow, stated, “Whether it was a sour romance, a breakup with your work, or a collective dislike for a 2022 trend, the Cry Me a Cockroach Fundraiser is here to help you leave that negativity behind.” This year, people can purchase a live cockroach for a $10 donation, vegetables for $10, and a rodent for $25. The donations will vaguely “help benefit the zoo.”
The Fundraiser Treats Animals’ Lives as a Joke
This fundraiser is problematic on multiple levels. First, there is the glaring irony that a place supposedly in existence for the purpose of teaching people about the value and conservation of living creatures is promoting the killing of animals for a Valentine’s Day joke.
One of the main arguments that zoos use to justify keeping animals captive is that they educate and inspire visitors to care about wildlife. All this fundraiser seems to achieve is to solidify the erroneous notion that some creatures are more valuable than others, and therefore deserve to live or die based on this perceived value alone. This cruel discrepancy between the supposed ideology and observed practice of zoos becomes obvious in the types of projects they funnel most of their resources into, which mostly benefit them as private moneymaking entities, and not the animals in the wild threatened with extinction that they claim to “help.”
Zoo Funding Reveals True Priorities
For example, despite all AZA institutions including conservation as a priority in their mission statements, conservation makes up less than one fourth of all AZA research. The most frequent research focuses of AZA members prioritize maintaining these animals in captivity, and include animal care, health, and welfare (52%) and basic biology (18%), altogether comprising more than two-thirds of the total AZA community’s research. Similarly, according to the New York Times, certain “AZA facilities report spending approximately $231 million annually on conservation projects. For comparison, in 2018, they spent $4.9 billion on operations and construction.”
Zoo Research Focuses on Large, Charismatic Mammals, Ignoring Many Species in Need of Conservation
Over two-thirds (67%) of all AZA research focuses on mammals, with chimpanzees, elephants, western lowland gorillas, and orangutans being the most frequently studied. Reptiles (8%), Fishes (5%), Amphibians (3%), Invertebrates (3%), and Flora (<1%) accounted for the least AZA-funded research, despite many of these groups facing more urgent extinction threats than the most highly funded species. This discrepancy is likely due to the ”ambassador animal” role forced on these charismatic mammalian species, as they historically generate the most interest, and thus money, from zoo visitors.
Further, just about 10% of all species held in zoos are classified as threatened with extinction by the IUCN, meaning that ~90% of all species at zoos suffer in captivity for no conservation-related reasons whatsoever. Similarly, the ESA requires listed species to be managed under a recovery plan until they meet criteria that allows for delisting. As of September 2016, a meager 15.1% of all listings that had recovery plans named zoos as responsible for at least one recovery action.
Zoos Exist Mainly for Profit and Entertainment
In addition to these already damning statistics, this fundraiser only confirms the fact that zoos are not here for the animals; they exist for the entertainment and profit gleaned from the exploitation of entirely underserving animals. Instead of “educating” and “inspiring” the public, zoos accomplish the exact opposite; they teach us that keeping wild animals in barren, tiny prisons is acceptable; they encourage the complete isolation or unnatural social groupings of animals with no option to choose or escape harmful stressors; and, perhaps most importantly, they teach us that animals exist for the entertainment of humans and have no other inherent value on this planet.
Is this what we want to teach the new generations of humans? If not, say no to zoos. Every creature deserves to live, despite how “ugly” or “useless” to us they might seem.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Devan
