The zoo part II

So I went to the zoo today (see previous post). It was horrible. It made me depressed, it made me angry and just generally put me in a bad mood. When we arrived the first place we were taken was the penguin enclosure. The zoo keeper proudly told the group that there were hundreds of penguins of various species. Why was she proud of this? The enclosure was about 50x10m which is reasonable, but for hundreds of penguins?! It was cruel. I felt cruel sitting there. There was also white streaks everywhere that resulted in an unpleasant smell. I can only assume this was there shit. Lovely. Because of course penguins would walk about on their shit in the wild...

The next area was the big cats. The lions had a relatively small space and just looked bored. It was a depressing sight. The worst by far though was the tiger. There was a fully grown male tiger in the tiniest of enclosures. Literally 4x3m of steep rock face, with meat hanging from a rope in front of the viewing screen so that the tiger would come right up to the front and pull at the meat. I felt sick. All I could think about was how vast their territories would be in the wild. Literally kilometres of land to roam and to hunt. Instead, they were stuck here, in the rain, for the amusement of a few dozen middle-class bastards that stared blankly at them, unimpressed as they weren't as ferocious as the ones they had seen on the high-definition nature documentaries.

I realise I'm rather hypocritical for going but the last time I had gone I was five and had hoped the cruel conditions would have somewhat improved in the past 12 years. They haven't.