Perhaps the most revealing feature of zoos is the way they expose the curious contradiction in our relationship with other creatures. We visit, marvel at the animals and admire their beauty, intelligence and charm. We coo over them and congratulate ourselves on being animal lovers.
Then we go to the canteen for lunch, where we may be served the charred remains of chickens, pigs and other animals that also spent their lives inside cages too small for them, before being taken to the slaughterhouse and killed.
Some species, it seems, are to be admired and protected; others are to be bred, imprisoned and slaughtered. We are all conditioned into these distinctions from childhood, rarely stopping to examine them.
✍️ Chas Newkey-Burden
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