Zoos should be banned.

First "enclosures are made to be as close to natural habitats as possible" I say that what's "possible" isn't enough, if I take polar bears for example, they're confined in spaces that are more than a million times smaller than their arctic territory. No matter how big some zoos try to make the enclosures, no matter how many branches they put in them, no matter how beautiful they make the background paintings on the wall, they don't compare with the natural habitat the animals were meant to be in. Now, a rebuttal to your helping with conservation argument which is too, my argument: Even though there are thousands of endangered species, zoos have only been able to return about 16 species to the wild with varying level of success. Most zoo animals released in the wild don't survive. This is because zoos don't provide the right environment for a successful captive breeding project. The animals would need to live in habitats resembling their natural ones, especially in terms of climate and fauna. The animals would also need to be raised with minimal human contact and in populations large enough to provide a natural social balance and a suitable gene pool. "Zoos spend huge amounts of money on breeding programs" Why are zoos so interested in breeding animals? They attract huge amounts of people! Zoos main interest is always to make money and baby animals are their most powerful marketing tool. Also, selling surplus animals is a profitable way for zoos to dispose of them. Dealers will sell them to hunting ranches, pet shops, circuses, the exotic meat industry and research facilities. Surplus animals are also found for sale on the Internet. (Surplus animals are those unwanted animals for whom there is no more space, when zoos have bred yet another cute little baby to attract visitors.) Now rebuttal to your arguments about joy to children and to educating the younger about animals: Children visiting zoos will be given the subliminal message that it is OK to use animals for our own ends, however it impinges on their freedom or quality of life. Therefore zoos will encourage poor treatment of animals more generally. People do not go to zoos for educational reasons they simply go to be entertained and diverted by weird and wonderful creatures seen as objects of beauty or entertainment. Dale Marcelini, a zoo curator in Washington, conducted a study that found visitors spend less than 8 seconds per snake, and one minute per lion. Otherwise, most people preoccupied themselves with eating, resting and shopping"people treated the exhibits like wallpaper . As a form of education the zoo is deficient: the only way to understand an animal properly is to see it in its natural environment " the zoo gives a totally artificial and misleading view of the animal by isolating it from its ecosystem. "Zoos are not that expensive, many zoo employees are actually not that well paid." I don't really get, how that fits into the context, but, as a rebuttal or something, I could say that, chinese workers who make clothes and everything for fashion industry, aren't paid well, but that doesn't mean, that the owners of the companies who sell the product later don't earn very big money, they do earn enormous amounts of profit.