Zoo animals live in unnatural conditions,many display unnatural behaviours and are reduced to mere caricatures of the animal in the wild. Wild animals lead complex and unpredictable lives, and each species has evolved to ideally meet the challenges of its environment. Traditional zoos can do little to properly replicate this with their animal exhibits. Although many zoos proclaim an interest and contribution to conservation, only a few actually keep and breed endangered species. The vast majority of zoo animals are not endangered.
Zoos tend to focus on conserving single species in isolation whilst ignoring their habitats.
Less glamorous creatures rarely get a lookin. True conservation means more than keeping rare species in captivity in perpetuity, but there have been pitifully few cases of zoos successfully releasing captive-bred species back to the wild. Most successful cases of captive-bred reintroductions take place 'in situ' , in reserves within the animals' natural environment. Research Only a handful of zoos are involved in viable research and much of which is devoted to the study of disease and physiology and is primarily aimed at keeping species in captivity, not how better to conserve species in their natural habitat. Many infections and diseases are a result of an animal being kept in captivity, and are rarely, if ever, seen in the wild.