Retorts

Penguins on Parade

With the opening of the king penguin display at Kelly Tarlton's Marine World, Auckland, it is useful to review the controversy that surrounded the original proposal to display penguins in a zoo, and to think about the future.

Of course, penguins have been in New Zealand for a long time. It has even been suggested that they originally evolved here. The new arrivals are hardly a curiosity in the way of truly exotic creatures such as snakes or large predatory mammals. Most Kiwis have seen penguins in the wild during summer holidays at the beach, or on boating trips. Still, those were probably little blue penguins. It is more exciting to be able to see the much larger king penguins close up ... is it?

A careful reading of reports allowed me to glean five primary reasons for why it was supposedly wrong to display penguins in a zoo:

First, Kelly Tarlton's is a business. Thus it is exploiting the penguins for profit. As do horse races, farmers, and pet shops, to name just a few.

Second, the penguins will be constrained unnaturally and this is ethically unacceptable. Presumably it is therefore also unacceptable to hold lions, ostriches, alligators and sharks in zoos.

Third, holding penguins in zoos will encourage collection from the wild. Of course, the Kelly Tarlton penguins were bred at San Diego Zoo. But where does San Diego get its penguins from? In reality, zoos in Western countries obtain very few terrestrial animals from the wild these days. However, Kelly Tarlton's is on shakey ground because virtually all the animals you see there will have been collected from the wild.

Fourth, there is a disease risk. The poultry industry actually managed to stop the importation of live penguins for a while using this argument, although they did not manage to prevent a permit being issued for importation of eggs. There certainly is a quarantine issue here, but there is no evidence that penguins carry worse diseases than any other bird. And captive-bred birds, such as parrots, are moving in and out of New Zealand all the time. The quarantine issue was addressed with a purpose-built facility at Auckland airport. In the end, Kelly Tarlton's got live birds.

Fifth, the penguins will not be happy. The notion of "happy" in this context is difficult to define, but essentially it seems to mean psychologically well-balanced and socially well adjusted. The essence of the argument is that penguins are designed to swim large distances and hunt for free-living prey; and that nobody can be happy in jail. By preventing penguins from doing what they are designed for, we make them unhappy. Perhaps so. Certainly some zoo animals look pretty unhappy at times, although zoos now recognise and address the problem in imaginative ways.

Let's tease the last one apart a bit. Animals bred in captivity presumably do not have the same expectations or psychological requirements as animals bred in the wild. However, they are likely have "urges" to do things that evolution designed them for. Domestic cats hunt birds, carrier pigeons fly home, and so on. Life for captive animals will necessarily be a compromise between their possible lifestyle in the wild, and the constraints imposed by human inability to provide that lifestyle.

These days, we seem to agree that a small concrete cage is unacceptable for most animals. But might something less than pure freedom be acceptable, given that it comes with a support structure of food, shelter and protection from predators, but still offers some challenges? There might be animals for which any such compromise would be unacceptable, even if born in captivity. But there will be many (humans included!) for which a reasonable compromise can be found. Most importantly, nobody knows where penguins fit on this hypothetical scale.

What happens next? Kelly Tarlton's have invested some millions of dollars. Time will tell if the investment was worthwhile. Certainly the new Antarctic display is popular, and it is doubtful that the average tourist cares that king penguins are not a true Antarctic species.

The animal rights people have been surprisingly quiet since the penguins were put on display. As with all pressure groups, they likely have more causes than people, time and money to commit to them. For the moment, this seems to be one they have lost. We should thank them for their efforts, which in the end are on our behalf whether or not we agree with them. The real problem here is that most people would rather have zoos than not. People, especially children, love seeing animals.

Our society seems to agree that the benefits of holding and displaying animals in captivity outweigh the costs, most of which are born by the animals themselves. This is certainly a selfish attitude, but there are many unknowns.

Do penguins born in captivity miss being able to swim hundreds of kilometres, given that they have never had the opportunity to do so? Does seeing a penguin increase tourists' awareness of the natural world to the point where they attempt to live a "greener" life? Is it inconsistent to argue that penguins should not be held in captivity, when many other large animals with similar needs to penguins can be seen in a zoo? Is collection from the wild a serious issue, and if so, should we be concerned about the continuing harvest of sharks, snapper and the like for Kelly Tarlton's aquaria?

These questions cover an array of ethical issues for which there are no clear answers. But if we at least ask the questions, then we are one small step closer to achieving a reasonable relationship with our world.

Ian McLean, Zoology Department, University of Canterbury