By Shloimy Lowy, Photographer and Staff Writer
One Sunday at the end of the 2025 spring semester, while many students were riding the Luna Park roller coasters, I joined a small group of eight animal lovers from the Yeshiva University Zoology Club on a trip to the Bronx Zoo.
A 20-minute drive from the Wilf campus, the zoo spans 265 acres and is home to over 11,000 animals from over 640 species.
I was excited to visit. I grew up hearing all about the zoo’s birds from my grandfather, who would sit with a Gemara and his chavruta (learning partner) at the zoo, learning the halachot (laws) of bird kashrut and analyzing their morphologies to compare to the Gemara.
We started with the birds of prey, and my excitement was shattered. Despite how majestic they were, their cages were subpar. The stunning Andean condor, with upwards of a 10-foot wingspan — the largest of any flying bird — was sitting in a cage barely large enough to spread its wings. The bald eagles, symbols of American freedom, sat trapped in a cage in which the most they could use their wings for was hopping from stump to stump. While some of these birds are non-releasable, their cage sizes and conditions were nevertheless unhealthy for animals who have evolved for flying and hunting.
Gisela Kaplan, a bird and primatology expert has found that even in zoos that mimic animals’ natural habitats exceptionally well, captivity has an adverse effect on the physical and emotional health of inhabitants. She has shown that birds who do not have space to take flight can develop muscular dystrophy, and that birds who are consistently hand-fed can lose their natural hunting instinct. Birds surrounded by noisy people can develop anxiety and fear, and anxious birds sometimes self-mutilate, plucking their feathers and exposing their flesh.
Kaplan also found that birds in captivity are also frequently separated from their parents, stunting proper neuronal and relational development and creating significant emotional deficits.
We moved on to other parts of the zoo, my thoughts now shifted toward the living conditions of the other animals. Seeing the primates, especially the western lowland gorillas — who in the wild have complex social dynamics with territorial disputes, love and child-rearing — sitting in glass and bamboo enclosures mimicking their natural environment but lacking in size and complexity was heartbreaking.
The gorilla, as you might know, is quite a large ape. Standing over six feet tall and weighing 300-600 pounds, they are the size of a man in finance plus or minus 300 pounds of muscle. Whether they can beat 100 humans in a fight is a phenomenal question deserving of its own article, but what is sure is that they are highly evolved social creatures, sharing 98% of their DNA with humans and with an ability to experience joy and pain.
Zoos do not make them feel good.
Besides the many issues already mentioned, captive primates and mammals suffer from a unique issue found only in zoos. Animal psychologists have observed that the stresses of confinement combined with overstimulation from visitor attention can lead to behavior known as zoochosis, a form of stress-induced psychosis manifesting as abnormal repetitive behaviors rarely observed in the wild. This includes pacing, swaying, head bobbing, self-biting, overgrooming, self-mutilation and various other behaviors. According to Dr. Roger Mugford, a pioneer of animal psychology, zoochosis “is an indication of madness, of severe neglect, sometimes severe stress, certainly an inability to cope with the environment.”
Also worth mentioning are cage sizes. According to a meta-analysis of U.K. data from 2000-2001, zoo enclosures are on average 100 times smaller than the minimum range of the animals in the wild. This number goes up to 1,000 times smaller when talking about large mammals (>100kg). This is correlated with higher welfare problems for the bigger animals, and as the author points out, “a person that has lived in a village of 1 Km^2 most of his/her life would be in the same spatial situation than a captive zoo animal if this person was confined for life to live in a telephone box.”
So, why do zoos get away with this?
The answer is one word: conservation. In the past century, zoos have become a primary contributor to wildlife conservation by leading captive breeding and rehabilitation programs and funding field conservation efforts. In 2023, members of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) contributed $356.7 million toward field conservation through its Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) program, playing a role in global efforts toward species conservation.
However, although $356 million sounds like a lot, it remains a small percentage of AZA’s yearly budget. The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) recommends that zoos put aside only 3% of their operational budgets towards conservation, though some real world estimates range between 3 and7%. Additionally, when compared to the amounts generally contributed to conservation, these numbers become less impressive. In 2025 alone, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allocated $1.3 billion for wildlife conservation. That is besides the numerous other organizations and government agencies committed to conservation, and that is in the United States alone.
What’s more, as much as zoos financially contribute to conservation, most captive animals are not rescues or in captive breeding programs. Also, while zoos have played important roles in breeding and reintroduction programs, even almost entirely reestablishing the wild population of California condors, the success rate of such programs is low and zoos comprise only a small percentage of successful reintroduction of animals into the wild.
This could be justified if we can make the cold calculation that it is worth causing pain to some animals on the inside in order to support conservation efforts on the outside. If it is true that the only way to save entire populations and species is to display some of their brethren, hurting them in the process, then perhaps it may be necessary to make that decision.
However, the people visiting the park are still making the choice to visit, despite knowing full well that they have the ability to donate directly to organizations like the Wildlife Conservation Society without stepping foot in a zoo. Maybe, one can argue, in order to make people want to donate, you must allow them to experience the world of nature within cages. Essentially, we must commit this moral offense to create the moral motivation necessary for conservation.
All I can say to that is this: really? Is that the only way? The only way to get people to care about the plight of animals is to artificially recreate their suffering on real, feeling creatures? This just seems perverse. We should also be highly skeptical of these supposed good intentions altogether, especially considering our selfish interest here.
The Gemara in Nazir (23:B) tells us that sometimes the Torah wants us to violate one of the commandments in the name of some greater good. How does one know when he is justified to do so? Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz explains that a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself, “Am I doing this completely lishma (for the sake of heaven), or am I enjoying it in some way?” That is, when we must do wrong in the name of the right, if we find ourselves enjoying the process, we should use that as an indication that we may not have the purest intentions, and leave it to others to perform that mitzvah. Similarly, if we want to harm animals for the sake of conserving their species, we should be highly suspicious of the enjoyment we get out of it.
All of this begs the question: can we justify the harm to animals for our viewing pleasure? The animals confer no tangible benefit upon us, and although it makes real money put toward conservation, the distress it leads to, combined with the small percentage of the budget actually financing conservation, leads one to speculate that conservation is a mere excuse covering for moral horror.
There simply must be a better way to save the animals.
Some have suggested shifting the focus toward animal sanctuaries rather than zoos, while others have suggested improving the living conditions within zoos. I am not sure what the solution here is. As a bird and wildlife lover, I care deeply about conservation and would like to see more, not less, money going into our natural world.
However, as a birdwatcher, I feel depressed when I see a beautiful snowy owl, born to hunt in the vast tundra, sitting in the corner of a pathetic warm cage staring at onlookers, her natural hunting instincts slowly peeled away by the uncharacteristic amount of noise present.
There is one thing I could suggest: next time you want to go out to see wildlife, instead of running to see them behind glass and metal cages, go to your local wildlife refuge and simply observe. You will be surprised with what you see. The beauty, the colors, the species you never knew were local. It is a shame to only look at the exotic creatures, ignoring the beauty that surrounds us.
You need not go to the Bronx Zoo to see a bald eagle. You can take the 1 train up to 242nd street, and watch those beautiful aves soar up high over Van Cortlandt Park. Or watch them hunt further up the Hudson, surrounded by beautiful landscapes.
And if you want to do something about animal conservation, donate $10 to your local animal refuge — it will make more of a difference than the five percent of your ticket to the zoo.
Zoos are amazing places for education. They excite and instill passion in young and old alike. But if that same excitement can be found elsewhere, somewhere more ethical, then it is hard to continue justifying the pain they cause.
Photo Caption: Western lowland gorilla, Bronx Zoo, May 2025
Photo Credit: Shloimie Lowy