Captivity traps animals with no control over their environment. These situations foster helplessness. Many try to cope by adopting repetitive and harmful behaviors.
BOB JACOBS: Kiska, a young female orca, was captured in 1978 off the Iceland coast and taken to Marineland Canada, an aquarium and amusement park… To combat stress and boredom, she swims in slow, endless circles and has gnawed her teeth to the pulp on her concrete pool… Many animals try to cope with captivity by adopting abnormal behaviors. Some develop “stereotypies,” which are repetitive, purposeless habits such as constantly bobbing their heads, swaying incessantly or chewing on the bars of their cages. Others, especially big cats, pace their enclosures. Elephants rub or break their tusks…
Living in enclosures that restrict or prevent normal behavior creates chronic frustration and boredom. In the wild, an animal’s stress-response system helps it escape from danger. But captivity traps animals with almost no control over their environment. These situations foster learned helplessness, negatively impacting the hippocampus, which handles memory functions, and the amygdala, which processes emotions. Prolonged stress elevates stress hormones and damages or even kills neurons in both brain regions. It also disrupts the delicate balance of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that stabilizes mood, among other functions…
Neuro-scientific research indicates that living in an impoverished, stressful captive environment physically damages the brain. These changes have been documented in many species, including rodents, rabbits, cats and humans… Although researchers have directly studied some animal brains, most of what we know comes from observing animal behavior, analyzing stress hormone levels in the blood and applying knowledge gained from a half-century of neuroscience research. Laboratory research also suggests that mammals in a zoo or aquarium have compromised brain function.
Subsisting in confined, barren quarters that lack intellectual stimulation or appropriate social contact seems to thin the cerebral cortex — the part of the brain involved in voluntary movement and higher cognitive function, including memory, planning and decision-making. There are other consequences. Capillaries shrink, depriving the brain of the oxygen-rich blood it needs to survive. Neurons become smaller… As a result, the cortical neurons in captive animals process information less efficiently than those living in enriched, more natural environments…
Evolution has constructed animal brains to be exquisitely responsive to their environment. Those reactions can affect neural function by turning different genes on or off. Living in inappropriate or abusive circumstance alters biochemical processes: It disrupts the synthesis of proteins that build connections between brain cells and the neurotransmitters that facilitate communication among them. There is strong evidence that enrichment, social contact and appropriate space in more natural habitats are necessary for long-lived animals…
Caging large mammals and putting them on display is undeniably cruel from a neural perspective. It causes brain damage. Public perceptions of captivity are slowly changing, as shown by the reaction to the documentary “Blackfish.” For animals that cannot be free, there are well-designed sanctuaries. Several already exist for elephants and other large mammals in Tennessee, Brazil and Northern California. Others are being developed for large cetaceans. Perhaps it is not too late for Kiska. SOURCE…
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