The monkey probably won't be sad. I think it is entertained all day by the researchers. Playing its games, and drinking its delicious banana smoothie. As you say; Ignorance is bliss.
> The monkey probably won't be sad. I think it is entertained all day by the researchers. Playing its games, and drinking its delicious banana smoothie.
Rhesus Macaques [0] have a lifespan of thirty years. Thirty years. Thirty years in a massively controlled environment, often sedentary, with limited opportunities to socialise with peers, and the simple pleasures of mutual grooming, lying in the sun etc. Lab animals that are rehomed in rehab centres / zoos etc are often overweight, in poor health, and have a range of nervous tics and social inexperience. Many adapt to the non-lab environment, but they tend to have underlying health problems and issues with acceptance by the alpha individuals because they lack the years of experience required to understand and fit into the complex group etiquette.
Animals may still be the best model for testing drugs / devices that will go into humans, but lets not understate the massive cost to the individual animals concerned.
[Source: personal involvement with a primate rehab centre]
Neuralink monkeys are housed with at least one other monkey for grooming / social activities, and are in the same room with visibility to other monkeys. Are they as happy as zoo monkeys? Probably not. But they're probably much happier than most other research monkeys.
> Thirty years in a massively controlled environment, often sedentary, with limited opportunities to socialise with peers, and the simple pleasures of mutual grooming, lying in the sun etc
Perhaps it is blissfully ignorant of us to think of ourselves as free on this rock. Does the monkey have a better life now than before? I don't know. The monkey will not mate and likely does not have peers. I wouldn't be surprised if those things are required for happiness. Social and sexual needs are programmed in us.
I think it's a pretty tough topic in ethics but when I was younger, I didn't think much about it because we were doing science. I remember seeing my first rat die. I didn't feel bad at the time because we did it "humanely" with gas (and it's normalized and I was only 20) and they just sort of drifted off and defecated. It's an interesting and perhaps sad use of a life.
Zoos are bastions of conservation. They are usually only filled by rescue animals, and their funds are often used in conservation and animal welfare programs.
is that really always the case? do you have some data about it I can look into?
I stopped going to zoos because I didn't want to contribute to keeping animals like that, but would like to read information to the contrary if that's the case.
I’ve never been to zoos outside the UK, but here often the primary function is conservation - both of the animals, which are often rescues, and of wider wildlife which is funded by ticket sales
For example, London Zoo is managed by the charity Zoological Society of London [0] and places like Monkey World are essentially rescue centres you can visit [1]
> places like Monkey World are essentially rescue centres you can visit
Can confirm this (disclaimer- I'm a supporter). Many of their animals are rescues, including more than 70 Capuchins that had been lab animals in Chile and four groups of Chimpanzees, many of whom had been rescued from use in circuses or as tourist props - the latter often with teeth knocked out so that they couldn't bite the punters. There is currently a sadly growing collection of marmosets, most rescued from the UK pet trade after tipoffs from animal protection agencies. Many of the marmosets have diseases such as rickets resulting from their owners' lack of animal husbandry skills (e.g. thinking that all they need to eat is bananas). Most of these animals lack the survival skills or health to be released back into the wild. On a more positive note, Monkey World is also a hub for breeding critically endangered species, e.g. Woolly Monkeys and Orangutans.
Sadly, if an animal is being cared for at Monkey World, it generally means that the specific individual has been abused in the past and / or the species faces functional extinction in the wild.
I think it depends on the individual zoo. It's up to them to take part in conservation programs or to stick to keeping animals exclusively for display.
The one where I live has historically been a bunch of very desolate animal display cases, but they've committed to doing what amounts to a slow U-turn, and they have done quite well in that regard.
The old enclosures were clearly built to keep animals in plain view at all times. They've remodelled a lot of them since, and they're completely rebuilding some. There are times where you don't see a single great ape during a whole visit, because their new habitats have some caves and comfy areas hidden from view, with the result that especially the gorillas now appear to have quite a bit of fun interacting with visitors at the four separate points in their enclosure where that is possible and definitely seem much more relaxed than the previous generations (as far as I can tell, I'm no gorilla myself).
Certainly still worse than a life in their natural habitat, but they are part of a multinational conservation project and all their current gorillas were essentially sent to them via this project, with the end-goal of (as I understand it) having a viable captive gorilla population in zoos around the world so there is a "backup" in case the natural populations collapse. The living conditions they provide have earned praise from experts (for what that's worth, seeing they're not gorillas themselves, either).
They still keep their lions in a tiny, cruel pen, but they're building a new one currently that is supposed to be state of the art. Most monkeys have gotten new accomodations last year I think and they're pretty involved in keeping Kunekune pigs from going almost extinct a second time and they're breeding Visayan Warty Pigs (which are absolutely amazing things, and critically endangered); I guess for a relatively provincial central European zoo with a limited budget, that's quite decent.
They've also recently completed a pretty big section with heirloom breeds of common farm animals and they do a lot of education programs and events for schools, which I feel is something my generation missed out on big time, not necessarily from a zoo, but some kind of getting in contact with animals other than the occasional cat or dog might have been quite helpful. I feel there are some really weird misconceptions about animals that are pretty widespread among people my age.
For what it's worth, I've been quite opposed to that zoo in the past, but their efforts over the last decade or so have been enough to convince me to pay for a year pass. Some zoos are much slower adopting this approach, I surely wouldn't be as supportive of one of those.
Much less happy are the animals we eat, those confined in zoos, and many of the pets people lock in tiny spaces.