Horizon

This programme contains some scenes which some

viewers may find upsetting from the start.

'A visit to the zoo has been a staple of family life for more than a century.'

A lot of us will remember the experience of seeing

our first wild animal at the zoo as a child.

But is it time that zoos took a long, hard look at what they do?

Zoos, if they stay as they are, inevitably will become extinct.

The public will just stop going to them.

I'm Liz Bonnin. I've studied and worked in zoos,

and I've observed just how intelligent animals can be.

Chase and tickle, he wants to chase and tickle with you now.

I want to chase and tickle with you too!

But the more science is revealing about animals,

the more difficult questions are being raised

about why and how animals are kept in zoos.

Why are zoos still keeping elephants

now that we know captivity can halve their life expectancy?

To us it just became more and more clear that there was no...

there was no way to really make this work.

We want to be able to sleep at night.

Did captivity drive one of SeaWorld's orcas to kill his trainer?

There is no evidence whatsoever that there is any mental

aberration that is a result of living in a zoological park.

Why do so many zoo animals exhibit behaviours

that are hardly seen in the wild?

It does indicate that something is not right.

Is the battle to save endangered animals

one that zoos can simply never win?

We feel like janitors of the human culture.

We're trying to clean this mess up.

I want to ultimately find out if zoos need to change,

to serve animals and humans better.

Or if they should be consigned to history.

A day out at the zoo, in Copenhagen.

In 2014, the zoo offered families an educational experience that

some might find disturbing.

A two-year-old giraffe called Marius was culled,

then dissected in front of them and fed to the lions.

What happened here lifted the lid on a practice

few other zoos embrace so publicly.

Today I'm here to see it happen again.

Copenhagen Zoo has culled another animal.

This time it's a sable antelope.

How was she culled? What method did you use?

She was shot with a rifle and you can see,

if you want to, that she was shot right in the brain here.

And obviously, this is not a very enjoyable part of our job,

but the key here is to do it so the animals have no idea what's coming

and it has to be swift and efficient.

The culling of Marius triggered a global storm of protest.

In the firing line was Bengt Holst, director of research at the zoo.

Bengt, were you surprised by the reaction,

by the backlash that you got because of the culling of Marius?

Yes, very much indeed, and that's because we have done this,

we have used this concept for more than 30 years here in the zoo,

and we have done it with lions and with bears

and leopards and antelopes and a lot of different animals,

not with giraffes until now.

But it was really strange because we have never had this reaction before.

It may seem cruel,

but culling has come about with the modernisation of zoos.

In the 19th century, when zoos began,

most of the animals were taken from the wild.

Zoos would order animals for spring time, you know, because there was

a new season and you'd bring them in and if they survived the summer,

that was great, but if not, you'd just order some more next year.

Since the 1980s, zoos have aimed to develop a more positive

relationship with the natural world.

Today it's much more conservation-minded.

It's ethically wrong to take all animals in from the wild, so we

strive at being self-sustaining with as many animals as ever possible.

Now, more than 90% of the animals in zoos are born in captivity.

And around 90% of all species kept are not endangered in the wild.

Animals are carefully paired across zoos around the world

to avoid in-breeding and to ensure genetic diversity.

But there is a consequence.

If you want to do serious breeding with animals,

where you go for a healthy population far into the future,

then you cannot avoid having, at some stage, if they breed well, a surplus.

That's because zoos can't breed just the animals

they need to maintain a sustainable population.

You cannot go into a shop and buy three males and four females,

for example, if that's what you need for your population.

You have to let them breed

and you cannot predict what is the sex ratio.

At Copenhagen, surplus animals are also produced

because the zoo takes a particular approach to animal welfare.

This particular animal is considered surplus to the programme,

in the sense that her genes are already represented

fairly well through numerous of her siblings.

The parents of this antelope, just like Marius's parents,

were not paired in the international breeding programme.

Instead, Copenhagen decided to allow them

to breed, rather than use methods to stop them, as other zoos do.

Why cull, as opposed to using contraceptives?

Because by using contraceptives,

you take away the breeding behaviour from the animals.

I think it's very important that we give the animals

an opportunity to perform as much natural behaviour as ever possible.

And breeding behaviour is a big part of that natural behaviour.

If you take away that part, you have a welfare problem.

You reduce their welfare.

Before considering culling,

zoos look at moving surplus animals to other zoos.

But space is limited, and priority is given to housing animals

that are valuable to the breeding programmes.

This sort of proves that there are no surplus animals.

Everything has a role to play.

As controversial as Copenhagen's policy is,

perhaps what's most surprising is how openly it's carried out here.

It's not known how many other zoos take the same approach to breeding,

but it's estimated that between 3,000-5,000 healthy animals

are culled by European zoos every year.

I would say in general, it is actually pretty common,

but many zoos are not so open about it.

Some are doing it in disguise.

When Marius the giraffe hit the headlines,

Copenhagen says it was criticised by other zoos.

We got attacks from other zoos, also in Europe.

Zoos that practise culling, or...?

Yes, some zoos that practise culling.

Does this mean that the zoos that were culling,

but had attacked you, were saying you shouldn't have made it public,

you shouldn't have engaged in the conversation?

Some even said that you should have done it without...

Keep it behind the scenes and then don't mention it at all.

But I think it's not the way forward.

The journey zoos are on from the less-enlightened

days of the past has reached a critical point.

The ever-growing human population means the wild has shrunk,

with species disappearing faster than ever.

And science has moved on in leaps and bounds

in its understanding of animals.

But are zoos adapting with the times?

If you peel it all back,

and you look at, say, London Zoo in 1828 -

and all the other zoos throughout the 19th century -

they all had big animals,

showy animals, colourful animals, mainly from Africa or from Asia.

The typical zoo today has got exactly the same collections.

They have not moved on from that.

Zoos tell us that the welfare of their animals

is at the heart of what they do.

But is it?

Zoos have certainly published dozens of scientific papers

about their animals.

But all that you can find,

all these studies carried out by various zoos around the world,

it's not always easy to talk to zoos about some of this research.

So it's hard to judge whether they're really keeping up

with the latest scientific insights into animal needs.

At least, in most cases.

There is one zoo that's been quite keen to talk to us about their work

and the stickier issues surrounding the welfare of captive animals.

'A day at the zoo.

'The Detroit Zoological Park ranks with the finest in the world.'

Opened in 1928, Detroit Zoo kept the same animals

most other zoos did - including elephants, a star attraction.

I've heard people say, "Oh, they haven't got an elephant in that zoo",

"can't be any good."

And if your zoo isn't popular

because it doesn't have the animals that the public wants to see,

they'll probably have to close the doors.

So we have to educate the public.

I'm visiting the zoo to find out about a novel approach to

animal welfare, a vision that's raising a question for all zoos.

This place is taking a long, hard look at the scientific evidence

to determine what animals it should keep and what it shouldn't.

The zoo's director, Ron Kagan, wants to show me why, when it came

to elephants, he broke with 150 years of zoological tradition.

This used to be the indoor enclosure for Detroit's two Asian elephants.

Now, notice, there is more room for people...

I was going to say! ..than there is for elephants.

I didn't want to be smart about it, but how come

there's more room for the people? Because zoos, in the beginning,

were thinking a little bit more

about people than they were about animals.

When they lived here, both elephants developed arthritis

and chronic foot problems.

Many captive elephants have major problems with their feet

because they're not walking enough

and they're not walking on the right material.

The Michigan climate exacerbated the problem of not giving

the elephants enough space.

When we had particularly long, harsh winters,

and the elephants had to stay indoors for long periods of time,

we knew that wasn't good for them. To us, it just became more

and more clear that there was no way to really make this work.

We want to be able to sleep at night.

In 2004, Detroit announced it was moving its elephants to a sanctuary.

There were people that said, oh, your attendance is going to drop

and this is going to hurt revenue and it's going to...

We said, you know, we don't think that's right.

But we're just not prepared to knowingly keep animals

that we don't think are doing well.

At the time, the zoo had just under a million visitors a year.

Now, it gets almost one and a half million.

The reaction from the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums

who wanted the elephants moved to another zoo was less positive.

I lost my AAZA professional membership.