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Pros and cons of contact zoos

29.11.2021

"The animals, which are few, were included in the Red Book, and there are many of them in the Book about tasty and healthy food."

Faina Ranevskaya

The joy on the child's face, after communicating with animals in the petting zoo, suggests that the child received an unforgettable experience. Almost all children love animals, and once having visited a petting zoo, they beg their parents to return there again and again. Traditional petting zoos offer their guests a variety of educational activities, which are a bit of a challenge for petting zoo residents. We assume that knowing and understanding the pros and cons of a petting zoo will help you make sure that a petting zoo is good for children and good for pets.

Pro

By interacting with animals, children become familiar with their unique behavior. In a petting zoo, children who have never seen animals other than their domestic cats and dogs learn to overcome their fear of the unknown and thus become more confident in their own abilities.

Along with social skills, petting zoos provide children with practical skills such as feeding, stroking and caring for animals. Studies have shown that both social and tactile communication with animals activate both hemispheres of the brain in children, which contributes to their emotional and intellectual development.

Brain scans of adolescents who had previously interacted with animals in a petting zoo showed increased activity in the sensory and motor regions of the brain when children thought about the animals with which they came into communication. This indicates that when visiting contact zoos, all 5 senses are involved in children.

After an emotional experience that can be safely enjoyed at a petting zoo, the latter is sure to become a favorite destination for children. And their parents, breathing in clean air, for example, under the century-old oak trees of the Animal Park petting zoo, can observe how children transform in the presence of animals, they become active and emotional, on the one hand, and socially communicative, on the other.

Contra

Contact zoos can be potentially harmful to humans, animals and society in general. There are many ways in which contact animals can harm humans, and vice versa. Contact animals are usually very attentive with their guardians. But visitors to tactile zoos, for various reasons, animals may not accept, be aggressive towards hostess.

People can also harm animals, for example by putting too much pressure on them when they are petted and fed. Another negative factor is that animals may experience excessive stress from communicating with people, which may be too many, or they may be too noisy. Limited space, too annoying people, sound and light (camera flashes) stimuli — all this can cause behavioral problems in animals and, as a result, stress, aggression and non communication behavior.

When pets with behavioral issues are observed in Animal Park, they are immediately separated from other animals and completely exclude contact with people, except with the park administrators. For isolation, country nurseries are provided in which animals are kept in quarantine or because of behavioral difficulties.

As a result

  1. life in modern megacities is organized in such a way that children may not encounter only wild, but tamed animals, but also domestic pets, such as cows, goats and horses.
  2. The full formation of a successful personality — emotionally, intellectually and physically developed — cannot take place without active interaction with the environment, of which animals are an integral part.
  3. By overcoming fears of contact to animals in zoos, both adults and children become more self-confident. Internal confidence is transformed into trust in the outside world — this is what children with social adaptation problems lack.

Contact zoo — good or bad — we leave to you the right to decide this. To find the arguments "for" or "against" we invite you to the contact zoo "Animal Park" (Kiev, VDNG). This is the place where wild animals trust people, and people begin to trust themselves.