“The pets tend to be the most behaviorally disturbed, I would say. They have the hardest transition most of the time into kind of sanctuary life, because with the pet trade, infants are usually taken from their mothers within a few days or a few weeks after they're born. And most primate species in the wild will stay with their mothers for at least a couple of years, if not for most of their life. So that's incredibly damaging right off the bat, because that separation is very traumatizing.” – Devan Schowe

 

Devan Schowe is the Campaigns Associate for Born Free USA, a nonprofit wildlife organization with the largest primate sanctuary in the country. Born Free recently release and report on the extensive suffering of giraffe in zoos. I read the report and wanted to talk to Devan about giraffes but also to get her expert perspective on captivity and why it’s so harmful to all animals, particularly in zoos.

 

It completely baffles me that in 2022, most people have no issue with zoos. Maybe they don’t know that no matter how “nice” the zoo is, it’s still a prison for animals.

 

Born Free USA https://www.bornfreeusa.org/