On Friday 6th June, our Year 10 Philosophy class had a day trip to Auckland Zoo. We have been studying Ethics in class this term, where we try to figure out what is right and wrong. As part of this topic, we travelled to the zoo to question whether or not it is morally right to keep animals in a zoo. We gathered info on the habitats of each animal we encountered, questioning the animal’s physical and mental condition to see if these habitats suited their welfare or not.
One highlight of the trip was when we were in the education centre. We learnt about the history of the zoo and its change in values over the 100 years: What was once a place purely for entertainment, is now a place of conservation for endangered species such as Little Blue Penguins, Kiwi, Tigers, Orangutans, Rhinos, and so much more. However, while we were learning about that, the parrots in the room beside us started dancing for us; it was really cute. (That was the real highlight.)
Another highlight was watching through the window of the Zoo Vet centre as two vets tried to put a live kiwi to sleep with sleeping gas, so they could perform tests to see why the kiwi was losing weight. The kiwi was putting up a fight – it did not want to go down easily! We also went to the “flight school” encounter where the zookeepers brought birds out of their cages and had them flying back and forth right over our heads. They flew so close we had to dodge out of the way!
Our takeaway from this trip was that the zoo was here to support animals in danger of extinction, and thus while the zoo isn’t perfect, it’s definitely working towards an ethical way of treating the animals.
by Adam Yuan and Kaa Malcolm 10FI, with Mr Willow Maxwell