Look Good, Be Good?

Reading yesterday's editorial about flamingo welfare, there was one line that stuck out in my mind.  "Flamingos do not live on lawns outside of children's books."  

I've seen greater and lesser flamingos in the wild, albeit from a distance, in Lake Manyara in Tanzania.  They appeared mostly as a shimmering pink haze in the distance on the edge of a muddy, rather foul smelling lake.  And looking at pictures of flamingos in the wild, Manyara actually looks like one of the lusher places they inhabit.  From the salt pans of the Great Rift Valley to the high altitude grasslands of the Andes, flamingos often seek out the harshest, least pleasant places to live in order to raise their young in peace.  Despite their association with the tropics, these are not birds that are going to putter around on a touristy beach under the palm trees, or stroll across the grassy lawns past the cocktail bar, like the equatorial version of Canada geese.  And yet that is the image that we seem hellbent on recreating in zoos.

Why?  Because in these cases we aren't recreating the animals' habitat as it exists.  We're recreating what the visitor thinks the habitat looks like.  And in this case, that's incorrect.

It seems kind of silly to me now, but it was an epiphany when I realized this - that there can be a major difference between what we think of as natural and what really is.  In some cases, what actually is best for the animal might, to a visitor, appear inappropriate.  Flamingos on a grassy lawn ambling around a shallow pond probably looks a lot more appealing that flamingos on mud.  It probably would smell better, too.  I could easily imagine visitors, comparing the two habitats, leaving with the impression that the birds in the grassy habitat were happier and better cared for, while those in the muddy yard were dirtier, sadder, and perhaps less healthy... you know, because of the dirt.  I know for certain, however, which yard the flamingos would opt to be in.

I was reminded of this again the other day when I visited a zoo in which a pair of macaws were perched in front of a lush green backdrop - one which they had no access to.  Their flight feathers were clipped and they were largely confined to their perches, called "parrots on sticks" within the field.  Visitors expressed admiration that the birds were "free" (for so they seemed to be, not being in a visible cage), even though they had less room to roam and less opportunity to express natural behavior than a macaw in a reasonably-sized enclosure would have had.   Or perhaps it's the mentality that causes some facilities to put solitary or incompatible individuals together so people don't feel sad that the animals don't have "friends."

One of the most important things I've learned about animal welfare over the years is that sometimes there's a difference between what looks good and what is good.  When there is, always chose the later.  I'd rather have to explain an ugly enclosure than explain poor animal care practices.