According to circuswatchwa.org, abnormal behaviour due to zoochosis includes bar biting, pacing, tongue playing, circling, neck twisting, vomiting, coprohagia (playing with and eating excrement), rocking, swaying, head bobbing and weaving, overgrooming and self mutilation. The list is worrying in both length and content.
Zoos are an attempt to preserve animals, but doing so can be detrimental to their mental health. BornFree.org, a website which encourages that animals be kept in the wild has illustrated some of the reasons why wildlife suffer so much in captivity. ‘Ensuring reasonable animal welfare in captivity is extremely challenging. Animal species have evolved over millennia and their physical, physiological and behavioural traits have developed in order to optimise their chances of survival in their natural environment’.
‘In captivity, animals may face a number of challenges for which evolution has not prepared them. The climate, diet and the size and characteristics of the enclosure may be completely alien to the species as it exists in the wild’.
It is noble of zoos to attempt to conserve animals, yet the task is not easy. Attempting to recreate the habitat animals would have in the wild is costly work. Some zoos simply do not have the funding.