China tells zoos to do better amid abuse concerns – Yahoo! News.

I want to be clear here. I think abusing animals is a very bad thing, but I don’t think that having animal performances equals or requires animal abuse. There is a great zoo near where I live and they have animal performances, including tiger performances. I have been to a several zoos in my life and the happiest tigers I have ever seen were at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in California, and the ones here at the Chime Long Zoo. Most zoos I’ve been to the tigers will pace, which is a sign of stress, and and they don’t have enough stimulus in the tiger environments to really provide for their mental health. These two zoos are not similar, they seem to have very different philosophies regarding human/animal interaction, but the animals at each for the most part seem to be happy and well cared for.

I have not been to the Guangzhou Zoo, which I’ve heard is heartbreakingly bad, and I don’t know if they do animal performances.

winner-winner, chicken dinner 🙂