WHAT GIVES US THE RIGHT TO KEEP WILD ANIMALS IN ZOOS?
A 2026 philosophy thesis asks a question that sits beneath nearly every debate about zoos: Even if keeping wild animals in zoos is legal—and even if zoos provide conservation, education and research benefits—what ethically justifies confining the individual animals who live there?
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Most discussions about zoos begin with familiar questions.
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Is the enclosure large enough? Is the animal receiving appropriate veterinary care? Does the zoo contribute to conservation? Does the public learn something from seeing the animal?
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But a 2026 undergraduate philosophy thesis from the University of Montana begins from a deeper question: What justifies keeping the animal in a zoo in the first place?
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In The Legal Philosophy Behind Zoos Confinement of Animals, philosophy student Jamie Lynn Tucker Crockett examines the ethical arguments surrounding the confinement of animals in American zoos. Rather than simply cataloging arguments for and against zoos, Crockett explores the different philosophical ideas about animals, human interests and animal rights that lie beneath those arguments.
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Importantly, the thesis does not begin from the assumption that people on either side intend to harm animals. Crockett instead examines how opposing positions can emerge from fundamentally different understandings of what it means to properly care for and respect another animal.
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THE ARGUMENT THAT THE BENEFITS OUTWEIGH THE COSTS
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One of the most familiar defenses of modern zoos is essentially consequentialist: keeping animals in zoos may impose limitations on individual animals, but zoos can produce broader benefits through conservation, education, research and species preservation.
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Crockett challenges that calculation.
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If benefits to people, conservation programs or even other animals are used to justify restricting the life of an individual zoo animal, she asks us to consider what moral weight should be given to the interests of the animal actually experiencing that confinement.
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That shifts the conversation from simply asking “What good does the zoo accomplish?” to also asking “What does zoo confinement cost the individual animal?”
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FROM ARISTOTLE TO MODERN ANIMAL ETHICS
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The thesis traces part of the philosophical divide back centuries. Crockett discusses arguments associated with Aristotle and longstanding human-centered views of animals while contrasting them with modern approaches to animal ethics.
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She draws particularly upon the work of philosopher Peter Singer and philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Their approaches differ, but both challenge the idea that human interests automatically deserve greater moral consideration simply because they are human interests.
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Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is especially relevant to Crockett’s discussion of zoo confinement because it asks what opportunities a living being needs in order to flourish according to the kind of creature it is.
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For an animal living in a zoo, that can move the discussion beyond whether basic needs are being supplied.
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Food, veterinary care and physical safety matter enormously. But so can movement, social relationships, exploration, environmental complexity, behavioral choice and the ability to exercise species-appropriate capabilities.
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The ethical question therefore becomes larger than whether an animal can survive in a zoo.
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Can the animal live a life that adequately allows it to be the animal it is?
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WHEN ANIMAL AUTONOMY REACHES THE COURTS
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Crockett also considers two animals whose circumstances became important tests of how legal systems think about nonhuman animals: Happy, an elephant at the Bronx Zoo, and Cecilia, a chimpanzee formerly held at a zoo in Argentina.
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Their cases raised questions that conventional animal-welfare regulation does not easily resolve. Should an animal always be treated legally as property? Can a cognitively and emotionally complex animal possess interests in liberty or autonomy that deserve legal recognition? And is providing adequate care necessarily sufficient to justify continued zoo confinement?
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These questions illustrate an important distinction between animal welfare and animal rights.
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Animal-welfare frameworks generally ask how animals in zoos should be treated while they remain under human control. A rights-based approach can ask a more fundamental question: Should humans exercise that degree of control over wild animals in zoos at all?
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THE COSTS OF ZOO CONFINEMENT
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Another important part of Crockett’s argument concerns the relationship between psychological and physical well-being.
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The thesis argues that confinement in zoos can negatively affect animals psychologically and that psychological effects can, in turn, influence physical health. That matters because an animal can receive food, shelter and veterinary care while still experiencing restrictions that affect its overall quality of life.
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Modern zoo-welfare science increasingly recognizes concepts such as behavioral opportunities, environmental complexity, social needs, agency, choice and control. Crockett’s philosophical argument pushes the discussion one step further by asking what those needs mean ethically—not merely how zoos should manage them.
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LEGAL DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN ETHICALLY JUSTIFIED
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Perhaps one of the most useful questions raised by the thesis is the distinction between legality and morality.
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Laws can establish minimum standards for housing, transportation, veterinary care and treatment of animals in zoos. Accreditation organizations can establish additional standards. Facilities can comply with those requirements.
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But compliance largely answers the question:
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“Is this permitted?”
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Philosophy allows us to ask another:
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“Should it be?”
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That distinction is particularly important as our scientific understanding of animal cognition, emotion, social relationships and agency continues to develop. Practices once accepted without much examination can be reconsidered as knowledge changes.
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THE KEEPING WILDLIFE WILD PERSPECTIVE
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Crockett’s work is an undergraduate philosophy thesis, not a peer-reviewed scientific study or legal opinion, and it should be understood in that context. It does not settle the debate over zoos—and no single thesis should be presented as doing so.
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What it does particularly well is challenge us to examine the assumptions underneath that debate.
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When evaluating animals living in zoos, it is relatively easy to measure what humans provide: food, veterinary medicine, enclosure space, enrichment, education programs and conservation funding.
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It is considerably harder to measure what the individual animal has surrendered.
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Freedom of movement. Choice of social partners. Control over proximity to humans. Opportunities to disperse, explore, forage, hunt, migrate or avoid observation. And, ultimately, much of the ability to determine how and where its life is lived.
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None of this means that every zoo, every animal or every circumstance is ethically equivalent. Nor does acknowledging the conservation work performed by some zoological institutions require us to stop asking difficult questions about the individual animals living within them.
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Perhaps that is where Crockett’s thesis makes its most valuable contribution.
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Instead of asking only whether zoos produce benefits, it encourages us to examine who receives those benefits, who bears the costs and how much moral consideration should be given to the individual animal whose confinement may make those benefits possible.
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And that leaves us with a question worth considering:
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When our ability to confine a wild animal in a zoo is unquestioned, shouldn’t our justification for doing so receive even greater scrutiny?
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Source: Jamie Lynn Tucker Crockett,
The Legal Philosophy Behind Zoos Confinement of Animals
University of Montana, 2026,
Undergraduate Theses,
Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts, No. 561.
Evidence • Education • Accountability
