Peter Singer Quotes

I hate zoos.

I've always had a repulsion going in a place where animals are in captivity.

We have wild animals in zoos, yet people rarely meet their 'food' face to face.

I hate to witness animals in captivity - or see circus elephants paraded down the streets. When animals are caged, it's a loss of what they are.

I've never really been able to tolerate zoos.

Confining marine animals to tanks and separating them from their families and their natural surroundings, just so people can watch them swim in endless circles, teaches us far more about humans than it does about animals - and the lesson is not a flattering one.

For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones.

Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all.

I hope SeaWorld is exploring how, like Ringling, it can get out of the wild animal business.

I don't believe in pets. I like animals to be wild and free.

All zoos are both beguiling and repellent.

We're feeding all these zoos. And that's getting bigger and bigger.

Several countries - among them Austria, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, India, Israel and Sweden - ban or severely restrict the use of wild animals in circuses. In Brazil, a movement to ban wild animals from circuses started after hungry lions managed to grab and devour a small boy.

In my perfect world, we would establish perhaps four national zoos of unimpeachable quality and close the rest of them.

There is no good scientific reason to bring back an extinct species. Why would one bring them back? To put them in a theme park?

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

Zoos have always fascinated me. What child hasn't wondered what would happen if all the animals escaped from the zoo? Or what would happen if they got caught in an enclosure?

The newspapers do little better. Their coverage of nonhuman animals is dominated by "human interest" events like the birth of a baby gorilla at the zoo, or by threats to endangered species; but developments in farming techniques that deprive millions of animals of freedom of movement go unreported.

Animal abuse is rampant in the U.S., right under everyone's eyes, for the entertainment of the public. The brutal confinement and pain of training methods of wild animals in the circus, the aquatic and theatrical shows, leads to retaliation by the animals. Eventually they find the right time to strike out, and they will.

Bolivia recently did what every country should do - banned the use of animals in circuses.

There is something about seeing rhinos and lions running free that excites you. It's not that you feel afraid; it's more like you're liberated by seeing them.

I was watching a Storyville documentary called 'Blackfish' about killer whales in captivity. I was emotionally drained by the end. It revealed a real behind-the-scenes truth on what we do with animals.

In most countries, it is possible to visit zoos and see bored animals pacing back and forth in cages, with nothing to do but wait for the next meal. Circuses are even worse places for animals. Their living conditions are deplorable, especially in travelling circuses where cages have to be small so that they can go on the road.

What's the reality of being inside a zoo, for the animals and for the people who love and care for those animals? There's a lot of joy, and there's a lot of loss.

Animals weren't put on this earth to entertain us.