Zoos, known for animals, famous for getting to visit the animals at the zoo.

Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun.

Let's find out why zoos are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey, hey, hey, there, folks, welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is.

My name is Alex Schmidt. And folks, not only am I not alone, I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden, Katie.

Alex! Hey, good to see you, buddy. Yeah, it's good to see you too.

I'm glad you're back from your break. Me too. And I am also so glad people picked such a wonderful topic for any SIF episode. Thank you, Dacup Bear, with support from lots of folks. Katie, what's your relationship to or opinion of zoos? You don't think about animals. You probably haven't heard of them or anything. I grew up in San Diego, so I went to one of the world's most famous zoos quite a bit when I was

growing up as an adult, the San Diego Zoo. Yeah. And I also, because I host a animal podcast,

a creature feature, I get asked a lot what my opinion is on zoos.

It really comes down to the zoos because some zoos are basically animal prisons. They're not very good.

They don't have adequate space for animals. And so a lot of like roadside zoos are terrible.

You just can't put a wild animal in a small cage and call it a day.

And I don't see any value to that.

Zoos like the San Diego Zoo and other zoos, there are plenty all across the U.S. and the world that do have adequate housing and care for their animals,

I think are actually really important. They both do a lot of things like practically in terms

of conservation and also in terms of education for the public. So I'm very much pro-good zoo.

I think there are a few animals that just can never realistically be kept in a zoo.

One of them is elephants.

They're just too big, and they're too smart, and their whole life is nomadic.

It's not ideal to have elephants at a zoo. I know some zoos have elephants

because they're rescued, and I understand that. I think that's fine, but I don't think

elephants should ever be bred in a zoo. You don't find them much in zoos, but another one is

orcas.

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