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48: śramaņa, Vol 64, No. III, July-Sept. 2013
nonhuman animals. Scientific education encompasses a great wealth of information regarding nonhumans, including but not limited to their scientific names, how to classify them according to their taxa, what each species of animal typically eats in the wild, where each particular species lives in the wild and what their particular niches, or individual functions in the larger ecosystem, are in the wild. While this information is surely interesting to science-minded people, most zoos fail in their goal of educating people about their animals. As Rowlands wrote in Animals Like Us,"one study indicates that zoo-goers express the usual prejudices about animals" and "200-goers are only slightly more knowledgeable than those who claim to know nothing at all about animals."21 Obviously, there are much more effective ways to learn about animals than attending zoos. How to Save the Planet Another form of education done by zoos is conservation education and as is evident by the New York Zoological Society's name change to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), many zoos are now making conservation efforts a much stated goal. With threats to the world's biodiversity such as habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation, environmental degradation and pollution, global climate change, invasive species and disease looming over world, conservation education should surely be valued by all Jainas, but do efforts at conservation education justify keeping nonhumans in captivity in zoos?
While many zoos and aquariums are now touting themselves as centers for conservation education, as22 noted in Zoo Tourism: The Need for More Research," there is very little information available on the effects zoo and aquariums have on visitors. Following Mason's claimreviewed studies attempting to measure the impact of zoos and aquariums on educational and conservationoriented objectives, however, nothing conclusive was found,24 a study largely undertaken by the AZA, claimed to have been the first, claiming "zoos and aquariums are enhancing public understanding of wildlife and the conservation of the places animals live" and "zoos and aquariums make a difference."25 In its publication, Jim Maddy, the president of the AZA, celebrated the study, claiming: For the first time, we have reliable data validating the positive impact zoos and aquariums have inchanging visitors' feelings and attitudes about conservation. This study clearly shows that visitors believe that accredited zoos and aquariums are deeply committed to animal care and education and that we play an important role in species conservation.26 Despite these claims, however, 27 in “Do Zoos and Aquariums Promote Attitude Change in Visitors? A Critical Evaluation of the American Zoo and Aquarium Study," identified a major conceptual problem and seven threats to methodological validity within Falk et al., undercutting the authors' conclusions. These threats to validity included nonspecific effects, novelty, construct confounding, demand characteristics, experimenter expectancy effects, nonrandom sampling and response bias.28 In the end, Marino et al. joined the ranks of previous studies, concluding "to date there is no compelling or even particularly suggestive evidence for the claim that zoos and aquariums promote attitude change, education and interest in conservation in visitors."29
