The Comfort Argument: o que os zoológicos preferem não dizer (B2)
The modern zoo defends itself with two arguments: it educates the public, and it breeds species that would otherwise disappear. Both are partly true, and both are used to avoid a harder question. Education is real but shallow; studies of visitors leaving an enclosure suggest that they remember the animal and forget the message within days. Breeding programmes have genuinely saved a handful of species, though the animals concerned are rarely the ones that fill the car parks. Elephants, big cats and primates are the commercial foundation of most zoos, and they are precisely the animals whose needs an enclosure cannot meet. An institution that quietly retired those exhibits would be more honest and considerably poorer. Until that trade-off is stated plainly, the conservation argument functions less as a justification than as a comfort.
Fonte: English for ALL (texto original).
A crítica central desse ensaio aos zoológicos consiste em apontar que
- A) os programas de reprodução em cativeiro jamais conseguiram salvar espécie alguma.
- B) os visitantes memorizam bem a mensagem educativa, mas esquecem rapidamente os animais.
- C) as instituições deveriam ampliar o número de recintos destinados aos grandes felinos.
- D) a educação do público é o único argumento realmente sustentável em defesa dos zoológicos.
- E) os animais que sustentam financeiramente a instituição são justamente os que menos suportam o cativeiro.