ABSTRACT
Capturing an animal-from the wild state-is considerably more difficult to justify than keeping it in a zoo. With a zoo animal we should be able to demonstrate convincingly that it is in a state of well-being, that it is being kept well. But an animal cannot be kept well until it has adjusted to captivity (if it wasn’t born into it) and has, as it were, accepted the situation. So we can’t defend the process of capture in this way; capture, even carried out efficiently, is likely to be stressful for an animal; and it seems, in any case, an improper invasion of its right to be left alone to live its own kind of life. I have argued that the well-adjusted zoo animal is slightly domesticated; this of course by definition can’t be so of the wild animal.
