How many animals would be extinct if we didn't have zoos?

here's all the species that are extinct everywhere but zoos:

Abingdon Island Tortoise

Alagoas Curassow

ʻAlala

Ameca splendens

Barbary Lion

Black Soft-shell Turtle

Geochelone nigra abingdoni

Guam Rail

North China Sika Deer

Northern White Rhinoceros

Père David's Deer

Red-tailed black shark

Scimitar Oryx

Shanxi Sika Deer

Socorro Dove

South China Tiger

Spix's Macaw

Wyoming Toad

really zoos don't help that much, they don't necessarily save the species, the last just happens to be in a zoo, and when it dies, they go extinct anyway. Just like the Tasmanian Tiger.

Animals Saved By Zoos

Unlike BWANA's extremist answer, zoos can help in a variety of ways.

Many zoos focus on more than simply entertainment. Busch Gardens might be primarily about entertainment, but zoos aren't.

Many zoos will put a big emphasis on research, conservation, and education.

Research and conservation are important to help biologists and ecologists understand how animals interact with their environment, each other, and other animals. For example, the Pittsburgh Zoo and Disney World are doing research on elephant communication, which can help understand how elephants communicate in the wild and how environmental factors impact that.

Education helps the public understand about animals. The more the public understands, the more they internalize and personalize the animals. They start to care, and start to donate more time and money to education, conservation, and research. I wouldn't be an animal researcher today if not for my early and frequent exposure to the zoo I grew up with.

So apart from directly helping animals, zoos can help save species by bringing the animals to the public and really getting people to care about animals. Most zoos with proper credentials are ethical in how they treat the animals, are concerned about the animals' welfare, about breeding the animals productively for the species where applicable (e.g., they try to have good breeding programs to save the species, not simply to have tons of babies, and they select mates that will not dilute the species). They provide thorough enrichment for the animals' behavioral and cognitive development and welfare. All in all, the public benefits from responsible zoos, and the animal world benefits from it as well.

Loads. Przewalski's horse, the red wolf, the golden lion tamarin and the California condor to name but a few. All these animals were extinct or nearly extinct in the wild before captive breeding returned their numbers to healthy enough levels for them to be reintroduced to the wild.

Some of these answerers seem to have no idea of how important zoos are for conservation. It's likely that some species, like tigers, will become extinct in the wild in the near future. Would you rather they were gone forever than for there to be a healthy population in captivity that could one day be returned to the wild? Of course zoos in some places, like China for example, may be more about money than conservation and treat their animals cruelly, but to say that is the case everywhere is either ignorance or prejudice. Zoos in places like Europe and the US treat their animals superbly - there are governing bodies that can shut them down if they don't.

And to say they are being deprived of a wonderful life of freedom in the wild is a load of tree-hugging hippie crap spouted by people with no understanding of nature. Life for wild animals is no bed of roses, every single day is a battle for survival. A wild animal with a broken leg will suffer for days or weeks and die a slow, agonising death. That same animal in captivity would a) not be injured in the first place; b) receive immediate medical care if it was injured; and c) be put to sleep quickly and painlessly if nothing could be done to help it recover.

FYI the Tasmanian tiger became extinct because it was hunted to extinction in the wild, and at the time (the 30s) there were no captive breeding programmes in place - zoos in those days were just for displaying wild animals, not protecting them as is the case today.

Zoo's are hardly beneficial to animals in many countries with no animal rights laws. I am currently spending the summer in china and i was warned not to go to any of the zoo's here if I like animals and don't want to see them mistreated. The zoo's here cause the animals to go mad from boredome, they lock them in very small cages with nothing to do and no where to move. The boredom is actually the last of their worries though, they are beaten and made to perform unnatural stunts and tricks for humans that can seriously hurt them. I saw a newspaper article that expressed tourists outrage after visiting a zoo in china saying that a bear was beaten and forced to dress up in human clothing and pull a car around the zoo for human entertainment a couple of times a day. The Zoo also had domestic animals for visitors to buy and feed to the wild animals. If I were one of these animals I would rather be extinct than live under these conditions!

I think a more important question would be how many animals would NOT be extinct if we didn't live in a culture that can't exist without violence and destruction? Zoos have some positives but for those animals living in the prison, its hell.

That's impossible to know for sure, we would have to recreate such a universe, which we cannot do. If zoos didn't exist, I think there would be many fundamental changes to our attitudes and practices regarding conservation.

I didn't read all the responses, but to the first person who answered, one of the defining differences between zoos and sanctuaries is that sanctuaries do *not* breed their animals. Please do a little research before you post another answer.

Zoo do NOT keep animals from going extinct. Very, very few animals have been saved by being kept in zoos. To my knowledge, there has been one, and only one, that has, so far, made it back from the brink of extinction by zoos, and that's the California Condor.

Captivity in zoos is NOT healthy in any way for wild animals. No matter what they do in zoos, or how the animals are cared for, or what conditions they are kept in, they do NOT do as well as they would if they were just left alone in the wild where they belong, and can do their part in helping to balance nature and keep this planet healthy.

Zoos always have, and always will, put the animals and their welfare SECOND to that of the human visitors that pay to see them. Keeping the public comfortable and bringing in the all mighty buck is what zoos are all about. And, they do this by exploiting the animals that are penned, caged, housed, or fenced in there.

It is true that many people would not see most of the animals if they were not kept in a zoo, but it is NOT good for the animals and NOT healthy for the environment in the long run.

We must learn to live with nature and the wild animals that are a part of it, not against it by hunting, trapping, or caging them in zoos. When you consider the animals and their welfare, zoos are NOT a good thing.

The only way we could know this is if there weren't zoos to begin with. Most endangered species aren't even in zoos, they are in sanctuaries. There, they have more room and more of them, so that they can create a larger population.

Point of information: The Tazmanian Tiger died of neglect because he was in the zoo, left out in the weather in a simple cage with no proper shelter and not fed properly.

In the wild he had no predators and would have lived out his days happy (but lonely!)

The animals do not know they are the last of their kind, it is not their fault, and it should not justify their mistreatment.