Grotesque and cruel. To enslave an animal in a zoo for viewers to consume for pleasure. To ensure that the captive animals represent the happy animal fiction they are drugged.
After their experiences at the zoo in Boston, Murphy and Mufson were curious about the use of psychopharmaceuticals in other captive gorillas, so they surveyed all U.S. and Canadian zoos with gorillas in their collections. Nearly half of the 31 institutions that responded had given psychopharmaceutical drugs to their gorillas. The most frequently prescribed were Haldol haloperidol and Valium diazepam, though Klonopin, Zoloft, Paxil, Xanax, Buspar, Prozac, Ativan, Versed, and Mellaril had all been tried.
via Even the Gorillas and Bears in Our Zoos Are Hooked on Prozac | Opinion | WIRED.
Thanks to Dan Weiss’s daily coffee from the Rumpus for the link.