Bert Archer makes the perennial case against zoos:
I feel confident in saying that we, the animal-loving public, are idiots. We don’t pay attention (and step on nests), we don’t think things through (and pay companies to put whales in aquariums), and, since the entirety of our context for animal-human interaction seems to be cats and dogs, we have a deep desire to treat all animals the same way. We want to pet them and hug them and love them and kiss them. Hence the outrage directed of late at Sea World and its cognates, with their riding and caressing animals in a way that makes it clear, when put alongside the hoop-jumping sea lions and the dancing dolphins, that we as humans have dominion over these creatures, and can make them do our bidding, as is natural and just. Dogs and cats are our creations; those other creatures are not, no matter what it says in Genesis. Thinking that they are here for our use is the sort of logic that led to the sealing and whaling industries of the last two centuries, which nearly wiped out the upper echelons of the aquatic food chains.
Previous Dish on the ethics of zoos here.
The Dish 