The captives

Adult male Bornean Orangutan fishes rubbish from moat (for anything edible) at Dudley Zoo in 1988 (c) Ian Redmond

It doesn’t get any easier. After more than 50 years of visiting zoos, you would think I’d get used to seeing apes in captivity. I’ve had the opportunity to visit most of the major zoos in the UK, Europe, North America, and parts of Africa, Asia and Australia, often as a guest speaker with behind-the-scenes tours and discussions with zoo staff. 

Acclaimed ape expert Ian Redmond

I have to admit I am still fascinated by every ape I encounter – their personality and individual story – and yet as I leave each captive, I am saddened by the restricted lives they lead. Having also had the good fortune to study gorillas and photograph or film chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans in their natural habitat, the contrast is stark.

The first non-human ape I met, back in 1973 as a student, was Guy, London Zoo’s famous gorilla. He was then housed with a younger female gorilla, Lomie, who had joined him as a five-year old in 1969. But having been alone for 25 years, and captured in Cameroon as an infant, Guy’s social skills were limited and he didn’t father any offspring.

Between 1988 and 1991, I surveyed most of the apes, elephants and rhinos in the UK and Ireland for Zoo Check (our charity which was renamed as the Born Free Foundation in 1991), visiting 86 exhibits in 32 zoos and safari parks, plus six circuses and a monastery. Of these, 29 zoos had gorillas, chimpanzees and/or orangutans and two of the circuses had chimpanzees.

Orangutan numbers seen:

• Bornean: 9.18 (9 males, 18 females)
• Sumatran: 4.8 (4 males, 8 females)
• Hybrid (X-bred): 1.1 (1 male, 1 female)
• Unknown: 0.1 (1 female)

Gorilla Population (July 1991):

• Total: 84 gorillas, all Western Lowland
• 30 males
• 53 females
• 1 infant (unknown sex)

Total Known UK Chimp Population (July 1990):

• 172 individuals
• 76 males
• 94 females
• 2 unknown sex
• Plus an estimated 10 chimps in the Chipperfield Organisation (not registered in the UK Studbook and declined participation).

Note: Twycross Zoo declined to participate in the survey, so data are incomplete. Twycross acquired bonobos in 1990 and since then has been the only UK zoo to house four species of great ape.

Four decades later, some things have improved:

• Thankfully, performing apes and elephants in UK circuses are history.
• Many zoos that used to house one or two of each kind of ape now have more individuals, of fewer species, in appropriate social groups.
• Outdoor enclosures are more varied and most have some natural vegetation (though usually trees are ringed with hot-wires to prevent apes from climbing them).
• Two UK zoos, Howletts and Port Lympne (both owned by the Aspinall Foundation) are rewilding Kent-born gorillas in Congo and Gabon, and report successful breeding in the wild, but no other zoos are following this example.
• Today, the numbers have changed somewhat (19 zoos with apes instead of 29 and two circuses in 1990, now none), and more attention is paid to environmental enrichment in the better zoos.

But the life of a captive ape is still one of social and sensory deprivation compared to a life in the wild. 

Adult female chimpanzee looks pensive in cage at Drayton Manor Park (c) Ian Redmond

On 24th April 2025, RTE News reported that Dublin Zoo announced the death of its ‘much-loved’ female Northwest Bornean orangutan Leonie. The zoo said she was ‘an iconic presence since her arrival from Rotterdam Zoo in 1984’ and that the 44-year-old ‘was at the heart of our orangutan family for four decades’.

I checked my notes from 1988 and sure enough, I had watched Leonie, then aged seven, playing with Maggie, two years her junior, while their adult male cagemate, Sibu, lay in a heap and gave exaggerated yawns at the public. My notes recorded that Leonie threw excrement at one noisy school party and begged for food from another group.

Maggie tasted a damp patch on the concrete floor – there appeared to be no food or water freely available, and the only enrichment was a swinging tyre. As well as noisy children, their soundscape included a children’s ride that played Fur Elise electronically.

I have a lasting memory of Leonie as I left, face against the glass of her indoor quarters, a picture of boredom and sensory deprivation compared to a life in the complex ecosystem in which orangutans evolved to play a role as a keystone species. The thought of her being locked up for four decades is painful.

I don’t doubt that the keepers and public cared deeply for her but her every move, every decision – what to eat, where to sleep, with whom she could mate – was taken for her by humans. For an intelligent autonomous being it wasn’t much of a life and unless more zoos begin rewilding the captives in their care, that is the prospect for each infant ape born in a zoo.

If they survive into adulthood, they face 40, 50 or even 60 years of concrete and steel indoors, and an exercise yard with at best some grass and a climbing frame, but gazed upon daily by crowds of humans.

According to online sources, Leonie had one infant, a son named Carl, now in Barcelona Zoo, and acted as a surrogate mother to Mujur, still in Dublin. On the face of it, for a female ape to give birth is a wonderful thing and incomparable in terms of environmental enrichment for the mother.

But unless the breeding is part of a rewilding programme, reintroducing the species into suitable habitat within its historical range to restore its role as a keystone species to forests depleted of apes, then the question has to be asked: is it moral to encourage breeding for a lifetime in captivity?

About 10 years ago, a video of Leonie rescuing a bird from a lake went viral, demonstrating her innate compassion. As more and more zoo visitors record interesting snippets of ape behaviour on their smartphones and post them on social media, more and more people are being surprised by the self-evident level of ape cognition. The reactions in comments below such posts suggest a shift in public opinion against captivity for display in zoos – what Mkono and Holder (2019) refer to as ‘digital spaces of Collective Moral Reflexivity’.

The time is long overdue for a re-evaluation of the ethics of imprisoning apes (and other sentient, self-aware social animals) for zoos to provide a fun day out for the kids. I hope this new report on apes in UK zoos will trigger such a public debate.

The survey in the late ‘80s (Redmond, 1991) led me to the following conclusion:

The supporters of zoos commonly offer a number of justifications for the keeping of animals in captivity; these fall into two clear categories which we can describe as selfish and altruistic. Selfish justifications are those which stress the benefit of zoos to humans: for example, ‘zoos give pleasure to millions of people every year,’ or ‘zoos are educational — there is no substitute for the real thing when teaching children about animals.’

Altruistic justifications are those which purport to be for the animals’ own benefit, or for the good of the species; for example: ‘animals in zoos have food, shelter, and protection from predators,’ ‘zoos provide an ark for species that are endangered or vulnerable to extinction in the wild,’ or ‘zoos are sometimes able to rescue individual animals from death or suffering at the hands of hunters or when orphaned.’

Although distinct, the two categories are interlinked. The debate about whether zoos should be primarily for education or for entertainment seems to me to be rather a red herring. To anyone interested in the subject, what could be more entertaining than watching animals behaving naturally in a natural setting? But how do we ensure that the person watching has some interest, and is not just tolerating a visit to the zoo to keep the kids happy?

The key word here is not education or entertainment but experience. How does the zoo visitor experience the animal? Does the time spent in front of the enclosure resemble in any way a rich and rewarding glimpse of a creature in its natural habitat, or does the experience consist of a living zoological specimen served up on a barren, concrete plate?

The quality of the visitor’s encounter with an animal will affect his future perception of that species. Thus, those who plan such exhibits should have in mind the ‘ideal encounter,’ towards which they should strive. By taking an animal from the wild and keeping it in captivity, we take on a number of responsibilities.

These are arguably the same whether we are talking about a snail or a silverback, but the moral argument tends to carry more conviction when applied to large-brained, long-lived social mammals with behaviour similar to, or analogous to, our own.

The three orders of mammals which fit this description are the Cetaceans (whales and dolphins), the Proboscideans (elephants), and the Primates (particularly the great apes). With such species, I feel we have a moral obligation to recreate the opportunities for each individual’s fulfilment—the wherewithal to behave naturally and reach their full potential.

As their captors, we must undertake to do the following:

• Provide appropriate climatic conditions in at least a part of their enclosure;
• Provide the space needed for them to perform their basic behavioural repertoire;
• Provide an appropriate habitat;
• Provide food comparable to their natural diet;
• Provide other conspecifics for social and sexual interaction;
• Protect them from alien parasites and pathogens;
• Allow their young to mature in an appropriate social unit of conspecifics;
• Provide a means for exogamy for each new generation, in order to prevent in-breeding in genetically heterogeneous populations.

Adult female western lowland gorilla at Bristol Zoo Gardens (c) Ian Redmond

I would now add that such captivity is only justifiable if it is part of a programme to restore these species to areas of natural habitat from which they have been extirpated. This is essential, both for the welfare of the individual animals and to enhance the ecosystem function of that habitat.

Apes evolved to play the role of #GardenersoftheForest and in a time of climate and biodiversity crisis, they have a job to do as seed dispersal agents, sowing the seeds of the trees of tomorrow, as well as creating light gaps in the canopy when building nests, and fertilising the soils of Africa and SE Asia with their droppings (Redmond, 2021).

Ex-captive chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans have all been rehabilitated to begin new self-sustaining populations in Congo, Gabon and Indonesia respectively. Now is the time for zoos to rise to this challenge.

OUR CAPTIVE COUSINS: THE PLIGHT OF GREAT APES IN ZOOS