Narrator: Now listen to part of a lecture on the topic you just read about.
Professor: I think, and a lot of scientists think, that conservationists criticize zoos too harshly. You have to weigh the issues against the benefits, the very significant benefits, of keeping wild animals in a zoo. For instance, people think of a zoo, and they might think of this horrible, depressing place, where animals live in cages. But in most zoos, at least in developed countries, that’s just not the reality.
Take the Singapore Zoo, for instance. They have a forest habitat, a tundra habitat, and so on, and they’ll have all kinds of animals from those habitats living in this massive area, similar to how they would live in the wild. People will sometimes complain that the zoo is too big, and they can’t see the animals when they want to! That’s a good complaint to have. And anyways, even if a zoo habitat doesn’t live up to where an animal would live in the wild, don’t forget, a natural habitat isn’t necessarily a safe place. Some animals are kept in zoos because their natural habitat is shrinking from climate change or from… deforestation. Just because something is natural, doesn’t mean that it’s better for the animals’ welfare.
It’s true that sometimes there are negative interactions between animals and zoo visitors. It’s a tragedy whenever that happens. But, it would be better to solve it with education and with technology, than to say that animals shouldn’t be kept in zoos at all. Would that kid have fallen into the gorilla enclosure if there was a higher fence or if their parents knew how dangerous it was? Probably not. It’s unreasonable to say that there are these negative interactions, which are totally preventable, so we should just get rid of zoos entirely. We’re not going to give up the positives, like conserving endangered species, scientific research, and so on, when instead we could focus on other solutions to prevent the negatives.
The lecturer address claims from the passage that zoos treat animals unfairly by placing them in an unatural environment. The passage also claims that interactions with humans result in harm to the animals. The lecturer argues that animals have access to natural habitats in a zoo and that negative interactions could be significantly decreased.
The passage discusses problems with placing zoo animals in an unnatural environment. For example, animals that are crammed into a smaller space than natural can cause them to become depressed and aggressive. But the lecturer points out that most good zoos take care as much as possible to match the natural habitat of the animals. The lecturer also highlights the fact that some animals are at far more less risk in a zoo than in the wild.
While the author of the passage is concerned about interactions with humans that result in harm to animals, the lecturer counters with an argument that most of these rare unhappy events could be prevented with more attention to technology. The passage mentions an example where a gorilla was killed to prevent it hurting a child who crawled into the gorilla’s pen. The lecturer believes that this type of incident could be prevented with higher fences or other measures.
The lecturer is adament that the pros associated with zoos—conservation, research, education—far outweighs the cons pointed out in the passage
The author addresses all of the main points made by the lecturer. He shows a good grasp of the issues. The last sentence in his second paragraph contains an error that makes the meaning hard to understand (“far more less risk”). But this is the only error that creates a confusing meaning, so he can still earn a good score. Minor misspellings (e.g., “adament” for “adamant”) and tiny grammatical glitches do not obscure the intended meaning.