For hundreds of years, zoos used to make money just by saying what they are: entertainment venues.

About 20 years ago, people started to object to the misery of these animal entertainment venues so the zoo industry revamped its image by building nicer cages and promoting themselves as education centres. That promo still works for the average person looking for a cheap outing for the kids. (Some of the kids, thank goodness, aren't fooled as easily as their unthinking parents.)

Then the new public obsession, the environment and its animals, handed the zoo industry a new way to disguise that they are still animal exploiters on a silver platter.

Endangered species protection is the new zoo. So now zoos can say that they not only educate but are preserving endangered species.

Both are patently silly: the "education" gleaned from gawking at imprisoned animals is that it is okay to imprison animals; and the only way to preserve a specie is to preserve the specie's gene pool and that can't be done with a few samples being interbred in zoos.

But there is no money in doing the right thing, preserving habitat and just letting the animals alone.

We humans want other species' habitats for ourselves to spread into, so we reduce the numbers of other animals while we continue to increase our own numbers. Then we make money by "preserving" the species we are decimating.

There's no money in the truth either.

The truth is that if you perceive an evil being done to other species, you must act to rectify the evil, not capitalize on it.

Zoos are only one player in an animal-welfare industry that acts to protect itself by making sure it is never out of business. More people must ask any society or business in animal-welfare if they are trying to put themselves out of business, and then weigh the answer against their actions.