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Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all.

Zoos should concentrate more on the preservation side of things.

What's the reality of being inside a zoo, for the animals and for the people who love and care for those animals? There's a lot of joy, and there's a lot of loss.

I have friends who come to the Australia Zoo, and it's just, instead of playing video games, we get to hug and kiss a giraffe or walk a tiger.

I am personally not against keeping animals at zoos, as they serve a huge educational purpose, but treating them well and with respect seems the least we could do, and with 'we' I mean not just zoo staff, but most certainly also the public.

More than just a zoo, the Animal Kingdom is an extraordinary experience of animals, rides and performances. The exhibits have the scale and creativity you associate with Disney. The African safari ride is terrific and worth riding several times.

My parents used to take me to the pet department and tell me it was a zoo.

On the intimate level, anyone who has loved a companion animal knows the uniquely wonderful experience these 'other nations' provide, and their important presence in our shared lives. In their very local way they show us the global truth of our real wealth, our biodiversity.

It was wrong to capture wild animals and confine them in captivity for people to go and gawk at them. And that's basically how zoos got started. But once you do that, and once you have animals that have been bred in captivity, you're really stuck with them in some sense. You can't return them to the wild.

For actors in Hollywood, it's very straightforward. We're well-paid animals in a zoo.