Joe Rogan | Zoo's Are Animal Prisons!!

On one hand, when you have children and you bring a child to the zoo, on one hand it's really fascinating to watch this little person look at all these different animals and freak out and see how amazing it is. But that's the only pro is introducing human beings, like little human beings in particular, to these animals. Everything else is a con, except for the animals that are really endangered and they protect them and help breed them and then sometimes they're responsible for some reintroduction efforts. But other than that, it's an animal prison, man. It's weird. I don't take the position or ideal. I'm not this person that's trying to represent an ideology necessarily. I'm not against all zoos, but I have to say that there's nothing more sad than seeing elephants, cats, bears. Cats, man. The cats, when they're pacing back and forth, I mean, just get them out of there. Whose purpose are you serving? Is that good for you? I mean, seeing an animal that's got zucosis, I mean, it's a mental case. And we don't know what the fuck's going on in their head, so we have no idea how disturbing they are. Most people just watch and think this is just maybe normal or something. A lot of people, we're not... See, because the veil is only now coming off and people are now getting the truth on the matters, you start to see things for what they are. I watched the video on YouTube some weeks ago and it was a marine land in the 70s and man, was this place busy. And the people were just, I mean, they were climbing over each other to be next to the pool. I've never seen anything like it. I worked there 12 years. I'd never seen the amount of people that this thing had. And when you looked in the pool, there's a bull orca who's... He spans the literal length of the pool that he's in on the side with his dorsal fin over and he's literally staring at the wall, not moving. And then you got two other massive orcas that are in this pool, like maybe five times the size of this room kind of thing. And the people are celebrating like it. And the video has like this sort of quirky music and it's kind of funny and fun. And I'm watching this going, what a disconnect of time. Like where this, you're looking at exactly what you see today in terms of the animals and the conditions that they're in. Yet here, these people having knowing nothing about it, just in the awe, the beauty, the majesty of these animals, the majestic nature of these animals. And yet we couldn't see for ourselves whatsoever how abusive and gross this was. It was really a weird and strange thing. But that's, you know, the Marine Land's a legacy business. They built themselves on having people come and experience the shock and awe of these animals and they did very, very well. But that time is long gone now, long gone. I think we're going to come to a time in the future where people think the same way about zoos. I think it's, we're just, we're going to realize like I get that you want to see them. I get it. I get you want to see them. I get, I, I want to see them too, but God damn, we got to stop doing that. Like this is no way also for you. The problem is humans don't have any real experience with animals. We have experience with dogs and cats, which are these domesticated, weird little fluffy friends. They are not animals. We don't have much experience with real animals. And even the animals that you have experience with, they're urbanized, you know, like pigeons that you can feed or squirrels that take peanuts from you. You get out into the world and the world of the wild of forests and mountains and you, you see actual real animals and it's almost psychedelic. There's like a weird, like paradigm shift that goes through when you see a wild animal in the, in the actual wild, like, Oh, this is where it's supposed to be. It kind of feels weird because you're in their world. You would be in the adapt because now you're like, Oh, what? The series of, of, of, of tools that that animal has in its world that doesn't translate in captivity, for instance, is like, wait a second. That thing can spring on me, climb on that. Like, like I'm in its world now. To me, that's the awe of the experience of witnessing animals because since the year and a half that expired that from our last show, you know, I had the gift of seeing dolphins in the wild. Down to, I can't remember what beach it was, but it was while I was in California and that was my first experience. In fact, again, I'm from a small place. And then this year I was able to go to Washington state and see orcas in the wild. Now I've jumped off orcas, rostrums into the air so high that you're looking down into Dixie cup to land. I mean, that's pretty awesome, but there's nothing like having seen a fucking bull orca with an eight foot mass on his back, swimming next to his mother and all the five. My heart sunk into my stomach. I'd never seen anything more majestic. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.