#гена работал в зоопарке крокодилом

[yesthatsatumbler]

Never really understood that particular point, because one of the big-name Russian anthropomorphized-animal settings has a major crocodile character who works in a zoo. As a crocodile.

It's his day job. He goes there in the morning, lazes around in his cell, shows off that, yeah, he's a crocodile, this is what a crocodile looks like, and in the evening he goes back home. He doesn't even do it every day, there's a different croc that replaces him sometimes. Yes, he gets paid for it. It's just a job. He likes it, even - not a lot of responsibilities.

...even if animals were people, I think it wouldn't really have been that unethical to have a zoo, if it was sufficiently well managed. Or, at least, if there is something unethical about that, I'm failing to see it.

If anything it seems more unethical in a non-people-animals context, because animals who aren't people can't properly consent to it.

(Vague OTL equivalents: models, mascots, multiple kinds of service work, almost anything to do with a circus. Mascots [of the human-in-costume variety] are the closest, I think, and definitely feel like the closest comparison that isn't generally considered to be unethical.)

anthropomorphizing animals is cool when people draw frogs in hats fishing and living in a cute little house. Not so cool when people say zoos shouldn't exist because they don't understand that animals aren't people