Though they’ve been extinct in the wild since 1921, three baby Barbary lion cubs were born at the Living Treasures Wild Animal Park of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania on July 7. Pictures of the rare cubs—adorably spotted at birth—can be viewed here.

The lion’s famous thick, dark manes made the animals largely sought after, and they were hunted to death by humans. Today, only a handful of the lions exist in a few zoos around the world.

This is the reason my mother—who taught me as a child that circuses were unethical places of woe—believes that zoos are okay. They help recover species, she claims, from extinction, and her claims definitely aren’t far-fetched as far as the status quo goes. Every time we turn around, we hear about a species of animal being “brought back” from the brink of death at some zoo or another, and the efforts at conservation are praised. It’s as if that we forget that we humans are responsible for the decline of these species in the first place, yet we hail our efforts at preserving the last few of their kind—in enclosures that, if in the wild, they’d certainly never want to be stuck in—as if we are some kind of species of miraculous gods ourselves. The species we preserve, of course, are not the same as the ones we’d encounter in the wild; even without trying to domesticate them, while kept in captivity, they lose much of themselves.

I recently read Derrick Jensen’s incredible Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos, and Jensen really opened my eyes to some very disturbing concepts. Did you know that the majority of these rare animal births in zoos result in death just after a few years? Jensen provides some startling statistics in his book, as well as an impassioned argument against zoos—both through dozens of heartbreaking photos of imprisoned animals as well as through commentary against the zoos themselves.

One concept that Jensen made that startled me was the one of animal personality. We all know that our own companion animals each have his or her own unique, distinctive personality, traits, preferences, quirks, and way of living. No two animals that I’ve ever cared for have ever been exactly alike—and I’ve fostered or kept dozens of animals in my lifetime. But we never think of bears, tigers, or even birds with their own unique preferences and personalities. I’ve always been uncomfortable at the zoo—every time I’ve been there, I’ve seen heads uncomfortably bobbing in distress, repeated pacing in such small areas, and cried over everything from the elephants to the bears to particularly the great apes, our own cousins, whom we’ve condemned to be viewed behind glass. What do you think each animal thinks of his or her lifestyle?

Jensen also talks about how, in the wild, we have much more respect for these animals. When viewing them in captivity, we are very blasé about their existence, and some children even taunt them. And when the animals react to a person within their environment by maiming or even killing him or her, we blame the animal and often put it to death. In the wild, Jensen says, animals have their own dignity—choosing whether or not to reveal themselves to us, making it all the more special for us as well as respectful for them. They are not on display like trophies, which is what they are in zoos. In fact, he also presents evidence that zoos are no better than historic kings and pharaohs who kept animals on display out of vanity—and that many zoos spend much of their budget—money that the public often donates for animal care—in acquiring new, exotic, or rare species.

All I can say is that I do hope these baby cubs make it—though I also wonder at their quality of life.