Letter: Arfur's wicked life sentence

I DID not say, as Colin Tudge alleges ('But what was it like for the lion?', 17 January), that the incident with the lion at London Zoo showed the 'folly' of keeping wild animals in captivity. I said it demonstrated the wickedness of keeping them there for public show, and his article, assuring us that the progeny of the London lions will soon be 'distributed among several leading zoos', displays the apparently unbridgeable gulf between people like him and people like me: those who assume that animals exist for human beings, and those who believe that in the eye of God and of nature they are our equals.

Unless we keep such animals in zoos, Mr Tudge concludes, 'we will lose them'. If a tribe of Brazilian Indians were near extinction, would he advocate keeping some of them in prison too, exhibited to public view, lest the world become less interesting for us?

Jan Morris

Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd