"Choosing zoos as a means for species preservation, in addition to being br expensive and of dubious effectiveness, has serious ethical problems. Keeping br animals in zoos harms them, by denying them freedom of movement and br association, which is important to social animals, and frustrates many of br their natural behavioral patterns, leaving them at least bored, and at worst br seriously neurotic. While humans may feel there is some justifying benefit br to their captivity (that the species is being preserved, and may someday br be reintroduced into the wild), this is no compensating benefit to the br individual animals. Attempts to preserve species by means of captivity have br been described as sacrificing the individual gorilla to the abstract Gorilla br (i.e., to the abstract conception of the gorilla).