Agree we probably should no longer have zoos. Is that ape better off here or in the zoo? It doesn't know any different, it gets food and water delivered each and every day. I don't believe the bold part to be true. When I watch a horse walk up to an empty feed bucket and stick his nose in it, I know what he wants. If I were to walk out to the corral with an empty dinner plate, and start licking it, that horse would NEVER know what I was doing, whether I was hungry or not. It doesn't know if it's been two hours or two weeks since I brushed it. It doesn't know that I drove out of the property in my truck, it doesn't know that it's a truck..........just that the object makes noise and moves. It doesn't ever wonder if I'm going to Atwoods to buy feed for it............... it can't. You could take every animal in existence and make the same comparisons. When we're out of sight, it doesn't know where we are. Can they be trained to do things WE want them to do, yes. Why do we know that some animals ARE dangerous, that some CAN be dangerous, and some are not? Because we can reason. NO animal has the same capacity to understand and reason like we do. If so, why do deer run away all year long, and not just during deer season? You'd think they'd figure out by now that they only need to run when it's cool/cold and the leaves fallen and grass is brown. It's really that simple........
There's so much ignorance in terms of zoology here I don't where to start. Applying human anecdotes concerning daily activities relays little about vertebrate awareness. Animals flourish outside of zoos, in several aspects of behavior, so believing it doesn't know any different just won't apply to certain species. In captive environments, several species, even those probably deemed as "stupid" won't breed due to stress. So they are aware enough to a degree in terms of their environment to not reproduce.
No not every vertebrate or even invertebrate has our level of cognitive abilities, but at the very least many are more, if not just as aware, of their surroundings and have the ability to figure the "difference."