At the Zoo

Over the last several years, public awareness and outcry has led SeaWorld to change its model. No more trained orca shows. No more captive breeding. No more harvesting from the wild. It will direct its focus on rescue and research. Similar reassessments of how animals are used are taking place across the spectrum: in circuses, in feedlots, and in zoos.

The first zoo I ever visited was the Fleishhacker Zoo in San Francisco, California. I must have been five. I remember mostly my feeling of awe, viewing live what I’d been pointing to—and identifying—in picture books for years: bears, lions, tigers, and monkeys.

The last zoo I visited was the Lincoln Park Botanic Garden and Zoo in Chicago, Illinois. I enjoyed seeing Bactrian camels, leopards, vultures, a bear. I still felt the thrill of being up close and personal with the animals, but even in their large, naturalized areas, I felt a bit of sadness too.

Scientists have learned a lot about animals in the years between my two visits—and in the nearly 10 since that last one. They’ve learned that animals are more intelligent than first thought. Whales and porpoises travel in groups called pods. Each pod uses its own dialect. They seem to even have proper names, in the form of whistles, for each other. Crows remember faces. Don’t ever make one mad. They don’t forgive, and they don’t forget. Try to keep a squirrel off your bird feeders. Or raccoons out of the garbage. It is annoying, but it demonstrates intelligence.

 Scientists have learned that animals have feelings. Elephants who’ve known each other earlier in life, and been separated, not only recognize each other when reunited many years later, but greet each other with vocalizations and hugs. Coincidently, elephants also bury their dead—and visit their cemeteries, seemingly remembering anniversaries.

One of the best exhibitions of both emotion and intelligence in an animal is Koko the gorilla. Koko, 45, was the grad-school project of Penny Patterson, who intended to spend four years teaching the ape sign-language and documenting the process. It has become a lifelong endeavor. There is debate, to be sure, over the gorilla’s use of language, but time has won over many detractors. The public has seen Koko receive, and name, her beloved kitten All Ball, and the public watched her mourn All Ball, when it was killed at a young age. Koko got a new kitten, but alas, she signed, it was “not All Ball.” Intelligence. Feelings.

A lot of information has been gathered over the years about animal sociology, too. One of the biggest things that’s come to light is the family-based structure found in almost every animal society. The whales and porpoises mentioned earlier, horses, bison, monkeys, lions, and tigers all belong to intricately woven societies—much like our human ones—based on familial relationships. These new discoveries make a reexamination of zoos imperative.

While zoos have contributed much to the animal research out there, their for-profit business model presents a built-in conflict of interest, and chances are, the animals suffer for it. Zoos, by definition, are collections of animals. Space constraints make it impossible to import whole herds of water buffalo, or prides of lions. This means that the lion exhibit may have a handful of lions, and is probably not a true “pride” in that the animals are probably not related to one another.

But zoos have good breeding programs, and are helping conservation efforts, especially when it comes to endangered species. Breeding creatures to repopulate a habitat can have positive outcomes. Populations of eagles and the California condor have recovered since DDT nearly wiped them out.

The problem is: most species are endangered because they are losing their habitats. This leaves zoos breeding them—for zoos. It’s like breeding Siamese twins for the circus. An animal is brought into existence that will never be able to express its natural being. It will never hunt its food, or choose its mate, run its native terrain, or climb its native trees. It is only for display.

At the Lincoln Park Zoo, on the day I visited, there was a lone tiger. He had a large space to roam, with real grass and real trees. A deep moat separated him from the people who came to see him. As I watched from the back of his area, he meandered toward the crowd gathered at the front. I could hear their excitement as people got their cameras ready. But when the tiger reached the group, he turned his back on them—and defecated. To this day, I believe that big cat knew what he was doing, and I believe he did it on purpose. Take that, y’all.

So, because animals are kept in unnatural habitats, and forced to live lonely, neurotic and unnatural lives, I believe that zoos must be rethought—in their missions as well as their practices. If what’s happened with Sea World is any indication of what’s in store for zoos, then they’d best see the writing on the wall and make changes to bring their facilities in line with the latest animal research, and with the wishes of a public interested in the welfare of its natural resources.