"I don't mind zoos if they're like San Diego..."

[urbpan]

Another point which became very obvious to me at Whipsnade was the totally erroneous idea that an animal was happier and therefore lived better in a larger cage or enclosure than a small one. “I don’t mind zoos if they’re like Whipsnade,” was the remark that was so frequently made by those well-meaning and ignorant animal lovers that I met. The answer was, of course, “You should have worked there—and experienced the difficulty of trying to keep a close daily check on a herd of animals in a thirty-five acre paddock, making sure they were developing no illness, that some of them were not being bullied to starvation level by the others, and that the whole group was getting enough to eat.”

If anything went wrong and you had to catch up an individual member of the herd, you would have to pursue it round thirty-five acres and when you had finally caught it—you hoped, without its dying of heart failure or breaking a leg—you had to treat it not only for whatever was wrong with it but for acute shock as well. Nowadays, of course, things are made much easier by the use of such refinements as dart guns, but in the days when I worked at Whipsnade the size of the paddock was ultimately detrimental to the animals. The only useful function they fulfilled was as a salve to the anthropomorphic souls of those animal lovers who did not like to see animals “imprisoned.” Unfortunately, this attitude toward zoos is still rife among the well-intentioned but basically ignorant who still insist on talking about Mother Nature as though she were a benevolent old lady instead of the harsh, unyielding and totally rapacious monster that she is.

It is hard to argue with these people; they live in a euphoric state where they believe that an animal in a zoo suffers as though it were in Dartmoor and an animal in its natural surroundings is living in a Garden of Eden where the lamb can lie down with the lion without starting in friendship and ending up as dinner. It is useless pointing out the ceaseless drudgery of finding adequate food supplies each day in the wilds, of the constant strain on the nerves of avoiding enemies, of the battle against disease and parasites, of the fact that in some species there is a more than a fifty percent mortality rate among their young in the first six months. “Ah,” these bemused animal lovers will say when these things are pointed out to them, “but they are free.” You point out that the animals have strict territories that are governed by three things: food, water, and sex. Provide all these successfully within a limited area and the animal will stay there. But people seem to be obsessed with this word “freedom,” particularly when applied to animals. They never seem to worry about the freedom of the bank clerks of Streatham, the miners of Durham, the factory hands of Sheffield, the carpenters of Hartley Wintney, or the headwaiters of Soho, yet if a careful survey were conducted on these and similar species you would find that they are as confined by their jobs and by convention as securely as any zoo inmate.

Gerald Durrell, A Bevy of Beasts, 1973

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

at the other end we have an apparent majority of american horse owners, who think nothing of confining a nomadic herd animal to solitary confinement in a 12x12 box, with maybe 2 hours a day of "turnout" (again, often alone) "if the weather's okay".

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

This actually raises an interesting question - if we do display an animal in a zoo setting, do we owe it as close an approximation of its natural life as possible, or as easy a life as possible? If you value the first option, you must accept competition, illness, and death as unavoidable side-effects. If you value the latter, you must accept physical confinement and a certain degree of unnatural interaction with objects and people.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I think about this one too. It's a balance of providing a healthy, suffering-free life, with appropriate enrichment to stimulate normal behaviors without causing stress or otherwise harming the animal. You can't say firmly that this one this is good and this other thing isn't with total certainty: this is something that keepers, veterinarians, curators, and trainers are constantly discussing (by which I mean "fighting about.")

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Oh absolutely. Plus, our perception of what is "normal", "stressful", or "enriching" for animals is inherently anthropomorphic.

There is also the more utilitarian motivation for displaying animals in a more contained, more hands-on fashion: if more people can see it, it lives longer, and/or produces more offspring, it makes more money for the zoo.

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

it's been WAY too long since I've read Gerald Durrell, who pretty much taught me to read.

and also, YES THAT, although it's a bit of a simplistic summary and leaves out a lot of other things that can factor into an animal's contentment or otherwise. But you know that already.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

the well-intentioned but basically ignorant who still insist on talking about Mother Nature as though she were a benevolent old lady instead of the harsh, unyielding and totally rapacious monster that she is.

That line made me laugh.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

That's my favorite part.

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

I myself have tried to free the bank clerks of Streatham, the miners of Durham, the factory hands of Sheffield, the carpenters of Hartley Wintney, and the headwaiters of Soho. They don't want to go. They think they are happy.

In a zoo the animals need to be cared for and we know so much more about what they need and how to provide it. The large area enclosures aren't about mimicing "their natural habitat" so much as catering to the fantasies of the patrons.

In East Africa, you put the fences around the people to keep the wild animals out. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Oh and by the way, we had a large yard at the public school I went to and I got bullied all the time. Nobody saw. :(

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

I thought this was you talking, until I got to "Streatham". I was wondering why you were using so many English examples!

[gigglingwizard.livejournal.com]

Funny he wrapped that up the way he did. I was just about to suggest that maybe these people are projecting their discontent with their own confinement. Because I don't report for daily confinement anywhere, my food, shelter, and safety are far less certain than they'd be with a steady paycheck and a safe, monotonous routine. I say hesitantly that I'm happier now--hesitantly because most of the stress in my life is related directly to my poverty. But I wouldn't go back. I couldn't. I'd as soon be dead as spend the rest of my life doing nothing but somebody else's work by somebody else's rules. By this author's logic, you could stuff any animal into a cage so small it can't lie down, but hook an electrode to its brain to stimulate production of dopamine, and it would be as content as any animal ever needs to be. My heart tells me that ain't right.

Thinking about The Matrix...suppose the machines imprisoned us like that, not as an energy source, but for our own protection, to save us from extinction. Doesn't seem so humane.