Zoo-ology

Sorry about the hiatus last week; our crack team of bloggers were off on a trip and were cut off from Internet access.

The trip was to New Orleans, home of the mighty Audubon Institute, which comprises the Audubon Zoo, the Aquarium of the Americas, and a brand-new Insectarium opening this week.

Since our crack team of kids insisted, we visited both the Aquarium and the Zoo, and it got me to thinking.

Why do we have zoos? There are several answers. The biggest reason cited is usually education -- letting the public see live animals. Another reason is conservation -- using zoos as a way to preserve species which are going extinct in the wild.

And there's the unspoken reason, the reason that dare not speak its name, even though it's actually the most important reason to have zoos: Entertainment. People go to zoos to have fun. To see animals and be diverted.

Unfortunately, zoos seem vaguely ashamed of this, and try to downplay that aspect. At a zoo you're supposed to be learning something, improving yourself, and learning about animal conservation to make the planet better. You should come out morally and intellectually uplifted. It's like a funny-smelling church.

One result of this attitude is that zoos aren't really much fun any more. In their (entirely laudable) efforts to create more comfortable, natural enclosures for the animals, zoo designers have made it almost impossible for human visitors to actually see the creatures. During our visit to the Audubon Zoo, as with all zoos I've visited in my life, at least a third of the animals on exhibit were invisible. I assume they were hiding or asleep -- though for all I know the Zoo could be selling off its creatures, confident that nobody will be able to tell if they're in the cages or not.

(And you can tell the Zoo administrators are aware of this problem. Zoos continually add more play structures, interactive video gadgets, and what amount to carnival rides, simply to restore the sense of fun which is missing from the earnest animal exhibits.)

Is there a way to overcome this problem? Can we make zoos which educate, conserve -- and entertain the public? Certainly nobody wants to go back to the bad old days of "animal jail" zoos, but isn't there some way to design zoos to be comfortable for the animal residents without making the human visitors come away disappointed?

For example: most zoo animals probably have a subcutaneous identification chip. Couldn't this be used as part of a locator system, to help visitors tell where in the enclosure to look? Clever use of one-way glass or periscopes could give animals the illusion of privacy while still giving visitors a good view. Perhaps designers could camouflage the visitor walkways and viewing galleries to hide the humans instead of the animals. I'm not a zoo designer, so these are just top-of-my-head brainstorming ideas -- but surely professionals could come up with better ones.

All this griping should not be taken to mean we didn't all enjoy our trip to the Audubon Zoo. It's a great zoo, and anyone traveling to New Orleans should make time for a visit.

Comments

[Thom H.]

Glad to see you are back. I missed a couple of Friday Parasites and was beginning to wonder what happened. Not that I didn't stay busy... PZ has been a virtual Niagra of information lately.

I have to kind of agree about the zoos. I've been to the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa a couple of times recently and couldn't determine if a given animal was missing, hiding, or moved into a back room.

[runwithscythes]

I always find zoos too depressing. Poor big animals stuck in wee cages that would drive me mental if I was stuck in their. Of course that was Edingbourgh Zoo and some of the enclourses where small... so the public can see the animals....