The New Zoo Review
I remember taking an anthropology class as an underclassman and learning a very startling fact. You know when animals pace from one end of their cage to the next at the zoo? Well, that's actually a sign that the animal is going insane. Read Rilke's Panther, if you must for reasons why, but I have another suggestion: flagrant and absolute boredom. You put a polar bear, used to having a 100 mile radius hunting grounds in a cage with a 100 foot diameter, well...he's likely to feel like you would feel if we shoved you in a cage to live out the rest of your life.
Now, I'm no animal rights activist (thank God!). Zoos are zoos. They perform a service to both people and to animals. You see the lemurs and you find out that they are being hunted to extinction and you think to yourself, 'how could anyone hunt lemurs to extinction.' You are appalled, you become concerned, next thing you know, pissed off people are taking action to make sure that lemurs are no longer hunted to extinction. Also, children seem to like animals, you don't want your children trying to pet cheetahs in the wild, so you take them to the zoo and you say, "look, a cheetah." Yes, I like zoos.
But it still gets me, those bored animals going insane because they have nothing to do. They may be performing a service for their species, but let's face it, their lives are less than admirable.
So, some zoos have decided to give animals things to do. The point of this is, of course, to increase attendance. People like to see cheetahs chasing shit rather than lounging around a concrete "habitat," but let's put our cyinisism on hold for a moment. The cheetahs are probably happier too, right? I mean, they're cheetahs, they're probably happier chasing crap around rather than sitting inside their aquarium taking one for the species.
Well, enter the animal rights activists. Evidentally, this practice of putting live fish in the tank with the sea otters, and making the cheetah chase a paper mache rabbit filled with ground beef at 60 mph has the animal rights activists up in arms, and who is their target? Well, of course, their age old nemesis: the zoo keeper, the guy who's trying to raise public awareness about animals so that entire species doesn't go the way of the do-do.
Let me try this another way, there are animal rights activists, right now, attempting to take excitement away from the zoo animals. The animal rights activist WANT the animals to be bored to the point of insanity. Hmmm....
Forget teen violence and low test scores, who do you blame for this shit?
Now, I'm no animal rights activist (thank God!). Zoos are zoos. They perform a service to both people and to animals. You see the lemurs and you find out that they are being hunted to extinction and you think to yourself, 'how could anyone hunt lemurs to extinction.' You are appalled, you become concerned, next thing you know, pissed off people are taking action to make sure that lemurs are no longer hunted to extinction. Also, children seem to like animals, you don't want your children trying to pet cheetahs in the wild, so you take them to the zoo and you say, "look, a cheetah." Yes, I like zoos.
But it still gets me, those bored animals going insane because they have nothing to do. They may be performing a service for their species, but let's face it, their lives are less than admirable.
So, some zoos have decided to give animals things to do. The point of this is, of course, to increase attendance. People like to see cheetahs chasing shit rather than lounging around a concrete "habitat," but let's put our cyinisism on hold for a moment. The cheetahs are probably happier too, right? I mean, they're cheetahs, they're probably happier chasing crap around rather than sitting inside their aquarium taking one for the species.
Well, enter the animal rights activists. Evidentally, this practice of putting live fish in the tank with the sea otters, and making the cheetah chase a paper mache rabbit filled with ground beef at 60 mph has the animal rights activists up in arms, and who is their target? Well, of course, their age old nemesis: the zoo keeper, the guy who's trying to raise public awareness about animals so that entire species doesn't go the way of the do-do.
Let me try this another way, there are animal rights activists, right now, attempting to take excitement away from the zoo animals. The animal rights activist WANT the animals to be bored to the point of insanity. Hmmm....
Forget teen violence and low test scores, who do you blame for this shit?
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
10:25 AM
2 Comments:
Certainly all of the Cheetahs will be up in paws about this. Here Mr. Cheetah, meet your local animal rights activist. No Mr. Cheetah, it is not okay to bite their head off. Yes, they run fast like rabbits, and I know you're missing the chase, but you must let them go. They're fighting for your rights, after all.
Cheetahshit. Bite the head off the nice running animal rights activist. The animal rights activist doesn't give a shit about you. If they did, they would be Joy Amundson. Or a zoologist. Before you can complain about how a habitat should be set up or how food is delivered in an involving non boring natural way -- become a five star gourmet cheetah chef, spend the 8+ years of study and field research and actual work with animals to become a certified zoologist, or spend a day in a cheetah habitat sucessfully avoiding being eaten. I don't want to hear any crap from someone the cheetah's themselves haven't conversed with and deemed worthy to speak for them.
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