Throughout its past, the zoo has — even in its original form as a private garden — been a powerful symbol of dominion, projecting the archetypal image of humans as the rulers of nature. Eventually, after being converted into public menageries, the role of the zoo was predominantly that of an entertainer. Ironically, the contemporary zoo has metamorphosed into an emblem of conservation policy, with humans playing the role of wildlife saviours, rather than rulers. Zoological institutions are now justified and legitimised as havens of wildlife protection that rescue the animal kingdom from the consistent encroachment of industrialisation and urbanisation. Audaciously, the modern zoo positions itself as a brush with the wild!
Lopsided relationship?
Zoos are demonstrative of our lopsided relationship with nature. Our desperation to bridge a ‘nature gap’— born from the alienation of a rapidly urbanising humanity — has instead led to intervention efforts, like zoos, that hopelessly aspire to re-establish the human-nature nexus, and with it, invariably, promote a false conservation ethic. This alienation is what allows for the continued pervasiveness of zoos; used as mediums by which humans may re-develop a connection — albeit illusory, and unequal — with animals.
As monuments of ‘fake nature’, zoos are morally wrong; and as supposed edifices of conservation, essentially paradoxical, and nothing more than a microcosm of our collective frantic need to attempt to conserve animals by containing them within boxed enclosures for inspection, implanting an outlook of human primacy. In zoos, the structure of the human-animal encounter is organised in accordance with human interests; how humans are able to observe and inspect their ‘objects’ of investigation. The interaction sought becomes an impossibility when the ‘real’ animals disappear — disrupted by their artificial conditions of living — and the conditions for viewing them are undermined.
A major reason for the existence of zoos is that they preserve species that would otherwise become extinct. In New York not too long ago, I learnt of the Bronx Zoo’s successful snow leopard breeding programme (started in the 1960s) that has since produced 75 surviving cubs, more than any other zoo in North America. Wild animals in zoos — especially endangered ones — are marketed as champions for their species, helping raise public awareness and funds to support education, research and on-ground conservation activities. In the Bronx Zoo, Leo the snow leopard serves as an ambassador for snow leopard conservation. The exhibit’s interpretive panels tell Leo’s story and the major issues threatening snow leopard populations to the zoo’s two million annual visitors. Moreover, a children’s publication; ‘Leo the Snow Leopard: The True Story of an Amazing Rescue’ chronicles Leo’s early life; aimed at inspiring coming generations to care about snow leopard conservation.
With hundreds of millions of visitors each year, accredited zoos are unique among conservation organisations because they have a direct connection to the public. At the Bronx Zoo, the snow leopard exhibits are claimed to furnish the animals with mental and physical stimulation, offering the cats some choice and control over their environment; allowing visitors to observe the animals as they would otherwise appear in their natural habitat. This is misleading, for in being taken from the wild and confined within zoos, animals are prevented from gathering their own food, developing their own social orders, and behaving in ways both natural and instinctual. However intricate or detailed the exhibition is in its imitation of the wild, it will in reality, always fall short of ‘real’ nature.
Human intervention at the Bronx Zoo serves the purpose of perhaps raising awareness on snow leopard conservation amongst its visitors, however, it is difficult to ascertain with exact precision how much the public has learnt about snow leopards and their endangered status. A literature review commissioned by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association concluded that “little to no systematic research has been conducted on the impact of visits to zoos on visitor conservation knowledge, awareness, affect, or behaviour”. Scholars have found the average person “only marginally more appreciative, better informed, or engaged in the natural world” following a visit to the zoo. The packaging of nature for the entertainment of humans erroneously places us at the top of an imagined hierarchy that further instills an incorrect sense of our place in the natural order. A clear — and unnecessary — distinction is made between humans and other animals, and this is unfortunate, for such education is grossly fallacious.
Captive and miserable
Certain scholars justify the existence of zoos by claiming that the artificial environment offers some of the “accoutrements of the wild” whilst providing shelter and safety from some of its main stresses such as predation and starvation. Mainstream animal welfare advocates contend that the welfare of wild animals is diminished under human care, and that it is inconceivable for zoos to provide for or replicate the richness of experience, freedom of movement and quality of life animals would otherwise experience if left in nature; for there is no duplication of the wild. Sadly, after a few years in captivity, animals begin to diverge both behaviourally and genetically from their relatives in the wild. Dolphins and orcas for example have miserable records in captivity; lousy breeding success, shorter life spans and overall poorer health.
As humans continue to develop, deforest and urbanise, animals are forced to live in fragmented worlds. The intervening human solution to save these animals through zoos is unethical and unsound. In this sense, perhaps the animals themselves can be deemed ‘fake’, commodities for the purpose of entertainment; their natural capabilities and capacities hindered by the artificiality of their setting. Insofar as zoos provide recreational opportunities for the public, human intervention in the guise of entertainment or conservation does not warrant sufficient justification for the existence of zoos or for holding animals in captivity. Amusement was certainly an important reason for the establishment of early zoos and it remains an important function of contemporary zoos as well. Entertainment invokes interest, and thus makes education possible, but what is it that we want people to learn from visiting zoos? Surely the educational or entertainment-driven benefits of zoos can be obtained through videos, lectures, or computer simulations? Being centres of synthetic and fabricated ‘nature’, are zoos even required?
‘Fake’ nature, and the replication of ‘nature’ as a concept demonstrates a falsehood; human authority and mastery over the animal world. As zoos brand themselves as saviours of wildlife, the only option for continued survival of wildlife that concurrently ensures and safeguards human progress is in a world that is regrettably real, where tigers — or any other species — may only be able to survive in manufactured environments of human design. This is a scenario where the tiger itself is but an asset, an object of entertainment, a captive-bred entity as unnatural as its environment.
If all tigers in the wild went extinct; we are reassured by the fact that there are some left in zoos which can be used for captive breeding purposes. The species is not entirely gone. However, and macabrely so, this nonchalant attitude very much echoes the proverbial “can’t have the cake and eat it too”! Keeping species isolated in ‘sheltered’ zoos only serves to postpone extinction; allowing for the continued existence of endangered species in an ‘artificial wilderness’ which thereby curtails, in some regard, progress made in the direction of conserving those same species in ‘actual wilderness’. Zoos are like a moral insurance against extinction! Our alienation from nature, coupled with an extrinsic view on how we can solve a conservation or endangered species issue (i.e., captive breeding) only provides a short-term solution; there is no fundamental intrinsic change in how we both view nature and execute conservation initiatives.
Perhaps, we must then ask ourselves whether it is really better for tigers, or any animal for that matter, to live in artificial surroundings, or to go extinct?
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Harshad Sambamurthy
Harshad is an environmental educator with a strong foundational background in sustainability. A recent graduate of NYU’s Environmental Conservation Education Programme, Harshad is striving to develop an environmental consciousness that recognises the inherent link between culture and nature by using creative educational and pedagogical tools like storytelling and folklore. He is based in Chennai. He can be reached at: harshad.samba@gmail.com[/column]