Life at the Zoo

by Phillip T. Robinson

  The Hagenbeck Tierpark’s exhibit panorama

  As zoos experimented with moated displays, their grounds became a patchwork of old and renovated attempts at zoo design. Despite the desire to modernize exhibits, they often failed to provide convincing environments, borrowing more from contemporary architecture than from nature. Experimentation by architects and zoo planners has gradually honed the concept of naturalistic exhibits, beginning most notably in Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo in the 1970s. In collaboration with David Hancocks and zoo veterinarian Dr. Jim Foster, Jones & Jones Architects developed innovative African savanna and gorilla exhibits as part of a long-range plan to redevelop that zoo. Jones & Jones has become the dominant architecture firm internationally in zoo master planning and design, promoting the melding of animal, people, and service spaces into indistinguishable juxtapositions where boundaries are indiscernible, and organic materials and landscaping obliterate the structural elements that would disclose the illusion of naturalness. Several zoos have undertaken the construction of naturalistic exhibits without the essential outside expertise, only to learn in the end that this process is considerably more complex in the details than perceived. Because these projects are deceptively simple on the surface, shortcuts have spawned some embarrassing failures.

  Many techniques are rigidly employed to accomplish these images and depart sharply from the older display conventions in zoos. Gone is the foreboding architecture of formal buildings that displayed human wealth and power, often taking the shape of castles and temples—segregating animals taxonomically into carnivore houses, monkey houses, and pachyderm palaces. Contemporary zoo architects sometimes refer to these older structures as “incarceration architecture.” Their replacements are zoogeographic assemblies of animals that derive from the same continents or major ecosystems, blended in a manner that attempts to communicate ecological relationships. An essential departure from older exhibits is the viewing perspective—except for aquatic environments, nearly all terrestrial displays orient the observer to looking across or up at the animals, rather than down upon them. These perspectives are illustrated in the exhibits shown in the following photographs. Unlike the unrehearsed performances of old zoos, the new zoos are created in the form of a “zoological theater,” where the moods, backgrounds, and actors have been carefully orchestrated to control visitors’ senses from the time they enter the front gate. To complete their economic as well as their aesthetic and scientific missions, the constant challenge becomes the awkward transitions to visitor amenities such as food service, gift shops, and restrooms, which compete with the auras that the exhibits strive to foster.

  First and foremost, an animal exhibit has to confine its inhabitants reliably. In the case of dangerous carnivores, the safety of the public is the paramount consideration. If it works out that the zoo veterinarian can capture the animal by chemically darting it, that’s a bonus. But security guards in zoos are authorized to protect the public’s safety first, and they give little latitude to a dangerous animal. In the 1930s, on the Fourth of July—the busiest attendance day of the year—a bear escaped from an exhibit that was being remodeled at the San Diego Zoo. As Mrs. Belle Benchley, the zoo director, and Dr. Wegeforth, the president of the zoological society, dined in the zoo café, an armed security guard shot the bear to death as it approached a large crowd of people nearby. During the escape of a zoo tiger in Poland, not only did policemen shoot the tiger, but they also accidentally shot and killed the zoo veterinarian who was attempting to sedate it with a tranquilizer gun. In another Polish incident an escaped circus tiger attacked and killed a veterinarian who was attempting to shoot it with a tranquilizer dart. Curiously, tigers are involved in dangerous zoo animal escapes and personnel injuries far out of proportion to their numbers in captivity.

  Atlanta Zoo mock rock tiger exhibit

  When a new naturalistic orangutan exhibit was finally built in San Diego with authentic-looking rock cliff faces, our troublesome, now grown-up, orangutan Ken Allen escaped three times. We were considering changing his name to Houdini before workmen finally succeeded in eliminating the essential finger- and toeholds he used to climb out. On the first occasion he was found on the viewing deck sitting near a clueless tourist who thought this new ape exhibit, with the tame, trained animals, was the best he had seen in any zoo. The zoo spokespersons proficiently turned these embarrassing liberations into a series of lighthearted stories about the escapades of a loveable ape. In another zoo, however, the escape of a chimpanzee ended without a whimsical public-relations spin. The chimp left the zoo grounds and climbed a telephone pole in a nearby neighborhood. When the zoo veterinarian darted her with a tranquilizer, she fell, grabbed a power line, and was electrocuted.

  Zoos must have plans to deal with the escape of large and dangerous animals. Some zoos classify animal escapes as “Code Green” situations, where the event in progress threatens the safety of visitors and personnel. And escape they do, in zoos around the world—chimpanzees, elephants, gorillas, leopards, lions, polar bears, rhinos, tigers, and other less intimidating creatures have managed to jump barriers, break down gates, or be liberated by one human misstep or another. A surprising number result in no major injuries, but the possibilities for disaster are sobering. In Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo, a semiannual drill is conducted to simulate a polar bear escape to prepare for the possibility of earthquake damage to zoo exhibits. An employee in a cartoon bear costume runs around the zoo pretending to attack visitors while the staff practices their procedures to contain and recapture the bear, ultimately “tranquilizing” it and carrying it off in a blanket.

  To account for the misbehavior of the public, some precautions are necessary to keep people from maliciously interfering with animals or readily entering exhibit spaces, although this has become increasingly difficult with the contemporary style of open spaces that lack walls and bars. As a veterinary student, I participated in a postmortem examination of Barney, a large male hippopotamus that had died acutely at the Detroit Zoo. He had been brought to the Michigan State University veterinary diagnostic laboratory, where we found him to be in overall good weight and condition. A thorough examination inside, however, revealed a rubber ball lodged in his small intestine, causing a fatal obstruction that resulted in peritonitis, shock, and death. Gaping hippos have been historical targets of mischievous zoo visitors.

  Through their actions, zoo intruders have found their way into carnivore exhibits. One deranged person scaled the lion exhibit wall in a California zoo one night, leaving behind only scant remains when the keepers cleaned the exhibit the following day. At the National Zoo a paranoid schizophrenic climbed a fence and swam a moat to reach a pride of lions that devoured her. A number of suicides in zoos have occurred by people jumping into tiger and lion exhibits, and over the years some incidents have occurred when inebriated visitors—during and after hours—managed to come into fatal proximity to dangerous animals.

  The following 1999 incident was the consequence of an alleged practical joke by “friends”:

  Man thrown into lion’s den

  Police in South Africa say a man was mauled by a lion in Pretoria Zoo after three men threw him over a fence and into the animal’s den. Workers threw stones to distract the lion’s attention and zoo staff sedated it, enabling rescuers to save the injured man. He suffered wounds to his arms, legs and chest and was said to be in a stable condition in hospital—though police say he was still too disorientated to make a statement.

  Others have been due simply to flawed judgment:

  Tiger kills youth in safari park

  Eighteen-year-old Mohammed Khaja was mauled to death by a tiger at the Nehru Zoological Park here on Tuesday afternoon when he fell into the Tiger Safari park trying to catch a kite after clambering a 20 ft. wall and a steel mesh atop it. This is the second such incident in the safari park. Five years ago, a boy entered into it in search of a ball after having a bet with his friends that he would fetch it.

  Captivity does not
always spare zoo animals from local predators. Before zoos were enclosed with perimeter security fences, intrusions by stray dogs were fairly common. More nimble raccoons and foxes still take an occasional toll on captive avifauna in zoos. When the San Diego Wild Animal Park first opened in the Southern California back country, mountain lions shared in the cornucopia of exotic antelopes. To deter the still abundant coyotes, the perimeter fences of the large enclosures were further secured with “predator wiring”—fashioned by attaching metal fabric to the outside bottom of the fence and burying it horizontally to deter digging along the perimeter.

  Finally, local wildlife occasionally find themselves accidental captives in zoological gardens. In the Steiner Zoo and Animal Orphanage in Monrovia, Liberia, a large python was found in the zoo’s poultry pen one morning. Slithering between the cage wires at night, it consumed several of the avian inhabitants. When it attempted to depart with its belly full of fowl, it was trapped—its enhanced girth could no longer pass between wires and it became a zoo exhibit.

  Occasionally, behind-the-scenes visitors, even celebrities, become involved in injuries in their desire to get up close and personal with zoo animals. When actress Sharon Stone, of Basic Instinct movie fame, came to the Los Angeles Zoo with her husband Phil Bronstein, they received a VIP tour of the Komodo dragon lizard exhibit to visit and pet one of the “tamer” specimens. Here is part of the keeper’s official accident report describing what happened next:

  I entered the exhibit first to touch the animal and talk to it. “Komo” was gentle and calm, so I invited one guest (the man “Phil”) to come in. As he was stepping in, I noticed he was wearing white shoes and white socks. I asked Phil to step out of the exhibit because I knew “Komo” was excited by white objects (they look like the rats he eats).

  Phil asked me if he could take his shoes and socks off and go in barefoot. I said okay because I had never known the animal to be aggressive or excited by human skin. . . . Phil knelt next to the animal while I knelt on the other side to watch and possibly pick up “Komo” so Phil could be in the photo. Special guest Sharon Stone took a photo and was about to take another. At this time, “Komo,” without warning, bit Phil on his left foot and held on. I grabbed “Komo” by his neck and yelled at him. He let go after an estimated one or two seconds. After a delay of 10 to 15 seconds Phil stepped out of the exhibit.

  The victim “Phil” was on his back on the floor and Sharon had already tied one of his white socks around the wound and this stopped the bleeding. Sharon had Phil’s leg raised and he seemed to be breathing fast. I told him he was going to be fine . . . we got ice and cold packs and a towel and newspapers for Phil to rest his head on.

  I suggested washing the wound with surgical scrub—Sharon and victim Phil refused this first aid. By this time Security had arrived to help comfort Phil and he seemed calm. Sharon was concerned that the bite was venomous, so I quickly assured her and Phil that the animal was non-venomous.

  Phil, and the keeper, apparently failed to foresee that offering a bare foot to a meat-eating dragon might appeal to its basic instincts.

  Nearly all zoos today have experimented with moated exhibits, going back to Carl Hagenbeck’s fundamental concept of barrier-free viewing. In the case of dangerous animals, the physical dimensions of the enclosures must be competently determined. More than one zoo has been surprised when, under extraordinary fear or stress, some animals that have been confined safely within their moated exhibits (bears, tigers, lions) managed to escape when alarmed. We have all heard parallel accounts of athletic feats during stress, such as little old ladies moving overturned automobiles to free a loved one. When sufficiently alarmed, some zoo animals have jumped moats and scaled walls that had held them captive for years.

  Zoo carnivore moat profile

  The elevation on the public side of the exhibit moat is usually higher than on the carnivore side in order to make any attempt at jumping the moat span more difficult. Other techniques for foiling attempts to scale the public side of the moat wall include terracing the exhibit platform downward toward the public, and curving the moat face inward at the bottom on the public side. Large carnivores are usually confined at night off the exhibit area into smaller, more secure holding areas. One evening in San Diego, when a windstorm felled several trees in the zoo, night security guards went busily around inspecting animal enclosures for damage and found a huge eucalyptus tree limb straddling one of the bear exhibit moats. Fearing the worst, the security officer grabbed his flashlight and scanned the exhibit for the bear that had access to the outside area. Just as he approached the limb, he met the bear face-to-face on its way out. He gave the bear a whack on the head with his light. The bear fell backward into the moat, where it spent the rest of the night under an armed guard until the arrival of the tree removal crew at dawn.

  St. Louis Zoo bear exhibit dry moat, c. 1920

  Hoofed animals are particularly prone to encounters with exhibit barriers and, when alarmed, are often oblivious to physical obstacles in their paths. Chain link fences and sprayed-concrete and cement-block walls have caused serious and fatal injuries when panicked antelope, deer, and zebra take flight straight into them. Newly arrived animals, unaccustomed to their new roommates and exhibit surroundings, are particularly at risk from panic injuries, and they must be handled carefully and quietly until they adjust. Any strange sound or object may set them off and put them to flight. Improved systems for moving and sedating animals in zoo hospital settings now often utilize padded walls and floors, subdued lighting and suppressed acoustics in order to reduce the stress and excitement induced by handling procedures.

  St. Louis Zoo bear exhibit water moat, c. 1920

  Temporary sight barriers, such as cloth or plastic fencing, are often installed in exhibits to make physical boundaries more obvious to newly introduced animals. I escorted the shipment of a white rhinoceros to the Los Angeles Zoo, where the staff had arranged for a construction crane to lift the huge transport crate over the wall and into the exhibit. As the door was opened with a rope, the rhino backed out of the crate, and snorted with alarm when she noticed a large gray object in front of her. In keeping with her species, which is notorious for both spontaneity and lack of visual acuity, the rhino charged and hit a large boulder at full speed, breaking her horn off flush with her face.

  The fences and moats that are employed to contain hoofed animals in zoos are frequently psychological as much as physical barriers. The size and dimensions of these exhibits are often based on a perception of what is called an animal’s “flight distance.” Typically, this is the minimum amount of space that the animal allows between itself and a novel situation. In the wild, this is the distance at which it ordinarily runs from, or attacks, an intruder. Captive flight distances are much shorter than in wild animals since most animals become adapted to the presence of humans, other animals, and zoo vehicles. If confined to a small area behind the exhibit in what zoo people call “catch pens,” however, animals can explode in fear if spooked, causing serious injury to themselves. Some species, such as the wild goats, are so agile that they can easily run around a small room or pen, bounding from wall to wall without touching the floor. These animals must be confined in fenced areas (solid or metal fabric) with “turn-backs,” which are slanted appendages at the top of a fence that angle inward, making it more difficult for a nimble hoofed animal to scale.

  Himayalan tahr “turn-back” fence

  Regardless of their benefits, the larger, more naturalistic animal exhibits should always be judged both from the public and the animal points of view. Despite the spacious appearance of an exhibit, is that space actually available and valuable to the animals? Even though the front of an exhibit may be aesthetically pleasing, do the support facilities out of the public view provide improved resources for the inhabitants? In other words, how much is illusion and how much is real substance? Animals live only part of their existences on the stage set for the zoo public. Is it a Hollywood movie s
et with mere wooden props holding up the building fronts like a fake Western town, or are there real general stores, saloons, and quality hotels behind those exhibit facades? The current status of every zoo, and the environments they offer their inhabitants, should be candidly judged by the actual conditions they provide, not by idealized visions of what they might become.

  Pronghorn exhibit profile, San Antonio Zoo

  It is revealing to observe the behavior of zoo patrons as they browse through exhibits, totally bypassing some enclosures as if they were drab vacant lots. After a simple glance at one of these failures, visitors ordinarily pass it by, often not bothering to determine if something is alive inside. An Australian zoo I once visited had a prominent, blunt sign in front of one of their exhibit tragedies that simply declared, “This Ugly To Be Demolished Soon.” Shortly after arriving in San Diego, I walked behind a group of zoo visitors and decided to have a closer look at one of the exhibits they had shunned. Inside a chain-link clad enclosure, about the size of a U-Haul van, was a beautiful, small, solitary cat, asleep on a concrete shelf with its back to the public, surrounded by moldy looking rock and a cement floor. Not a single plant or soft surface was present, and the attempt at a pool was a stark looking concrete box into which water dribbled from a small rusty pipe. The animal, bored and alone, had nothing to do. The enclosure had all the charm of a prison. Nearly every zoo still has these sorts of remainders on their grounds that are gradually being replaced. Every successful animal exhibit must overcome the oppressive sensation of confinement, and this one failed on all accounts. Any takeaway message about the biology or conservation of an animal species falls flat on its face when the predominant impression of an exhibit is one of incarceration.