Life at the Zoo

by Phillip T. Robinson

  Cougar exhibit profile, San Antonio Zoo

  Zoo visitors occasionally take the time and effort to express their likes and dislikes to zoo management, as these individuals did in these actual patron reports after they visited a major western zoo:

  Patron Report

  Problem: On Friday the 14th of January my family and I came to the zoo. One of the reasons in particular that I decided to come to your zoo was because in your web site that I accessed Dingoes was mentioned as one of the animals you have. You see, I was participating in a scavenger hunt and one of the items that I needed was a picture of a Dingo. Well, when I got there and inquired where the Dingo was, I was informed that the Dingo was no longer there. I was very disappointed to say the least. We drove all the way from Las Vegas to get this picture. If I would have known the Dingoes were not there, I would have selected another zoo. —John C.

  Suggestion to correct or improve the situation: For my inconvenience I am requesting a full refund. A copy of the receipt is attached.

  Patron Report

  Problem: For the last three visits here (different hours) the animals are always sleeping. It greatly disturbs me.

  Suggestion to correct or improve the situation: Check to make sure the animals are not sick. Do something to make them more active. —Shallon R.

  Patron Report

  Problem: All I see is butt all day. Animals sick looking like they are about to die. That’s the problem. I want my eight dollars and twenty-five cents back.

  Suggestion to correct or improve the situation: Clean up the animals. Less pay. More animals. Feed them three times a day. —Veronica B.

  Patron Report

  Problem: The Chilean flamingoes smell worse every time I come. I almost vomited today.

  Suggestion to correct or improve the situation: Clean the exhibit more often? —Clara M.

  Patron Report

  Problem: While observing the gorillas, a black one threw a pebble or small stone in my direction and it broke the left lens of my photo tint prescription glasses with rhinestones all around both sides of the frame. The break is from top to bottom. I need my glasses to see.

  Suggestion to correct or improve the situation: Very urgent—I don’t have a spare pair of glasses. —Gayle P.

  Patron Report

  Problem: Gorilla threw his waste, landing in my baby stroller resulting in having to throw out the stroller.

  Suggestion to correct or improve the situation: Post a warning to the possibilities of what may occur. —Michael S.

  An entrepreneur friend once told me a little story when the subject of animal exhibits came up in a discussion. He was in the business of exporting various types of top-quality cooking utensils to premium markets overseas, and he had several major customers in Japan. On one occasion he was visited by two Japanese buyers who toured his showroom looking for new items to import. Out of all of the expensive cookware and dining accessories that they perused, they finally focused on a small, inexpensive white microwave-safe rice bowl and immediately placed a large order for this item alone. They were so ecstatic about their purchase that nothing else in the inventory interested them. On a trip to Japan several months later this same businessman paid a reciprocal visit to his Japanese buyers and discovered what had become of the bowls. In their elegant showroom in Tokyo their newly featured product was prominently displayed on a handsome hardwood table that was covered with an ornate, hand-woven tapestry. In the center of the table was an exquisitely lacquered, hinged rosewood box lined with red satin and velvet. Nestled within this box, with grace and simple beauty, was a solitary white microwave-safe rice bowl. In Japanese culture, the presentation of a gift is often more important than the object itself. A $3 rice bowl had been transformed into a $250 treasure. This same lesson could be applied to every animal exhibit in a zoo. I haven’t visited any Japanese zoos, however, to see if they have followed their own cultural predilections with captive wildlife.

  Zoo animal collections have often been rated by the numbers of species they hold. Large ones are frequently referred to as “postage stamp” animal collections in the zoo trade, where the numbers and kinds of animals possessed, rather than the quality of their existences, was the way of keeping score. Zoos with fish collections squeezed every minnow into their statistics in order to compete in this inflated numbers marathon. Then insects became popular and skewed the numbers game completely. Eventually, however, the emphasis has shifted more to the quality and aesthetics of the visitor experience, which is greatly influenced by the perceptions of how natural and content the animals appear to be. The consciousness of the public has changed. Many people no longer settle for sideshow types of displays, although most still demand to be entertained. The arklike collections have given way to more specialization and to thematic animal assemblies, where breeding success and naturalism trump sheer numbers.

  It is a given in most zoos that at least six animal types are mandatory in order to appease the public’s most fundamental expectations—apes and monkeys, big cats and carnivores, elephants and rhinos, giraffes, pretty birds, and fearsome reptiles. Zoo public-relations staffs lobby for new attractions that they can zestfully promote, such as San Diego’s “SuperCroc” exhibit or Brookfield Zoo’s Ituri Forest exhibit. With enough creativity, however, even diminutive, near-blind animals like the Pittsburgh Zoo’s naked mole rats, which weigh in at only two ounces, can be whimsical attendance magnets. With a clever marketing campaign, they attracted a loyal media and visitor following, generating renewed visitor zoo attendance and T-shirt and souvenir sales. Several zoos, realizing the appeal of such microfauna, now have Internet-based “Rat Cams” to cultivate the public’s ongoing curiosity about these offbeat exhibits.

  The best and most interesting zoo exhibits usually contain family groups of animals. This requires reproductive success to sustain, more husbandry expertise than static pairs and an ongoing capacity to find homes for the surplus offspring. Several major schools of thought prevail on how zoos should exhibit animals. In the more dynamic and aggressive style, exhibits are mini-representations of the classic ecosystems or habitats of the earth, such as rainforests, deserts, or savannas. In fact, the main thing that separates this school from the others is money. A “naturalistic” (not to be confused with “natural”) exhibit must convey an “impression” of authenticity to the visitor. It must look real and transcend the mundane. The far greater challenge, however, is to make that artificial exhibit truly meaningful to its animal inhabitants; this takes more considerable insight, money, and time to plan and implement. The present generation of exhibit planners in zoos must continue to address seriously and define exhibit success by rigorous self-assessment of their projects. Unfortunately, there are few objective criteria yet available by which to rate the effectiveness of an exhibit from the animals’ point of view. Perhaps tomorrow’s zoo biologists will develop useful models for making these assessments. Already there are researchers compiling detailed inventories of animal species’ behavioral characteristics called ethograms. One approach of these assessments will be to correlate the diversity of captive vs. wild repertoires as measures of behavioral fidelity in captivity.

  Accurate information is entirely lacking on what percentage of the average exhibit project budget is devoted to strictly animal vs. strictly people needs. I would venture a guess that the costs of people amenities, such as aesthetics and viewing logistics, easily outweigh the functionality costs attributable to animals’ needs alone. One of the costs of an exhibit that I propose should be obligatory for all exhibitors of endangered species is a sort of conservation tax. Perhaps 5 percent of the construction budget should go into a conservation research fund to benefit that species in the wild. Bring this notion up at a zoo staff meeting, however, as I have, and some people may stare at you as if you just emerged from a Martian spacecraft. For a $5 million gorilla exhibit, that would be $250,000 for the conservation of wild gorillas—enough to fund the startup of a new national park in some parts
of Africa.

  The newer naturalistic exhibits are far more expensive propositions than yesterday’s animal displays, but they still tend to emphasize popular, charismatic species. Their construction often involves corporate sponsors and support from community bond issues and revenue taxes. Simulating nature well in a zoo or rehabilitated wild habitat is costly, which is why the economics of protecting natural ecosystems is so self-evident. Animals have far less trouble reproducing than in surviving habitat loss and human disturbances. Captive propagation, as a primary conservation strategy, should be reserved for the emergency cases.

  Today’s megazoo exhibits often take the form of major redevelopment projects and are usually multistaged, as parts of master plans to reinvent a zoo as a whole. Rather than striking the viewer as two-dimensional monoliths, these eco-replicas are layered presentations, meant to be viewed and sensed from multiple viewpoints, in a sort of ecological striptease that reveals its subjects gradually—more like discovering animals in the wild. Microviews of animals are replacing the crowded railings of spectators, requiring the visitor to become, instead, an observer, working at it a little for the reward of glimpsing an animal. Viewing rights are being supplanted by viewing privileges. Lush meandering paths are replacing exhibit plazas. The emphasis of these exhibits is on customizing the animal encounter so that it resembles a personal foray into natural habitat, as opposed to yesteryear’s parade past an array of bleak cement boxes. Just don’t go for the experience on a busy day! My general advice about visiting a popular zoo—be there when the gates first open on a weekday morning.

  Realistic rock surfaces made of colored concretes are carefully cast using textured templates, incorporating authentic looking, air-brushed mineral stains, incrustations of lichens, and, yes, simulated, state-of-the-art bird droppings. Relying on the botanical contributions to contribute to a sense of authenticity, there is a heavy emphasis on horticultural plantings. The popular architectural designation for this approach is “landscape immersion.” The overall objective is to provide the visitor with a sensation of being within the exhibit environment, without perceptions of barriers, or even being in a zoo at all. Compared to the original Hagenbeck-style exhibit, where the visitor was placed on the outside looking in, immersion exhibits attempt to engulf the visitor within the exhibit itself. Today’s Hagenbeck Tierpark has been surpassed by newer exhibit paradigms in scores of modern zoos, surrendering its status as the old benchmark for zoological exhibition.

  The technology of replicating natural surfaces has advanced tremendously in recent decades with several notable contractors in the United States. Artificial trees, stumps, and bark lend realism and durability to the close-up details. The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and its building consultants set some of the contemporary rockwork standards that other zoos have sought to emulate. Much of the older fake rockwork attempts in zoos now look like garish backdrops at cheap amusement parks or lunar landscapes. Today’s tumbling waterfalls, shady passageways, boggy mists, buzzing insect acoustics, and clearwater ponds add realism to exhibits, capturing stimulating sensations of sound, motion, and solitude. All are intended to add new dimensions to the visitors’ “adventure” and lead them with anticipation to a tantalizing proximity to animals, who bask in the exhibit spotlights. Too often still, however, more space is allocated to the visitors than the visited, and the design is strongly influenced by managements’ compulsions to have animals on exhibit for the public at all times, offering fewer opportunities for seclusion or privacy.

  The underlying challenge of naturalistic exhibit-making is in creating a finely finished experience that is enticing to viewers, enriching for animals, and functional from an operational standpoint. Today’s visitors don’t want to go to a zoo that feels like a zoo. Most of the core housing and animal management infrastructures are buried in bunkers behind and beneath the exhibit facades, away from the sight and minds of the visitors—the zoo they never see. Requiring large amounts of capital, these are ambitious undertakings involving commitments to future planning. This approach has become the norm in evolving major zoological gardens such as in Atlanta, Basel, Denver, New Orleans, Orlando, New York, San Diego, Seattle, and St. Louis. One of my favorites is the Northern Trail exhibit at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. The striking result of the new exhibits, from a visitor’s standpoint, is the shift in their perspectives and, hopefully, their perceptions of animals. Patience, reverence, and respect are better cultivated through these exhibit experiences, in contrast to the more carnival values of traditional cement jungles.

  Teaching visitors about nature in their own backyards is being undertaken in zoos in order to connect with the zoo-going public on local and global environmental issues. Whereas zoos have been prone to elevate and emphasize so-called charismatic mega-vertebrates (large, popular species such as gorillas, elephants and giant pandas), some are turning homeward to showcase their own local wildlife, and lesser species, in order to instruct the public in biology and conservation. The urbanization of America has disconnected many people from direct experiences with both wildlife and domestic livestock. For some, this change has been a homecoming. Common swampland exhibits and temperate climate pond and woodland habitats are examples of the local emphasis in some zoo exhibits. This familiarity is used as a bridge between the visitor and everyday lessons in ecology. In the end, the greater goal should be to create more informed and enlightened citizens, who will, it is hoped, have the conscience and motivation to educate themselves about, and support, appropriate environmental measures in the form of relevant legislation, research, and public policy. These types of thoughtful and inspirational naturalistic exhibits, when done well, can utilize common species, as well described by Dr. William Conway, the long-time director of the New York Bronx Zoo, whose favorite example was a common bullfrog exhibit. While a well-orchestrated animal exhibit of the lowliest creatures can work miracles of understanding for animal and environmental conservation issues, a poor one can quickly deflate the magic of even the world’s most charismatic and endangered fauna.

  Several images stick in my mind as measures of how far zoos have come since I started as a zoo veterinarian. The big male gorilla I saw during my veterinary school days visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago occupied a bare cage whose only internal fixtures were a resting bench and a platform scale. This occasionally permitted the public to verify how much he weighed, a play upon our pop-culture fascination with mega-apes such as King Kong and Godzilla. At about that same time, the Cincinnati Zoo still had trained chimpanzees that entertained visitors by riding little motorcycles around in a circle. For years, the St. Louis bears also rode motorcycles, while the chimpanzees dressed up as members of a swing band, wielding trombones and drumsticks. Meanwhile, in San Diego, a monkey was exhibited without a cage, wearing a waist tether that permitted him to travel between trees parallel to a visitors’ moving sidewalk by means of a ring attached to a long wire. Even earlier, numerous zoos featured young apes and monkeys in people clothes in tea parties, where they demonstrated their abilities to drink milk from a glass, eat with a spoon from a bowl, and perform other examples of humanoid table etiquette.

  Educated chimpanzees dining at the London Zoo, c. 1900

  Offbeat animal attractions still survive yesterday’s showmanship efforts, such as the display of atypically white or albino specimens. Snowflake, the Barcelona Zoo gorilla that died in 2003, was perhaps the most notable albino animal. But albino snakes, alligators, koalas, kangaroos, and other pink-eyed, white specimens are often displayed in zoos, as well as the occasional two-headed snake, such as the late Dudley Duplex and the late Thelma and Louise, the San Diego Zoo’s bicephalic king and corn snakes. Experts on these oddities describe some of the challenges that arise from this condition, such as conflict over which direction to travel, which head decides that it is time to eat, or, even more troubling, which head will swallow the prey. Several instances have been observed where one head has attacked the other head. In defense of thes
e creatures, and their supposed rightful place in zoos, Gordon Burghardt, a herpetologist at the University of Tennessee, asserts, “These animals shouldn’t be looked at as freaks. They’re organisms with motivations and individuality just like any other. They provide us with an opportunity to study cooperation [or perhaps the lack of it] and the processes of controlling the same body with two nervous systems. Studying them might provide some insight into the survival issues faced by Siamese twins.” Perhaps I hadn’t given due consideration to this less than compelling medical angle, but, justifications aside, such creatures do consistently provoke acute visual and mental perturbation in zoo visitors.

  Early tortoise ride at the New York Zoological Park

  Mike the chimpanzee walks a tightrope at the St. Louis Zoo

  Rollerskating chimpanzees at the Detroit Zoo in the 1940s

  Most zoo animal collections are now being organized biogeographically, rather than by animal species groups, a system that used to have all the cats, monkeys, great apes, parrots, and other like creatures lumped into separate areas of the zoo. Animals in biogeographic exhibits are from common ecological settings. These exhibits are often made up of mixed species to convey a more cohesive impression of an African or South American rainforest or savanna. Some attempts at mixed species groupings have had mixed results, and add a new level of complexity to providing veterinary care. A group of Diana monkeys in one zoo had been integrated with gorillas and seemed to be getting along just fine for months without incident. One day, as the zoo director stood in front of the viewing glass speaking with visitors, a gorilla suddenly seized one of the monkeys, and, as horrified guests looked on, the gorilla decapitated it and ate the remains. Other zoos have found that zebras and Mongolian wild horses can be very predatory upon baby antelopes in mixed exhibits and have had to segregate them.