Diana McCaulay, Contributor
A WOMAN once called me to complain that her children had been upset by seeing the lion at Hope Zoo eat part of a horse's head. I wasn't very nice to her.
"What do you think a large carnivore eats?" I asked. "Lettuce?"
She thought the zoo staff should do the feeding outside of visiting hours. I disagreed. I thought everyone who visited zoos should know what the animals ate. To keep a lion in captivity, a large amount of meat is required. Sometimes it's horse.
I've never liked zoos, not even when I was a child. The endless, hopeless pacing of animals in concrete cages made me sad. And there were usually so few animals, sometimes just a single creature in an enclosure with a dying tree and a muddy water hole, living out confined, isolated years. The only part of Hope Zoo I remember liking was Monkey Island, because the monkeys behaved in an overtly sexual manner and embarrassed grown-ups.
Recently, I heard wildlife advocate Jane Goodall speak. She told a story of a chimpanzee, captured at birth, shipped to the United States and raised alone in a zoo cage. Chimps are social creatures, but this particular chimp had no experience with other chimps. He was eventually sold and found himself on just the kind of island Hope Zoo had, except the surrounding moat was deeper and wider. And the island was inhabited by an aggressive male chimp.
As soon as the new chimp arrived, he was attacked by the alpha male. He fled into the moat. A large crowd gathered to watch him drown. He went under, once, twice, three times. Suddenly a man rushed out of the crowd and jumped into the water, pulling the chimp towards the island where the alpha male chimp waited. The crowd screamed at the man to get out, but he faced down the alpha male.
After, in the mandatory TV interview, the man was asked why he had done this foolhardy thing.
"I looked into the eyes of the chimp," he said.
The interviewer was at a loss.
"What did you see there?" she asked. "I saw the chimp asking, 'won't anyone help me?'"
Dangerous humans
We humans, from our position as the most dangerous predator on the planet, slaughter animals we don't eat, dress them in tulle skirts for our amusement in circuses, cause them to jump through hoops for their food in seaquaria and imprison them in zoos for an afternoon's entertainment. No, I've never liked animal attractions.
However, today I went to the 92-acre Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle and after, I wasn't so sure of my ground. It had snowed a few days previously, and the zoo was a strange sight. A lion sunbathed on a rock, traces of snow beneath him. A mountain gorilla ate a handful of snow like a snow cone. Giraffes peered cautiously out of a heated building, obviously avoiding the crisp air. What are they all thinking, I wondered.
Well, I concede they probably weren't thinking, at least not as we understand the word. But I had no doubt the animals were feeling, it was plain in the frustrated strides of the jaguar, which was in the kind of concrete cage I remembered from Hope Zoo. A sign noted that this kind of cage was no longer acceptable in zoos and invited contributions to liberate the jaguar into more suitable surroundings. It was the only small cage I saw at Woodland Park.
Every effort and an unimaginable sum of money had been spent to create proper habitats for the animals. I was still disturbed to see tropical animals in a winter climate, no matter how appropriate the habitat. I was happier seeing the snowy owl, the wolf and the brown bear. I loved the penguins, even though they were from Chile, I knew the water was as cold as they would have liked it. They raced around their moat, literally flying underwater.
Magic
And it was magic. I saw it in the faces of children, their uncensored awe at the staggering diversity of the creatures of the earth, from the tiniest of rare Egyptian tortoises, only four inches in diameter, to the giant python, 18 feet long and weighing 180 pounds.
The zoo didn't miss an opportunity to educate; every exhibit included information about the threats the animals faced, their life cycles, diets and home ranges. The zoo also attempted the breeding of endangered animals and returned injured ones to the wild. Perhaps the children would remember not only the pacing of the cornered jaguar, but the pair of bald eagles with their nine-foot wide nest, rescued from the brink of extinction. Perhaps in the end a zoo like Woodland Park helps more than it hurts.
Readers may e-mail Diana McCaulay at dmcaulay@n.washington.edu
