Review Essay
TERRY L. MAPLE AND ERIKA F. ARCHIBALD
Zooman: Inside the Zoo Revolution
Marietta GA, Longstreet Press, 1993. 196pp. $19.95.

STEPHEN ST C. BOSTOCK
Zoos and Animal Rights: The Ethics of Keeping Animals
London and New York, Routledge, 1993. 227pp. $15.95 paper.

Garry Marvin 1
University of Kent, Canterbury

Zoos are probably the most complex forms of animal keeping in the world. Animals, usually those regarded as "wild" animals, from many areas the world are kept together in a proximity unknown or impossible in their natural environment and together they are put on display for the benefit of humans. Such an institution is a rich and fascinating environment for examining human relations with other animals and yet it has attracted little attention from social scientists. Perhaps a major reason for this is that in recent years one debate ­ whether or not zoos ought to exist and if they should exist, in what form and for what purpose ­ has dominated writing about zoos. The rights and wrongs of zoos provoke fiercely partisan arguments from many commentators, and although both books considered here do contribute to this fundamental debate it is not the intention of this review to evaluate the case for or against. Zoos exist and humans come to see the animals they contain. They exist in a variety of forms in different societies and cultures and they have been shaped by, and given shape to, a wide variety of human responses to animals. Both of these books deal with what sorts of messages zoos ought to be producing about the nature of animal lives and human relations with animals. The issues related to this intersection of the animal and human worlds are central to the review.

Zooman is a highly readable account of the making of a modern zoo. Terry Maple, a professor of psychology at Georgia Tech, took over as the director of Atlanta Zoo in 1984 ­ at the time named as one of the ten worst zoos in the United States. This is the story of how he and a newly motivated team transformed it into Zoo Atlanta, an institution with an international reputation. Maple has not written his book for zoo professionals but rather for the "everyday zoo visitors who want to learn about what is going on behind the scenes" (p. x). This idea of "behind the scenes", though, is not a simple description of what a zoo director, curator or keeper does. It is an account of what it has taken in terms of political skills, new management ideas, and developments in animal welfare science to create a thoroughly modern zoo. This story of Zoo Atlanta represents an example of the revolution taking place in the zoo world and outlines the elements of that revolution.

Zoos and Animal Rights is written by the education officer for the Glasgow Zoo. It is a more explicitly issues-based book which argues the case for the existence of zoos and explores what the role of the modern zoo ought to be. Although Bostock deals with philosophical questions related to animal rights, this is not a philosophical text. Once he has established his position that animals have rights because of their nature as conscious beings, his concern is then to demonstrate that the rights of those animals kept captive in zoos are not necessarily infringed simply because they are in zoos. Bostock does not argue that all zoos are acceptable places; they can only be that if they provide certain conditions. His main arguments concern what zoos must strive to achieve in terms of the quality of life and general well-being of the animals they contain. He also argues that zoos have important functions beyond the mere display of animals for public entertainment and he offers well-presented arguments for the essential roles of conservation, science and education.

Read together, these books cover most of the arguments which zoo professionals use to justify the existence of their institutions and they provide a good overview of what the best zoos are attempting to achieve. Both of these authors have written in terms of the various challenges which zoos face today. They argue convincingly that zoos need not be cruel and unacceptable places for keeping animals. Maple and Bostock are zoo professionals, actively involved both in deciding how collections of animals should be kept and in shaping people's attitudes to those animals; what they have to say is important. However, beyond the fundamental moral issue of whether or not to keep animals in zoos, the very arguments themselves, the explanations of what zoos are doing, the differing forms of the practice of keeping animals in this way, the changing styles of zoos and the ways in which people respond to them, offer fascinating material for those interested in the relationships humans have with other animals.

Zoos are peculiar places, totally artificial worlds which are based on culturally constructed images of the natural world and also creators of images of that world. Animals which would naturally live in very different parts of the world are brought together in the natural habitat of humans where they are separated from both the humans and the other animals which share that space with them. The visitor enters a world populated by animals chosen by humans to live in enclosures created by human design and displayed for human enjoyment. It is a realm conceived by human imagination and controlled by human effort. The zoo is an institution founded on the human control of animals and the ways in which it has changed can be read as an account of how that relationship of control and dominance is expressed ­ a relationship which in turn depends on changing human attitudes to animals and the natural world in general.

What interests this reviewer, as an anthropologist, is what ideas and processes have brought about the changes in zoos. What do the changing attitudes toward captivity and design of enclosures signify about human relations with animals and what elements are involved in human responses to animals in zoos? This is a rich area for investigation and sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, social historians and other researchers ought to consider zoos as worthy of their attention.2

One of the most common images of zoos is that they are prisons for animals. It is an image which the best modern zoos put the most effort into countering. Bostock is particularly concerned to show that zoos should not be perceived in these terms and argues that they have little in common with human captivity. He argues that if an animal in a zoo is able to engage in the same sort of behavior it would in the wild then the notion of captivity, as a negative term, does not apply. He considers that "really good captivity, is not, to all intents and purposes, captivity at all..." (p. 45). What he fails to deal with fully, though, is the relationship between captivity and dominance in terms of animal rights. He argues convincingly that the conditions of captivity may be perfectly acceptable in the zoo but the most important factor is that this condition has been imposed on the animal. The animal has no choice but to be in the zoo and it is held there, not because of its own volition, but by an outside agent of another species.

This is a fruitful area for further analysis and there are interesting comparisons ­ in terms of images of wildness, animality, dangerous behavior, control, captivity and punishment ­ which can be made between the histories of prisons, mental institutions and zoos. In the past, the mentally ill have been treated as though they were little different from wild animals, human madness often being equated with animality; criminals have been regarded as no better than beasts and held in conditions which emphasized their perceived dangerous nature; and the thick iron bars and stone walls within which many animals in the zoo have been kept conveyed a message of controlling dangerous wildness. In many societies the changing architecture and regimes of these institutions have represented a more humane attitude to those confined within them and have been expressive of a concern for the inmates' welfare. The fact that the best modern zoos now have naturalistic enclosures, where the mechanism of captivity, such as moats, is hidden or at least does not form a central feature of the enclosure, expresses a very different set of attitudes to the natural world from those expressed in the European or American zoo of the nineteenth century.

The term "captivity," when applied to animals, has an interesting set of implications with regard to our relationships with them. The concept of captivity seems, somehow, to be naturally linked to wild animals when out of their normal habitat and often indicates a problematic relationship ­ should they be in captivity? On the other hand, the emotionally neutral term "keeping" is used to describe human relations with domestic animals ­ cats, dogs, pigs, hamsters, horses and aquarium fish, for example. Yet these animals are also unable to choose to have this relationship. They are all in a state of captivity imposed on them by humans. Why the difference in terms employed for wild and domestic animals?

It would seem that in our society certain animals are perceived as suitable for holding in some form of captivity whereas others, especially those categorized as "wild," are not and their captivity has to be argued on special grounds. A horse in a stable is not a negative image for most people ­ it seems quite natural. However, a lion in a cage ­ despite the fact that it might never have lived outside the zoo ­ is disturbing for many people. A horse may be unmanageable and yet it is still a domestic animal; a lion might be raised by hand and yet it is still regarded as a wild animal. The cultural categories "wild," "domesticated" and "tame" are of a different type from zoological categories (although these are also cultural constructions) because they contain, as a defining element, a notion of a relationship between the animal and humans. The differing concepts, definitions and interpretations of this interrelated set of terms and the appropriate human relationships with the animals so classified would make a fascinating anthropological study.

All of this has interesting implications for zoos. Bostock devotes part of a chapter (pp. 51-56) to explaining that many critics of the zoo do not understand what the "wild" in "wild animal" actually means and then proceeds to a justification of the presence of such animals in the zoo. Here, however, his analysis is weak and he does not fully come to grips with the issue. He rather thinly claims that "...the distinction between wild and domesticated is less real than often imagined. And zoo animals, while they are indeed relatively wild, are also, in my view, slightly domesticated" (p. 53). Two defining characteristics of a wild animal when living a natural life are that it is normally uncontrolled by humans and normally shuns a close association with humans. What happens in the zoo is that animals classified as wild animals have these two characteristics of their lives denied them ­ they are made directly dependent on humans and they are made to be visible.

This visibility is a central feature of zoos. Animals, whose lives are not normally visible to humans, are put on display for human benefit. The nature of this display or exhibition and what exactly the human reaction to this ought to be has been the subject of major debates in the zoo world in many societies. The very fact that zoos have regarded the nature of exhibition to be a problem indicates that humans are the most important and problematic animals in the zoo. This is not to imply that zoos are unconcerned with animal welfare. Both Bostock and Maple clearly show how the findings of ethological studies of animals in their natural habitat have fed back to a concern for providing the conditions so that animals can engage in this behavior in zoos. The changing nature of exhibition is more complex than that, however. Zoo architecture and exhibits have always been for two sets of creatures ­ for the animals which must inhabit them and for the humans for whom they are a setting for viewing the animals.

There is a world of difference between the barren cages and enclosures of zoos constructed at the beginning of this century and the high technology recreations of tropical forests and other naturalistic exhibits found in some zoos in the United States. The reasons for these changes are indicative of complex changes in human attitudes to animals. Although both of these books deal with many of the issues relating to the appropriate forms of animal exhibition, the full story of how these ideas of appropriate forms have come about has yet to be written. There is a complex and fascinating set of relationships between the development of the animal rights movement, the concern for animal welfare, the influence of ethology, the increasing sophistication of natural history films on television, foreign travel where people have the opportunity to see animals in the wild, the development of theme parks of various sorts, and the growth of ecological awareness. All of these have influenced the style of exhibition of the best modern zoos and this in turn influences the way that the public responds to the animals on display.

Terry Maple has a fine example of all of this which forms the backbone of his book and is representative of the changes at Zoo Atlanta and other zoos. The wild-born gorilla, Willie B, was brought to Atlanta in 1961. For nearly 20 years the gorilla lived in a basic and boring cage-like enclosure. By the time Maple took over the zoo in 1984 there was a strong movement opposing the keeping of animals in such conditions, especially if they were those which Maple defines as "charismatic megavertebrates" (p. 19ff) such as the gorilla. Maple was in full agreement with such a movement and set about raising the funds to build what he considered to be the world's best gorilla exhibit. By 1988 he and his colleagues had completed the construction and Willie B was able to move into a large, carefully constructed, naturalistic outside exhibit. Maple builds into his account the popular image of gorillas and how members of the public responded to them and other primates in the zoo, the way that scientific studies of gorilla behavior influenced the design of the enclosure, how his visits to Africa molded his perspective of what he wanted to do about the zoo, and how he and his team had to design an exhibit for an increasingly demanding public. The account of the radical change in gorilla exhibition at this one particular zoo is of interest in itself in terms of the changing human experience of other animals and it can also be read as a symbol for what is happening in the rest of the best modern zoos.

The aim for many zoos these days is to exhibit their animals in enclosures in which the setting is as natural as possible or at least looks as natural as possible. The naturalistic enclosure may represent the high point of exhibition but there are still interesting questions which can be asked about it in terms of human/animal relations. Given that it is not a natural habitat and that it is usually impossible to completely replicate that habitat, what elements are chosen to replicate or represent it and for whom? Bostock and Maple show that from the animal welfare point of view, it is important to have an enclosure in which the animal has enough space to be comfortable, to have the conditions in which it is able to engage in natural behavior, and to have an environment which is stimulating. However, zoo designers can now create exhibits which go beyond the conditions which the animals need. With the availability of artificial rocks, trees, plants and other environmental features they have great scope for creating an illusion of the natural world. An enclosure can look like a part of the African savannah or a slice of a tropical rain forest and it would take a trained eye to see that it is not composed entirely of real elements. Animals can undoubtedly make good use of this enriched environment but they also know the limits of it and the illusion is perhaps more important for the public than it is for the animals themselves. People seem comfortable when facing an enclosure like this both because it is interesting to look at and because it is less likely to provoke a reaction of guilt when looking at the animals it contains.

The careful blending of natural and artificial, of illusion and reality, in modern zoo exhibition is a means of framing animal lives and transmitting a message about those lives. The history of the shift from bare cages to the present ultra-realistic natural settings is more than an account of how the controllers of zoos have thought animals ought to be kept and of increasing concern for animal welfare. The changing styles of exhibition are also a direct response to changing attitudes to the animal world. Although much has been written about zoo architecture by those within the zoo world, the wider social history of this subject has yet to be fully explored.

Both of these books devote much space to arguments that zoos have an essential conservation role in providing breeding centers for endangered species. Conservation is probably the single most important justification given for the continued existence of zoos and both Maple and Bostock clearly outline exactly what reputable zoos are attempting to achieve in this area. This reviewer takes a naive approach to conservation ­ it seems to be an intrinsically good idea and, although it seems important to maintain as wide a range as possible of endangered species, given limited resources, it is also likely that zoos will only be involved in maintaining a few.3 What is then interesting is how those who are actively involved in implementing conservation programs decide what ought to be conserved and protected? Why is it that some species attract more attention than others? These are not questions which relate exclusively to the zoo but they do have implications for what sort of collections zoos will have on exhibit in the future. If an animal is not a member of an endangered species, is there any justification for keeping it in a zoo? How will zoos survive if they do not provide the range of animals which members of the public expect to find on a zoo visit?

The question of what sort of event a zoo visit is and what it ought to be are considered in detail by both of these authors. One of the major problems faced by many modern zoos is that of their status. It seems that they cannot easily move away from the image of being places of entertainment more closely related to the circus and amusement park than to museums and education. Whereas a natural history museum containing stuffed animals is given high cultural status in our society, a zoo, with living examples of many of the same animals, is perceived, by most visitors, as a place of entertainment. The best zoos argue that education is one of their most important features and both of these books have major sections on the significant work which is being done in this area in many zoos. Maple and Bostock argue that it is important to use the zoo to teach people to respect the natural world, to show them what can be learned from the lives of the animals in captivity and to appreciate what conservation means. One of the major problems they face, however, is that the animals on display are both individuals and representatives of their species. The educationalists in the zoo would like visitors to be interested in the animals as members of a species and to learn about the species, whereas most visitors seem to respond to the actual individuals on display. There is a strong tendency for visitors to react to the animals in terms other than those of zoology, ethology or ecology. The animals are anthropomorphised, responded to as funny, ugly, cute, fierce, disgusting or frightening. The information labels on enclosures seem to be used for identification purposes but it is what the animal looks like or how it behaves which keeps the interest of the visitor. If the animal in some way entertains, then visitors will pay attention to it. An enclosure might contain the rarest antelope in the world but it will not command the sort of attention paid to a lion cub or a monkey swinging through its cage.

In the wild, animals live their lives for their own benefit; but in the zoo, a further dimension is added in that they have to live their lives for the benefit of humans. Even in the best zoos the animals are, in a sense, actors performing for humans. Their enclosure is an artificial world, a stage set on which they must display their lives. They act the part of other members of their species in the wild and the zoo attempts to tell a story of the lives of these others through them. The best zoos are concerned to communicate an important set of ideas and attitudes about animals and the natural world, about authentic lives and authentic environments but they must do so through captive animals living inauthentic lives. Bostock comments quite correctly that "animals in the zoo are living by our favor" (p. 181) but this is not unusual. In an important sense most animals in the world are living by our favor; humans decide how they will live or whether they will live. The zoo is simply one institution, a richly complex one, in the arena of human-animal relations in which humans decide what sort of lives and relationships these should be.

Notes
1. Direct all correspondence to the author at 33 Whitehall Road, Norwich NR2 3EN, England. The author is Honorary Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent.

2. For a full treatment of many of the interpretations suggested in this review see Zoo Culture by B. Mullan and G. Marvin (1987, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson).

3. A superb treatment of zoos and conservation is to be found in Last Animals in the Zoo by C. Tudge (1991, Washington, DC: Island Press).
 

For Abstracts of all issues, including the most current, click Article Abstracts

To order Society & Animals Journal, go to our secure online ordering page

You can Search the online issues of Society & Animals, as well as the entire Society & Animals Forum (formerly PSYETA) website,
for topics and keywords of your interest: