Metamorphoses of the Zoo: Animal Encounter after Noah (Toposophia: Sustainability, Dwelling, Design)

Metamorphoses of the Zoo

Toposophia Sustainability, Dwelling, Design

Toposophia is a book series dedicated to the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of place. Authors in the series attempt to engage a geographical turn in their research, emphasizing the spatial component, as well as the philosophical turn, raising questions both reflectively and critically. Series Editors: Robert Mugerauer, University of Washington Gary Backhaus, Loyola College in Maryland Editorial Board: Edmunds Bunkse Kim Dovey Nader El-Bizri Joseph Grange Matti Itkonen Eduardo Mendieta John Murungi John Pickles Ingrid Leman Stefanovic Books in the Series: Mysticism and Architecture: Wittgenstein and the Meanings of the Palais Stonborough by Roger Paden When France Was King of Cartography: The Patronage and Production of Maps in Early Modern France by Christine Marie Petto Environmental Dilemmas: Ethical Decision Making by Robert Mugerauer and Lynne Manzo The Timespace of Human Activity: On Performance, Society, and History as Indeterminate Teleological Events by Theodore R. Schatzki Metamorphoses of the Zoo: Animal Encounter after Noah by Ralph R. Acampora

Metamorphoses of the Zoo Animal Encounter after Noah

Edited by Ralph R. Acampora

Lexington Books A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published by Lexington Books A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.lexingtonbooks.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2010 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Metamorphoses of the zoo : animal encounter after Noah / [edited by] Ralph R. Acampora. p. cm.—(Toposophia : sustainability, dwelling, design) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-3454-2 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-7391-3456-6 (electronic) 1. Zoos—Philosophy. 2. Human-animal relationships. I. Acampora, Ralph R., 1965QL76.M48 2010 590.7’3—dc22 2010007070

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America



Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction—Off the Ark: Restoring Biophilia Ralph R. Acampora Chapter 1

Zoos as Welfare Arks? Reflections on an Ethical Course for Zoos Koen Margodt

Chapter 2

Nooz: Ending Zoo Exploitation Lisa Kemmerer

Chapter 3

Through a Frame Darkly: A Phenomenological Critique of Zoos Bernard E. Rollin

Chapter 4

Beyond Zoos: Marianne Moore and Albrecht Dürer Randy Malamud

Chapter 5

Respectful Stewardship of a Hybrid Nature: The Role of Concrete Encounters Chilla Bulbeck

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1

11 37

57 67

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Contents

Chapter 6

Whale and Human Agency in World-Making: Decolonizing Whale-Human Encounters Traci Warkentin and Leesa Fawcett

Chapter 7

Boring a Wormhole in the Zoological Ark David Lulka

Chapter 8

Open Door Policy: Humanity’s Relinquishment of “Right to Sight” and the Emergence of Feral Culture G. A. Bradshaw, Barbara Smuts, and Debra Durham

103 123

151

Chapter 9

Earth Trusts: A Quality Vision for Animals? Helena Pedersen and Natalie Dian

171

Chapter 10

From Zoo to Zoöpolis: Effectively Enacting Eden Matthew Chrulew

193

Chapter 11

Zoöpolis Jennifer Wolch

221

Chapter 12

Inventionist Ethology: Sustainable Designs for Reawakening Human-Animal Interactivity Ralph R. Acampora

245

Afterword: Following Zootopian Visions Nicole Mazur

257

Index

263

About the Contributors

267



Acknowledgments

I am grateful to all the contributors to this volume, especially those who have had to exercise patience for several years as the project slowly came to fruition. The Humane Society of the United States graciously extended use of a wildland trust property for a writing retreat that resulted in my own contribution. Thanks to Adam Israel, for indexing down the homestretch. Finally, apologies are due my son, Maxwell, for a book whose impetus so challenges his middle namesake—in due course you will come to recognize ambivalence and appreciate the possibility and promise of transfiguration.

vii

INTRODUCTION



Off the Ark: Restoring Biophilia

We are truly captives here . . . every one of us—and yet they have called this: being saved.1

Spaces set aside as zoological parks or gardens are found everywhere throughout the world, particularly in and around cities. Places of intense and widespread visitation, they are key elements of metropolitan identity. Historically, these establishments served as symbols of power and venues for entertainment; today, they have taken to portraying themselves as flagships of environmental education, scientific research, and wildlife conservation. Along with the past century’s turn in exhibition design toward increasingly naturalistic architecture, such portrayals have been received by many in an uncritically positive light. Recently, however, a strong set of varied critiques—from Randy Malamud’s Reading Zoos (1998) through Nicole Mazur’s After the Ark? (2001) to Keekok Lee’s Zoos: A Philosophical Tour (2006)—has contested any complacent atmosphere of apologetics surrounding the zoo. At the same time, it remains clear that zoos are immensely popular attractions (drawing hundreds of millions of visitors globally per year). This level of participation is consistent with the suggestion that humans harbor a strong sense of biophilia, one which moves them to seek out diverse life-forms when their own territories become too anthropocentrically homogenous or monocultural; from such a vantage, it is no accident that zoos are most often situated in urban(izing) areas. The book before you marshals a unique compendium of 1

2



Introduction

critical interventions that envision novel modes of authentic encounter that might cultivate humanity’s biophilic tendencies without abusing or degrading other animals. These “zoötopian visions” are metamorphic in that they either radically restructure what were formerly zoos or else map out entirely new, post-zoo sites or experiences. The result is a volume that contributes both to moral progress on the interspecies front and to ecopsychological health for a humankind whose habitats are now mostly citified (and becoming more so, if current demographic projections hold). To appreciate the critical context from which most of the contributions herein proceed, one may consider the array of ethical objections to zoos as presently configured. Perhaps the most well-known of these is the charge that (many or most) zoos abuse the animals kept therein, usually not through deliberate cruelty but rather by neglect of basic well-being (e.g., ignoring or failing to adequately provide for spatial or social needs). Koen Margodt’s chapter, “Zoos as Welfare Arks?,” illustrates this sort of concern and performs a rigorous inventory of the institution. He claims that the kind of conservation philosophy defended by the zoo community is not an isolated policy. It is well-embedded within the sustainable-use position defended by major conservation organizations such as the WWF and IUCN. Though this position is widely accepted in a superficial way, it contains serious, underexposed risks for the interests of animals —probably the most poignant of which is the notion of “extractive reserves” (in situ areas whence zoos, in a paradoxical reversal of their putative mission, would ensure a continual flow of wildlife into captivity!). Margodt argues in favor of a different kind of wildlife conservation philosophy, one that is based upon the appreciation of the interests of animals themselves. Species conservation and protection of individual interests do not need to conflict with one another; the first may be based upon and inspired by the latter. If zoos would transform themselves into veritable “welfare arks,” our author concludes, this would demand a structural policy for inhabitants’ well-being that goes beyond merely enriching the environment of enclosures. Such a policy would reject the killing of healthy animals and other acts that are not in the interests of the residents themselves. From another perspective, that of animal liberation, zoos are profoundly flawed in their denial of free range to beings who become essentially captives. Implicitly grounded in this approach, Lisa Kemmerer’s “Nooz: Ending the Exploitation of Zoos” argues for a near-abolitionist stance. Her chapter highlights several basic criticisms of zoos, and then provides a vision for new zoos: “nooz.” Offering a new name to these institutions makes a clear break from the old model, which in her view is fundamentally exploitative. The

Off the Ark: Restoring Biophilia 

3

common denominator between zoos and nooz is that both foster nonhumans who are neither domestic pets nor farmed animals—they keep “wild” animals. Nooz are nonexploitative, benevolent, and are designed for nonhumans, to provide safe haven for those individuals who have been misused by traditional zoos or science, or injured by humans. Kemmerer’s essay also explores “benevolent” reasons for keeping nonhuman animals in zoos (such as captive breeding programs and rehabilitation of injured wildlife) and acceptable parameters for nooz (including such topics as retribution for previous exploitation and the problem of carnivory). Ultimately, the liberation view as applied here would dictate an almost total eradication of zoos—with the exception of protecting certain animals under very limited circumstances, and the resultant operations so changed in purpose and structure as to warrant a neologism such as “nooz.” If welfarist and liberationist perspectives call for zoos to implement significant improvements or restrictions, respectively, then the approach of what might be called phenomenological virtue ethics points in the direction of rather radical transformation. This is because, when we concentrate on how zoos affect spectators’ characters and displayed animals’ natures, we come to see that the institution inculcates structurally perverse sorts of relations with a pornographic grammar. Not that zoos propagate bestiality, but rather that they render the keep into “slaves of sight” or representation (literal pornographs) and cast visitors or managers in the respective roles of voyeur or master/vendor (we could say pimp, if we do not fixate on the sexual overtone). Elsewhere, I myself have written extensively on this.2 So have others—for example, Derrick Jensen: Pornography takes the creative relational need for sexuality with a willing partner—and the intimacy this can imply—and simplifies it to the relationship of watcher and watched. . . . Zoos take the creative need for participating in relationships with wild nonhuman others and simplify it until our “nature experience” consists of spending a few moments looking at—or simply walking by—insane bears and angry chimpanzees in concrete cages.3

In the present volume this sort of analysis is brought forward by renowned animal ethicist Bernie Rollin; his chapter, “Through a Frame Darkly,” mixes personal experience and philosophic criticism in a powerful indictment of inauthenticity. Clearly, transformative therapies would be in order should we accept such critique—creative options for which are explored in later chapters. Before treating these, however, the present volume detours in another direction. Given all the ethical problems associated with zoos, some would

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Introduction

advocate total abolition—in which case it would be salutary to develop models of animal encounter or affiliation that replace the zoo altogether. One potential substitute might be literary and/or graphic representation that remains faithful to genuine animality. Randy Malamud proffers such an alternative in his chapter, “Beyond Zoos.” An excerpt from his book, Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity, his essay examines the aesthetic of poet Marianne Moore. Her poetry stands as a striking example of art that teaches a great deal about animals without necessitating their constraint, and without involving (even figuratively) people’s spectatorial presence. Moore presents her poetic animals on the same level as people; we perceive them directly, reciprocally, one-on-one. The intellectual and aesthetic experience her poetry offers is antithetical to the nonreciprocal paradigm of the spectator as voyeur. As she brings animals into the realm of human art, she does so with a wariness about what that action means and what presuppositions it embodies: Moore does not “anoint” her animals with the benevolent gift of our culture; she does not presume that the animals who enter her ken are necessarily ennobled by the poet’s touch.4 Malamud also discusses the graphic art of Albrecht Dürer in connection with this imaginative approach. Still, some may balk at Malamud’s suggestions as inadequate simulacra, and indeed it is reasonable to think that humans harbor an evolved sense of biophilia—hence we canvass other options for radical transformation of the zoo experience that yet retain a role for the presence of actual animals other than the human. Chilla Bulbeck, for instance, wonders whether animals can be kept in zoos or turned into spectacles for people’s amusement without conveying the wrong messages concerning appropriate human relations with the nonhuman world. Her chapter on “Respectful Stewardship of a Hybrid Nature” conducts an inquiry and shares results of research under the supposition of a world in which there is no pristine wilderness and human actions have potentially irretrievable impacts on the whole nonhuman world. Against the grain of noninterventionist moralism, she argues that an emotional and embodied connection with wild animals—i.e., one deriving from hands-on experience—is a necessary element of “respectful stewardship” of the nonhuman world.5 However, this practical experience must be combined with more abstract and general scientific knowledge concerning how to manage the environment as well as philosophical reflection in which we humans seek to understand the world from the perspective of nonhuman others. For Bulbeck, it is only through engaging head, hands, and heart that we can cultivate humanity’s biophilic tendencies without negatively impacting other animals.

Off the Ark: Restoring Biophilia 

5

In a similar vein Leesa Fawcett and Traci Warkentin aver that the potential joyfulness of encountering another free-living animal is unrivaled, and an experience one would assume is common. The knotted complexity of meeting a caged animal should be unusual, but instead it is ordinary. The public and urban availability of animal interface is to be commended, they hold, while what zoos teach us about other lives and compassionate encounters between species is dubious. In their chapter, “Whale and Human Agency in World-Making,” Fawcett and Warkentin investigate aquariums and human encounters with wild and captive whales in order to propose more “response-able” encounters where the operative vision is that everybody is always in relation. Since they believe there are few, if any, pure/innocent spaces, they assay how to ethically maneuver within the moral messiness of human-animal relations. Their assumption is that Noah is not the only agent on the Ark, nor is his rationality the most lucid. In these authors’ critique of Noah, they stage an ontological mutiny with the other animals captive on the Ark. Through a feminist-multispecies alliance, Fawcett and Warkentin challenge the patriarchy and colonialism of animal captivity, (including gene bank models of preservation), and imagine radical restructurings of humananimal relations. Grounded in specific narratives of whale-human interactions, they strive to decolonize whale encounters and explore “contact zones” of natureculture entanglements. The authors then propose transformative contact zones within which the touch of encounter requires responsibility, reciprocity, and recognition of these meetings as “intra-active relations.” For example, the underwater viewing area where humans meet captive whales at an aquarium could be transformed by reversing the lighting scheme to illuminate the area where humans stand, while dimming the lights inside the tank. Such a simple modification could enable the whales to look out at humans without being completely visible themselves, which may provide a more interesting and less vulnerable space for them. Furthermore, the human visitors may feel more visible and sense that the whales may choose to look at them. Humans are then encouraged to recognize that they are not the only ones looking through the glass, that the whales can and do look back. In other words and more generally, Fawcett and Warkentin suggest that transformative contact zones would be places where curiosity, agency, and performativity are not exclusively human and where vulnerability and openness are shared across species. For his part, David Lulka charts a course to literally re-animate the zoo experience. “Boring a Wormhole in the Zoological Ark” posits that the organismal animacy of motile capacities can be used to reconfigure zoos for

6



Introduction

the better. If we downshift the importance of optics (visual morphology), the chapter argues, then we can orchestrate more mobile dynamics throughout the zoo. At any given point in time, the vibratory zoo would be in a variable state of assembly and disassembly. With the exception of animals who exhibit a clear penchant for sedentary behavior, animals at this zoo would be on the move, periodically locomoting from one setting to another. Zoo personnel would be engaged in the process of preparing and reorganizing the space of the zoo, itself becoming more like an organism. In this way the total amount of space within the zoo available to each species and each animal could be augmented, ideally beyond the scope of each inhabitant’s memory and consciousness. Mobilized by Lulka’s choreographic model of zoology, the unending labyrinth of enclosures would contain varied habitats, varied geometries, and maybe even a varied composition of animal types designed to engage each other. Like a multisensory Rubik’s cube, this arrangement could offer tactile, olfactory, gustatory, auditory, and visual stimuli that bemuse, enthrall, and excite animals. The sequence of sites, from austere to naturalistic and otherwise, would likewise be indefinitely multifaceted. The vibrational quality of animals in their animacy would be affirmed by such transformative tactics. Overall, the chapter’s objective in developing these contortions is to design a panoply of habitats that does not fall into a condition of monotony and thereby outpaces an animal’s ability to sense its own captivity (and thus precludes the stress of confinement). If there is emancipatory potential in the process of continually changing scenes at the zoo, Gay Bradshaw and her coauthors, Barbara Smuts and Debra Durham, want to foment it in the direction of fuller liberation by means of a thoroughgoing decolonization of interspecies relations. Their motivating assumption is self-critical of human society’s role regarding the wider world of living beings: reflective of culture at large zoos, wildlife parks, and conservation reserves are rooted in models that privilege humans as righteous social engineers of/over other species. Whether described as entertainment or education, wildlife is confined to serve human needs. Yet, as these authors indicate, the life sciences have erased the self-serving essence of human differentiation through their embrace of a new transpecific paradigm. With this conceptual and perceptual shift, “Open Door Policy” argues, ethics and science align and compel a sharing of right or agency across species. Seen through postcolonial lenses, animal confinement emerges logically in parallel with concentration camps, internments, and relocation stations; however, the standpoint of postcolonialism equally implies that institutions wherein there is demand for animals to be visual targets (e.g., zoos, ecotourism) can no longer be presumed legitimate. Consequently, Bradshaw and

Off the Ark: Restoring Biophilia 

7

company move toward feral models of potential interaction, where places and spaces offer possibilities (rather than guarantees) for meetings between and among members of different species. Their portrayals of ferine comportment in biodiverse settings are scientifically informed yet intensely personal and evocative. This brings us to the frontier of research, design, and practice regarding animal encounter in contemporary cultural context. If we “open the doors” of the zoo, surrender the pseudosalvific mantle of the ark-metaphor, and finally say farewell to Noachic pretensions, what’s next for interspecies coexistence or contact in this third-millennium world of postmodernity? Regarding relative hinterlands, futures scholar Natalie Dian and educational theorist Helena Pedersen envision “Earth Trusts” in which human-animal encounters are made possible largely without artificial intervention and without symbolic and physical appropriation and commodification of nature. Their objective is to apply methodological tools from the discipline of futures studies—environmental scanning, trend analysis, and scenario creation—in order to delineate the most viable aspects of their prototype. This vision of bioregional stewardship is placed twenty-five years into the future, which provides for creative innovation while allowing for changes indicated by some current trends. With respect to urban(izing) areas, the best bet on the horizon would appear to be the vision of “Zoöpolis” that has recently taken shape in the geographic imaginary theorized by Jennifer Wolch (reprinted herein). Instead of setting aside spots for humans to gawk at animal others kept in faux-wild oases of biodiversity, imagine cityscapes and urban life transfigured by nurturance of cross-species conviviality. Such an overhaul of metropolitan mindset and layout would encourage urbanites to view free-ranging animals in their midst more as neighbors than as nuisances, and hence require a slew of biophilic changes in planning, land use, architecture, education, and aesthetics. This revolution in outlook and routine presupposes a rather sweeping cultural shift: the ideological and literal/material deconstruction of human(ist) empire, the dismantling of species apartheid, and the abandonment of zoocidal policies; ultimately and affirmatively, what is advocated under the banner of zoopolis (and that of biome-trusts as well) is the toposophic reconstruction of lifeways that celebrate coevolution with fellow earthlings.6 Sandwiching Wolch’s reprint are two chapters that frame presuppositions and implications, respectively, of the zoopolitan vision. In his essay on “Effectively Enacting Eden,” Matthew Chrulew shows the way toward zoopolis through comprehensive review, critical analysis, and creative synthesis of the biocultural ideology and politics that structure contemporary zoo-concepts

8



Introduction

and -praxis. His chapter brings one to the leading edge of zoo-theory even as it deepens one’s understanding of the philosophic and social developments that point there. Tacking between—yet never sailing into—easy apologetics and simple abolitionism, he arrives at a vantage point from which the complexity of Wolch’s model can be made out and made use of more readily and robustly. In my own contribution on “Inventionist Ethology,” I showcase and interpret relevant work of techno-artist and performance designer Natalie Jeremijenko as a provocative kind of transpecific engagement especially helpful in making transitions from zoo to zoopolis. Her reverse-engineered “ooz” projects restore what we might call “loco-liberty” (spatial and motile freedom of place) to other animals while yet promoting a role for humans to participate in cross-species encounters and even instigate the development of communicative creoles therefrom. Salient here is the gambit of rehabilitating technology from its demonization in much ecosophy, in order to demonstrate its value in the creative formation of prosthetic practices for interrelational “eco-feedback.” Ethological forays of this inventionist sort can help zoopolites to transcend the dead-end policies of pseudopreserving captives and sequestering humanity—thus to relinquish species imperium and rejoin the community of life. —Ralph R. Acampora, Forest Close, January 2010

Notes 1. Mrs. Noyes (fictional wife of the Biblical Noah), protagonist in Timothy Findley’s novel, Not Wanted on the Voyage (New York: Delacorte Press, 1984), 251. 2. See, e.g., my “Extinction by Exhibition: Looking at and in the Zoo,” Human Ecology Review 5, no. 1 (1998) and “Zoöpticon: Inspecting the Site of Live Animal Infotainment,” in Phenomenological Approaches to Popular Culture, ed. Carroll and Tafoya (Bowling Green University: Popular Press, 2000), 151–61. 3. Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos (Santa Cruz: No Voice Unheard, 2007), 96. Note that the pornographic dynamic would not diminish even if the bears and chimps were kept in naturalistic exhibits replete with behavioral enrichments (just as relatively well-paid, airbrushed Penthouse “pets” and Playboy “bunnies” no less exemplify human pornography than do “models” working at the seedier end of that genre’s spectrum). 4. Cf. Jensen on zoographic miseducation and manipulation: “Zoos teach us implicitly that animals need to be managed. . . . They are ours. We must assume the interspecies version of the white man’s burden, and out of the goodness of our hearts we must benevolently control their lives. We must ‘rescue them from the wild’” (87).

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5. Sarah Wright, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, Kate Lloyd, Lak Lak Burarrwanga, and Djawa Burarrwanga write resonantly about participant-observation of AboriginalAustralian eco-expeditions—see “‘That Means the Fish are Fat’: Sharing Experiences of Animals through Indigenous-owned Tourism,” Current Issues in Tourism 12, no. 5 (2009): 505–27. 6. At this juncture it would be well to recall that, though zoos pervert biophilia, this latter impulse is yet eminently worth cultivating—as Jensen puts it (93, italics original), “Humans visit zoos because we need contact with wild animals. We need wild animals to remind us of the enormous complexity of life, to remind us that the world was not made just for us, to remind us that we are not the center of the universe. We need them to teach us how to live.” Cf. John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?,” in About Looking (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 6: “With their parallel lives, animals offer man [sic] a companionship which is different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species [Geschlecht?].”

CHAPTER ONE



Zoos as Welfare Arks? Reflections on an Ethical Course for Zoos Koen Margodt

Conserving Species or Zoos? How would you design zoos as conservation arks, knowing that many species face extinction and you could help only some of them? You might take a variety of measures to help as many species as possible, such as (i) supporting the ones most in need, (ii) focusing in particular on smaller species to make better use of the limited space, (iii) keeping species that are inexpensive and easy to breed, and (iv) returning them as soon as possible to the wild. Are zoos taking such desiderata serious? There is no doubt that many species are in peril. The 2007 IUCN Red List mentions that some 60,000 species of vertebrates and around 1,200,000 invertebrate species have been listed thus far. The percentage of these that is threatened is somewhere between 10 percent and 23 percent for the vertebrates and between 0.18 percent and 51 percent for the invertebrates (see also below).1 This indicates that the total number of listed species that are threatened—and thus should be classified as Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically Endangered—ranges between 8,160 and 625,800.2 It is even more complicated to assess the total number of existing species, though it is clear that the 1.6 million of listed species of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and other species form only a relatively small part. Biologist Edward Wilson refers to figures ranging somewhere between 5 and 30 million. He argues that even a conservative calculation leads to the conclusion

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Koen Margodt

that each year about 27,000 species are disappearing, most of which are invertebrates.3 What are zoos undertaking to deal with this extinction threat? In 1993 the international zoo community, represented by the International Union of Directors of Zoological Gardens (IUDZG), published in cooperation with the International Conservation Union (IUCN) The World Zoo Conservation Strategy: The Role of the Zoos and Aquaria of the World in Global Conservation.4 About 15 years later a conservation symposium resulted in an extensive and remarkable reassessment by zoo practitioners and theorists of conservation efforts by zoos, namely Zoos in the 21st Century: Catalysts for Conservation?5 Together with other resources, these publications offer an interesting picture of zoos’ conservation intentions, efforts, and results. The target of zoo breeding programs is to maintain about 90 percent of genetic variability of a species for a period of 100 to 200 years or longer. This requires a population of about 250 to 500 animals. The World Zoo Conservation Strategy assumes that there are about 1,000 organized zoos, which have together space for 500,000 animals. It is thus estimated that zoos can organize captive breeding programs for 1,000 to 2,000 species.6 When taking into account that there are alone already some 8,000 to 625,000 species threatened among the listed vertebrates and invertebrates, it should be clear that zoos can offer space at best to only a very limited fraction of these species. Though Colin Tudge’s Last Animals at the Zoo: How Mass Extinction Can Be Stopped (1991) is a very informative book, its subtitle is clearly misplaced.7 The comparison between the conservation intentions of zoos and the image of an Ark that rescues endangered species may be attractive, but when applying it to the current extinction threat most threatened species simply risk drowning. There is insufficient space on the Zoo Ark, even if zoos were to focus entirely on conserving threatened species. Moreover, the real number of captive breeding programs seems to remain below the goal of 1,000 to 2,000 threatened species. The most intensively managed breeding programs of the AZA (the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, formerly American Zoo and Aquarium Association) and EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquariums) are respectively called Species Survival Plans (SSPs) and European Endangered species Programs (EEPs). In 1991 there were 110 SSPs and 76 EEPs, whereas in 2008 there were 114 SSPs and 172 EEPs. For a variety of reasons, one cannot simply count the number of SSPs and EEPs together in order to know for how many threatened species zoos have organized breeding programs. On the one hand, an SSP sometimes comprises more than one species. The 114 SSPs cover all together more than 180 species. In addition, besides the SSPs and EEPs, there

Zoos as Welfare Arks? Reflections on an Ethical Course for Zoos



13

are also other, less strictly organized breeding programs, in which zoos receive guidelines that they can follow on a voluntary basis. These are Population Management Plans (PMPs, organized by the AZA) and European Studbooks (ESBs, by EAZA). As of 2008 there were 311 PMPs and 165 ESBs. And there also exist breeding programs outside of the AZA and EAZA, such as the AAPs (African Propagation Programs) and ASMPs (Australasian Species Management Programs).8 On the other hand, these are all regional breeding programs and there exists extensive species overlap between these programs. Also, breeding programs such as SSPs and EEPs refer in particular to species that need intensive management within zoos. These species are thus not necessarily threatened in the wild. Examples are the bottlenose dolphin (EEP), the keel-billed toucan (SSP) and toco toucan (SSP), none of which are considered threatened in the wild—all three have a status of “least concern.”9 The main goal of SSPs, EEPs, and other breeding programs is to assure a genetically and demographically healthy, stable population in captivity. All in all, it remains unclear for how many threatened species zoos have now developed breeding programs, but it seems this ranges around a few hundred instead of the potential 1,000 to 2,000 that was brought forward by the World Zoo Conservation Strategy. Space on the Zoo Ark is limited and many species are in peril. Therefore, one would expect zoos to face enormous dilemmas in making selections among the threatened species that they will try to save from extinction. However, though it is difficult to assess for how many threatened species zoos have breeding programs, it is obvious that only a very limited part of available space in most organized zoos is dedicated to threatened species. In 1991, zoo conservationist Ulysses Seal of the Captive Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG) referred to estimates of the ISIS (International Species Information System), according to which only 5 to 10 percent of the space available in zoos participating in this system (at that time 370 zoos in 34 countries) were allocated to endangered species.10 In 2007, Alexandra Zimmermann (Chester Zoo and Oxford University) and Roger Wilkinson (Chester Zoo) reported on a survey they sent to 725 zoos and aquariums in 68 countries. 26 percent of these institutions responded (which was 190 institutions in 40 countries) and 72 percent of the respondents reported that fewer than 30 percent of the species in their care were listed by the IUCN as threatened species. 29 percent keep less than 10 percent threatened species and 43 percent state that somewhere between 11 percent and 30 percent of their collection consists of threatened species. 19 percent of the respondents hold 31–50 percent of threatened species, 5 percent have 51–70 percent of threatened species, and

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the remaining 4 percent (or less than ten institutions) hold more than 70 percent of threatened species.11 Mark Stanley Price and John Fa of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust analyzed the conservation status of animals kept by 188 South American zoos. These zoos hold 49,665 individuals of 1,211 species and the collections are predominated by mammals, birds, and reptiles. Within these three groups only 8 percent of the species are threatened. And only 13 species counting 54 individuals are classified as critically endangered. The authors selected South American zoos for illustrative purposes, not because this region’s performance was radically different from that of other regions.12 These data put the idea of the zoo community as a Conservation Ark for threatened species in perspective. Only a very limited amount of available space in zoos is dedicated to threatened species. In other words space for threatened species seems to be restricted to one of the Zoo Ark’s lifeboats, whereas the majority of its inhabitants are simply not members of a threatened species (not of vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered species). This has been so for decades, and it makes one wonder what course the Zoo Ark is following. Zoos do not tend to maximize their conservation role by breeding especially smaller species that breed quickly and are less expensive. No, their focus is rather on large animals. The majority of their breeding programs consist of mammals (52.62 percent). Birds come in second place (35.56 percent), and both groups of organisms represent together 88 percent of all breeding programs of the AZA and EAZA (see table 1.1). Reptiles come in third place (9.32 percent), and amphibians, fishes, and invertebrates each represent barely 1 percent. When looking at the more strictly organized breeding programs— SSPs and EEPs—this pattern is even more pronounced: mammals represent no less than 70 percent of these breeding programs, whereas birds take up around 20 percent (see table 1.1 and figure 1.1). Together, both groups correspond to 90 percent of all SSPs and EEPs. There is no ecological justification for these proportions. They do not reflect the percentages of threatened species as listed in the 2007 IUCN Red List—see table 1.2. It would be inaccurate to state that large animals in particular are threatened with extinction. Neither is this especially so for mammals and birds. For example and as indicated by Lesley Dickie, Jeffrey Bonner, and Chris West, the percentage of threatened amphibians (29–31 percent according to latest data) exceeds that of threatened mammals (20–22 percent) or birds (12 percent). Notwithstanding the zoo bias toward mammals and birds, it is pointed out that amphibians would be excellent candidates for breeding and reintroduction programs, due to their high fecundity, low maintenance costs, and few behavioral problems.13

Table 1.1. Numbers of AZA and EAZA Breeding Programs According to Taxa

Mammals Birds Reptiles Amphibians Fishes Invertebrates Totals

SSP

PMP

EEP

ESB

Totals

Percentage

Totals (SSP/EEP)

Percentage (SSP/EEP)

75 22 11 3 1 2 114

121 147 37 4 1 1 311

126 37 7 0 0 2 172

79 65 16 2 2 1 165

401 271 71 9 4 6

52.62 35.56 9.32 1.18 0.52 0.79

201 59 18 3 1 4

70.28 20.63 6.29 1.05 0.35 1.40

Calculations based upon AZA, www.aza.org/CandS/SSP.xls (September 8, 2008), AZA, www.aza.org/CandS/ PMP.xls (September 8, 2008) and EAZA, “Breeding Programs—Statistics,” EAZA, www.eaza.net/index.php (September 8, 2008).

Figure 1.1. Percentages of SSPs and EEPs according to Groups of Organisms. (Calculation based upon table 1.1) Table 1.2. Numbers and Percentages of Threatened Species (as reported in the IUCN Red List of 2007)

Mammals Birds Reptiles Amphibians Fishes Invertebrates

Number of Described Species

Number of Evaluated Species

Threatened Percentage of Species Listed

Threatened Percentage of Species Evaluated

5,416 9,956 8,240 6,199 30,000 1,203,375

4,863 9,956 1,385 5,915 3,119 4,116

20 12 5 29 4 0.18

22 12 30 31 39 51

IUCN, “Table 1: Numbers of threatened species by major groups of organisms (1996–2007),” IUCN, www .iucnredlist.org/info/2007RL_Stats_Table%201.pdf (September 8, 2008).

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Moreover, it would be a misconception to say that large animals in particular play an important ecological role. As argued by Edward Wilson, keystone species may as easily comprise smaller organisms.14 Zoos are apparently aware of the need of making greater efforts for smaller species, as indicated by their participation in project “Amphibian Ark” and the marking of 2008 as the “Year of the Frog.” The Amphibian Ark’s director Kevin Zippel comments in Scientific American that amphibians are “absolutely vital to their ecosystems” and that “for the price to keep a single elephant in captivity for a year, about $100,000, you could pay for the expertise and facilities to save an entire amphibian species.”15 One reason for the disproportions in breeding programs may be that it is far easier to obtain reptiles, amphibians, and fishes from the wild in comparison to mammals or birds. Whereas 79 percent of mammals and 63 percent of birds mentioned in the ISIS (International Species Information System) zoo database of 2003 were born in captivity, no less than 59 percent of reptiles (over 33,500 individuals) and 73 percent of amphibians (more than 16,000 individuals) were caught in the wild.16 The availability of these species from the wild may mean that there was far less pressure on zoos to organize breeding programs in order to assure the presence of these groups of organisms for continued display in zoos. In addition, and perhaps even more important, there is clearly a strong preference for keeping and breeding (large) mammals. Zoos are typically about elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers, dolphins, bears, and gorillas. The motivation for this is not ecological, but rather anthropocentric–species selection by zoos is driven largely by economic interests, perceived visitor preferences, and aesthetic appraisals. For example, Colin Tudge writes that ideally we would conserve California condors and every Amazonian beetle, but if one would need to choose “then it would seem perverse to sacrifice the bird for the beetle: like throwing out a Rembrandt to make way for an amateur watercolour.”17 And Jon Luoma mentioned in 1987 the following comments by Tom Foose (then conservation coordinator for the AAZPA—now AZA—and later CBSG Executive Officer): Indeed, zoos can’t serve every animal, says Foose. They tend, if only for their own economic survival, to focus on creatures that the public finds most fascinating—animals with whatever charisma it takes to propel those visitors through the turnstiles. And that, says Foose, is where zoos can and will concentrate—on the big and attractive animals. He’s fond of using a term that cropped up at a meeting of zoo biologists to describe those target animals: charismatic megavertebrates.18

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In the end, many of the species currently kept by zoos may become threatened, and then zoos could argue that their current decisions in terms of species selection were visionary. However, we should not allow such ecological camouflage to cloud the fundamentally self-serving motivation of zoos: Zoo conservation is in the first place about conserving zoos, not about conserving threatened species! If it was all about conserving species threatened in the wild, zoos would focus in the first place on those species that need their assistance right now the most. Moreover, they would return those species as soon as possible to the wild, in order to make space for other threatened species in need of support. However, successful reintroductions (as illustrated by the Arabian oryx and the black-footed ferret) are quite rare.

Eternal Arks? In 1995, Benjamin Beck (then at the National Zoological Park, Washington) mentioned that about 145 projects are known to have released captivebred animals in order to reestablish or reinforce the natural population for conservation purposes. Only 11 percent (or sixteen projects) of these contributed to the establishment of a self-sustaining natural population.19 An analysis from 2007 investigated the origin of released threatened reptiles and amphibians. Out of 38 threatened species, only 10 percent (or four species) came from zoos. The released individuals of twelve species were translocated (moved from one location in the wild to another) and twenty-two species came from specialized facilities of various types.20 Whatever their purpose may be, zoos do not release the animals they breed as soon as possible back into the wild, even though this would be logical from economic, ecological, genetic, and behavioral perspectives. Most species simply stay on the so-called Ark (which should not surprise us, as most of these are not even threatened). Zoos seem to have selected a range of species that they want to keep over the very long term—as mentioned above, their target is 100 to 200 years or longer. Robert Loftin pointed out that even where zoos consider reintroductions, they plan to continue keeping a considerable population in captivity and he used the notion of zoos as “perpetual arks.”21 Though the keeping of a captive population as a safety net might sound reasonable, from a conservation perspective it is an unacceptable luxury when taking into account the numbers of species facing extinction. The idea of a perpetual or eternal ark may be a tricky and untenable one. Zoos tend to keep a large variety of animals and focus in particular on larger, charismatic species. This policy is having very negative effects and is even

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undermining the interests of zoos themselves, namely maintaining healthy populations of species in captivity over the long term. According to Anne Baker (The Toledo Zoo, Ohio) the AZA’s 2002 Annual Report on Conservation and Science provides sufficient information on 95 breeding programs (SSPs and PMPs) to analyze their long-term viability. A good viability means that the gene diversity is greater than 90 percent, the population size is 200 or larger and the population is stable or growing. However, Baker’s study indicates that no less than 65 percent of these breeding programs have a low long-term viability. More precisely, 67 percent reported a population size of less than 100 animals and 25 percent stated their current gene diversity to be less than 90 percent. Part of the causes underlying this problem is the failure to make choices, adds Baker. Zoos want to keep too many species and she gives the example of guenons, for which no less than ten species had been recommended for SSP management. However, none of these species have a population above eighty individuals and no target population size is set above 125 individuals. As a consequence, the long-term viability for each species is low, whereas a restriction to only those two species with the largest population size and gene diversity might lead to long-term viability.22 If zoos would focus on a limited selection of small species with a decent population size, they might do a much better job. However, it seems to me that in many ways so-called modern zoos are still keeping animals as stamp collections (which typically contain just a few items of many kinds)—a picture usually associated with nineteenth-century zoos. Individual zoos tend to have their own preferences about what species they want to keep, and it is apparently most difficult to reach an agreement about priority species. Within this political reality, zoos rather seem to opt for a range of alternative solutions for dealing with their self-generated genetic problems, though these are highly questionable from an ethical perspective (see below).

The Potential Conservation Role of Zoos In general the question remains whether zoos might offer a desired roadway for supporting species threatened in the wild. Though zoos have reintroduced some species back into the wild over the last decades, there remain considerable disadvantages. Zoos tend to underline their value in supporting species that risk going through a so-called genetic bottleneck in the wild. Even if zoos could deliver sufficient animals with a proper genetic constitution, the fact remains that one should not consider merely the genetic level. Animals in the wild have a rich variety of skills and knowledge. They have learned how to deal with

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their environment—there is extensive ethological evidence of information that is passed on from one generation to the next and of variety between populations, indeed of animals having cultures. By taking animals away from their habitats and breeding them for several generations in captivity, zoos are pushing animals through what I call a “behavioral bottleneck.” Enrichment can only compensate for this in a very limited way. Stanley Price and Gordon argue that differences in complexity of habitat and learned behavior explain why it is so much more difficult to organize reintroductions for orangutans in comparison with more genetically hard-wired animals such as Arabian oryxes.23 Hillary Box includes within her list of survival skills the challenge of orientation and movement in space, selecting appropriate food, obtaining suitable places for resting and sleeping, dealing successfully with conspecifics and members of other species (predator avoidance).24 Besides the lack of particular skills, animals in zoos may very well go through a process of unnatural selection. The animals that adapt best to captive conditions (the most docile ones) tend to be the most successful ones, but these may not be the appropriate ones for reintroduction into the wild (due to lack of fear of humans). Apart from this, maintaining and breeding animals in zoos and the setting up of reintroduction programs are extremely expensive. In 1989, the cost of maintaining a captive population of 550 golden lion tamarins at 100 zoos was estimated at $911,875 per year and for the period 1983–1989 the reintroduction of tamarins was estimated to be $22,563 per surviving reintroduced tamarin (that is forty-eight individuals in 1989, namely twenty-seven of seventy-one released animals and twenty-one of twenty-six born individuals). Matthew Hatchwell (Wildlife Conservation Society), Alex Rübel (Zoo Zürich), and colleagues remark that “The costs associated with setting up and running reintroduction projects in developing countries are on a par with those of entire protected areas, which protect many more animals as well as their habitats.”25 Even though there exists a huge extinction threat, one should not conclude too fast that zoos are the answer, not even for saving critically endangered species. For example, George Schaller has written that the future of the fewer than 2,000 remaining giant pandas would be brighter if conservation money had been invested in antipoaching and forest protection measures rather than in the construction of captive breeding stations.26 And no zoo has a breeding program for the critically endangered mountain gorillas, even though less than 1,000 animals remain in the wild. Though their area within the Virunga mountains of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Burundi is rather limited in surface and for many decades situated within a turbulent

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political region and surrounded by an expanding human population, the mountain gorilla population has remained relatively stable over the last decades and has even slightly grown.27 These critically endangered species do not need an expensive breeding program, but rather appropriate goodwill. The removal of animals from their natural habitats should be avoided at all costs. Whenever a natural population risks destruction or disappearance due to (genetic) isolation in small island habitats, it is much more desirable to build corridors or to translocate animals to safer areas of natural habitat. Translocations are cheaper and more successful than reintroductions, which should not surprise us given the learning bottleneck in zoos. Griffith and colleagues have estimated the success of translocations at 75 percent, whereas they mention 38 percent for the reintroduction of captive-bred animals (compare with Beck, only 11 percent). Furthermore, beyond conservation and economics, the lower success rate of reintroductions clearly also means paying a higher price in terms of animal welfare.28 But what about an indirect conservation role for zoos? According to this line of thought, zoos might contribute to the conservation of wildlife by raising funds, educating the public, and by sharing scientific and technological expertise that may be useful for conservation efforts in the wild. First, very few data seem to be available that allow assessing the zoo’s indirect conservation role. For example, Sarah Christie (Zoological Society of London) remarks about her efforts to collect data on zoo funding for conservation that “all those who have been involved in collection of such data so far agree that getting blood out of stones is child’s play in comparison.”29 Similarly, Eleanor Sterling (American Museum of Natural History) and colleagues were asked to evaluate zoo conservation education independently. However, they write that the “dearth of published evaluations prevented us from doing so”30 and suggest that zoos should not only publish results about what works but also about what does not work. Second, available information on fundraising and education by zoos is not particularly impressive. Though individual zoos such as the Bronx Zoo (WCS) have for many years given support to a large variety of conservation programs, most zoos donate very little. Zimmermann and Wilkinson refer to an AZA study of 2000 by Bettinger and Quinn, which indicates that zoos spend only 0.1 percent of operating budgets on conservation and this already includes staff time and zoo-based research.31 In connection with education, zoos are proud to indicate that they reach some 600 million visitors each year.32 Given these numbers, the lack of evaluations of educational impact is indeed most remarkable. And the results of the few evaluations that are available may explain why zoos don’t prioritize evaluating their education

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impact—those studies point toward visitors being motivated in particular by fun and family enjoyment, little interest in learning, few people reading zoo signs, not staying long at enclosures to observe animal behavior, zoo visits increasing feelings of superiority toward nature, stimulation of the anthropomorphizing of animals, and even a decrease in knowledge scores after zoo visits.33 Third and perhaps most important, any meaningful indirect contribution by zoos to the conservation of wildlife could also be obtained when working from an entirely different kind of zoo philosophy, as I’ll argue throughout the remainder of this chapter. This brings us to the question regarding the value of species.

Species versus Individuals? What is the value of species and are species more valuable than individuals? Within conservation discourse it is often taken for granted that species are more important than their individual members. However, the conservation of species never can have as its ultimate motivation the interests of these species as such. Certainly, one may build an argument about the need to conserve species because of their aesthetic, economic, scientific, ecological, or spiritual value. However, these are not intrinsic but instrumental values in the sense that they are related to the interests of other beings, namely humans. Ultimately, we appreciate the beauty of species, we benefit from their economic value, not species themselves and as such. Apart from these anthropocentric interests, the conservation of species may also be advocated because of the interests of their individual members. The concept of a species as such and that of its individual members are two very different things, as philosopher Dale Jamieson explains in a clear way: “Individual creatures often have welfares, but species never do. The notion of a species is an abstraction; the idea of its welfare is a human construction. While there is something that it is like to be an animal there is nothing that it is like to be a species.”34 Whether the conservation of species takes into account or is even based upon the aim to protect the welfare interests of (all of) its individual members makes an enormous difference. This becomes clear when one applies the concept of sustainable use to the conservation of species. This concept has in particular become popular with organizations such as the IUCN, WWF and UNEP since the early 1990s.35 The idea behind it is that we may use natural resources at rates within their capacity for renewal. Though this is a most important concept, by itself it contains no guarantees at all for the welfare of individual animals. Within this view, one may utilize animals as long as the

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species itself does not suffer from it—that is, as long as a sufficiently large population remains in order to guarantee the continued existence of the species. For example, on such a view it is fine to kill whales, shoot elephants, and hunt seals, as long as this happens within certain limits that assure the total population remains stable. Trophy hunters could shoot every year a very limited quota of gorillas, as long as this doesn’t harm the overall continued existence of the species—they might, for example, compensate by paying a considerable amount of conservation dollars or euros. In this sense a view of sustainable use becomes one of sustainable exploitation. One may prune away the profits or interest, as long as the capital remains intact for future exploitation. Such a view is unacceptable for anyone who is sensitive to how much we have in common with other animals. Indeed, imagine applying the concept of sustainable use to humans. There would be no concern about killing many human beings, as long as the species Homo sapiens remains unthreatened. Moreover, this concept might appeal for drastically reducing the human population in whatever way, as our current population numbers are unsustainable and threaten not only the continued existence of humanity, but that of many other species and entire ecosystems as well. Any sensible person would disagree with inhumane solutions to human overpopulation or with sustainable exploitation of humans—and rightly so. Such a position would also in all probability make reference to the mental characteristics of members of Homo sapiens. A similar logic applies to many nonhuman animals. Though species differences are real, many animals have rich mental lives, are sensitive beings with welfare interests as well. Aiming to protect their welfare interests may be a strong motivation for conserving species. Certainly, even when one is driven by respect for animals as individuals, considering the species level nevertheless remains very important—as, for example, fragmentation of species over isolated island habitats may lead to decrease of genetic variability and ultimately result in populations no longer being viable. A philosophy based upon respect for individual beings should thus never lose sight of the species level. Before considering the implications of this conservation view (based on respect for individuals) as the course to be followed by zoos, I will first make some remarks about the welfare of animals living in zoos.

Some Welfare Problems in Zoo Enclosures Within the zoo world and perhaps even beyond, the single most famous animal of 2007 was without doubt the young polar bear Knut, who was

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23

born December 2006 in Berlin Zoo. Within the first 50 days that he went public, Knut attracted no less than 500,000 visitors. The visitor flood and a wide array of merchandise earned Berlin Zoo about five million euros (or $7.87 million) in 2007 alone. Knut got on the cover of Vanity Fair, starred in a book and movie, inspired Knut-mugs, Knut-candy, and Knut-toys. The market shares of Berlin Zoo jumped from 2,000 euro to 4,820 euro. Knut has become a logo (Respect_Habitats.Knut) and this label will be used to approve of sustainable projects. Companies may buy a Knut license and profits will be used to fund conservation projects.36 Knut is an excellent example of what has been called a charismatic megavertebrate, or what I would rather name a “charismatic fundraiser.” This huge public fascination for Knut is not new; zoo visitors have felt strongly attracted to cute white polar bear cubs for a long time. For example, in 1950 London Zoo reached its highest number of visitors ever—3,100,000—and according to Solly Zuckerman this was in particular due to the birth of a polar bear cub.37 Several zoos are clearly inspired by the success logged by Berlin Zoo and are trying to follow suit. The Nürnberg Zoo, for example, is attempting to reach similar success through the female polar cub Flocke (or Snowflake). Though zoos are often critical about what is called a sentimental focus on individual animals, they obviously can’t resist the opportunities associated with such an appeal to young animals. And why not? What’s the problem? Isn’t it already difficult enough to raise conservation funding? The problem is with the polar bears themselves—the stories aren’t as bright as they might seem to be. Knut was rejected by his mother briefly after birth and needed to be hand-raised in the sole company of zookeepers. His twin brother died a few days after birth. Flocke was taken away from her mother Vera for hand-rearing as well. A movie fragment by Reuters on YouTube shows how Vera leaves her den with Flocke—where both should have stayed several months—and how Vera repeatedly drops Flocke from her mouth on the ground and down concrete steps. The zoo comments that Vera seemed agitated and disoriented for whatever reason and that she wanted to carry her cub to safety in another part of the enclosure. The day before, another polar bear mother—Wilma—had eaten both her twin cubs in Nürnberg Zoo.38 All this should have come as no surprise at all. The keeping and breeding of polar bears in captivity has always been problematic and zoos that opt to do so are responsible for allowing a disastrous welfare experiment to take place. In The Welfare Ark I referred to a zoo article by a conservator of Antwerp Zoo, who wrote in 1980 that all polar bear cubs born at the zoo died due to maternal neglect or because their mothers killed them. The mothers

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took the cubs in their mouths and walked anxiously around with them, just as if they wanted to hide them somewhere. The conservator attributed this behavior to a lack of privacy, disliking the nesting boxes, and negative climatological conditions. Three decades later, zoos continue to struggle with the same kinds of problems, though some of them—such as Antwerp Zoo—have fortunately stopped keeping polar bears. I noted that of the more than 50 polar bear births reported to the International Zoo Yearbook in 1995–1996, no less than 73 percent of the cubs had died, whereas a UFAW study mentioned a mortality of up to 38 percent in the wild.39 Privacy and the cubbing den seem to be important factors. In nature, the mother stays in her den from October to February or April. She is very choosy about the spot and the kind of snow used. She may walk many miles and dig several test pits, before choosing a final location. The den is continuously adjusted during the confinement, in order to regulate the supply of fresh air and the temperature for her cubs. Sometimes, cubs may be eaten in nature as well, e.g., when the mother is malnourished or when she smells or hears the threat of a male polar bear. Digging the den in a more remote place, away from the sea, usually prevents cannibalism by male bears.40 In captivity male bears may be around, visitors may cause disturbance and stress (they make a lot of noise on the YouTube video showing Vera and Flocke), the breeding space may be inappropriate, the mother may have no experience in caring for young ones (behavioral bottleneck), and her mental state may be questionable, as indicated by stereotypical behavior. In Berlin Zoo, the father of Knut—Lars—was not only around, but he reportedly tried to attack and eat his son several times.41 Polar bears are prone to stereotypical behavior in zoos—such as pacing to and fro, head-bobbing, and swimming incessant figure eights. Ros Clubb and Georgia Mason (University of Oxford) mention a stereotypy frequency of around 40 percent and infant mortality of around 65 percent for polar bears in zoos. Moreover, their research of carnivores shows that problems correlate with the size of their natural home range and conclude that these stem from constraints imposed upon their natural behavior. A typical polar bear enclosure is only one millionth the size of its minimum home range.42 Stereotypical behavior is generally associated with poor welfare, monotonous environments, lack of autonomy, frustration, stress and/or boredom. It has been suggested that the repetitiveness of stereotypies may increase the release of opiates and thus have an analgesic effect in order to cope with poor welfare conditions that are otherwise beyond the animal’s control. Some video footage suggests that Knut as well may be developing stereotypical behavior—namely pacing to and fro a part of his enclosure.43

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25

Because of these welfare problems, some zoos have stopped keeping polar bears—but others continue with this experiment, even when it means breeding young cubs for hand-rearing in isolation from conspecifics. It is doubtful how successful they will be. The captive population is small—ISIS mentions less than 200 individuals: 86 males, 97 females, 1 with unknown sex, and only 8 births at the time of consultation.44 Given the lack of reproduction, zoos will become more and more challenged by an aging polar bear population. In 1993, already 35 percent of the female polar bears were older than twenty years.45 This means that zoos will more and more depend upon breeding with older individuals. Indeed, Knut’s thirty-two-year-old grandmother Lisa has received the company of ten-year-old Yoghi from the Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich—both zoos hope that the bears will reproduce. (The twoyear-old Gianna, who was apparently under threat of being killed by Yoghi at Hellabrunn Zoo, has been introduced to Knut.46) The example of polar bears shows some of the welfare problems that may occur in zoos. A major problem is what I’ve called the lack of “welfare autonomy.” Animals with welfare autonomy have the possibility to live according to their own needs and preferences. This requires (i) a rich and stimulating environment, (ii) an environment which fits their needs (usually this will be their natural habitat, the environment to which they’ve adapted over millions of years), and (iii) the possibility of making their own choices. Lack of welfare autonomy may result in frustration (e.g., no suitable cubbing den), stress (e.g., noisy visitors), and boredom (monotonous environment).47 These problems may lead to undesirable behavior such as stereotypies, increased aggression, or passivity (which may actually be a kind of learned helplessness toward their inescapable environment). Just as there exist excellent conservation reasons for keeping small animals in particular (see above), there is also a strong welfare logic for shifting from large animals to smaller ones. In 1996 Trevor Poole and Graham Law (Universities Federation for Animal Welfare or UFAW) suggested that if an enclosure cannot meet the demands of a large animal, it may be worth considering that it be converted into an enclosure for smaller species.48 The same enclosure may indeed be more spacious for smaller animals. For example, an enclosure once used for polar bears may be turned into one for small primates, such as golden lion tamarins. Concrete platforms can be replaced by grassy hills and space may be increased by using the third dimension through the planting of trees (thus offering climbing opportunities). Also, keeping smaller animals better allows meeting demands for composing a more suitable social group. Though all this is by itself no guarantee for a positive welfare situation, it is quite likely to mean an improvement in terms

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of animal welfare. Unfortunately, many zoos seem to believe that they must follow a stable course in displaying many species of large charismatic megavertebrates. Similarly, zoos might easily increase opportunities for more welfare autonomy by offering animals the opportunity to have more privacy via withdrawal from the sight of visitors. However, many zoos either prohibit access to indoor enclosures during the day or offer visitors the possibility to see animals both in their outdoor and indoor enclosures. This indicates that the priority of many zoos seems to be having animals on display—even though observations of, for example, primates have shown that the presence of visitors may lead to a significant increase in aggression as well as to a significant decrease in affiliative behavior such as grooming.49

Structural Animal Welfare Considerations Welfare problems are not limited to what happens inside a zoo enclosure. One should also take into account the structural welfare policy by zoos, and here it is important to return to some conservation considerations made above and especially to the challenge that zoos face to maintain sufficient genetic variation. It has been noted that zoos want to hold a large variety of species and that they tend to keep (large) mammals in particular. Both choices are clearly questionable for the maintaining of populations with sufficient long-term genetic variation. Recall that this is a very serious challenge for zoos, as a 2002 study showed that 65 percent of 95 breeding programs with sufficient data of the AZA (namely SSPs and PMPs) turned out to have a low long-term viability. What can one expect zoos to do within the constraints of their own species preferences? First, breeding programs demand a regular exchange of animals between zoos for breeding purposes and to avoid inbreeding. However, animals are taken away from their social group, strong social bonds may be broken, social stability may be disrupted, and transferred animals don’t choose where they’re going (they simply, all of a sudden, end up in a completely different physical and social environment). During their lifetime animals may have to live in many different zoo enclosures and this may have a stressful rather than an enriching impact. Second, breeding programs define which animals should reproduce with whom and how many young ones they may have. Once this target has been reached, the breeding animals become “surplus.” It is important to understand that so-called surplus animals are not necessarily the result of zoos being deficient in terms of having well-organized breeding programs—avoiding

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“surplus” animals is not only about applying contraception. Quite on the contrary, “surplus” animals are inherent to breeding programs directed at maintaining maximal genetic variation. Animals may be young and healthy, yet redundant for a breeding program and—worse—they may take up space and resources useable for other animals. The challenges that zoos face to assure long-term viability for their preferred species puts an enormous pressure on zoos to get rid of so-called surplus animals. There are not many options for putting animals outside of the structure of organized zoos, so that they no longer negatively influence space and resources within a given zoo community. These animals may be sent away to substandard places or they may be killed—zoo people prefer to speak of “culling.” One should not underestimate the numbers of healthy animals rendered useless within a breeding program. We must recognize that with each generation there is some loss of genetic variation, as each parent only passes half of its genes. In practice this may be compensated for by having large populations, but small zoo populations are vulnerable to this reality. In order to reduce the risk, breeding programs should make the generation time as long as possible—this means making the interval between each generation as large as possible, so that the loss of genetic variation is spread over time.50 In practice this may mean allowing a female tiger to have several litters of cubs over the years, to kill all of these except the last litter and finally only to allow these last-borns to reproduce. As a consequence, only the last-borns pass on their genes. By prolonging the interval between each generation thus, the loss of genetic variation can be slowed down. Given this situation and the economic appeal of breeding young ones for attracting visitors, it must be tempting indeed for zoos to consider breeding and killing animals in such a way. Though highly problematic from an ethical perspective that takes the welfare of individual animals into account, it makes perfect sense within the logic of a well-organized breeding program and within the context of sustainable use. In general, zoos tend to remain vague about the killing of healthy zoo animals; and whenever they are under fire, they tend to shift the debate to animals who are old, ill, or have only negative welfare prospects (such as being excluded from their social group). However, some zoo people (such as Robert Lacy of the Brookfield Zoo, Chicago) don’t play this game of hypocrisy and openly and consistently defend the killing of healthy animals no longer useful for breeding programs.51 Donald Lindburg (San Diego Zoo) and Linda Lindburg (managing editor of the journal Zoo Biology) have commented: “A representative statement of the position of zoos is provided by Lacy (1991), who advocates euthanasia for all individuals classified as surplus, irrespective

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of their state of health. Lacy’s position, while not the official policy of AZA, is widely embraced by its membership.”52 During a zoo congress held at Rotterdam Zoo, nearly all 100 zoo practitioners approved (in small workshops of ten people each) the killing of healthy animals—this wasn’t seen as a problem at all according to the congress organizers. Such killings were considered to be preferred above the sending of these animals to substandard enclosures (read behind-the-scenes enclosures) or substandard zoos.53 Apparently, few zoo people considered both scenarios unethical and avoidable. Third, the most convenient way for maintaining genetic variation over the long-term may be to get at regular intervals new animals with fresh blood on board the Zoo Ark—in other words capturing animals in the wild. This is precisely what several zoo people (such as William Conway from the Bronx Zoo) are proposing, namely the creation of “zoo reserves” or “extractive reserves.”54 This concept refers to financial support for local communities in order to conserve species and to harvest wild animals for export to zoos. Such an “extractive reserve could provide a legal and sustainable source of animals for zoo collections as well as for commercial exports.”55 Can you imagine zoos providing funding for the protection of gorilla habitat in Congo and to receive every now and then a shipment of a gorilla family in return? No doubt, the suggestion of capturing animals in the wild will be considered by many people—including many zoo visitors—to be an unacceptable and controversial proposal. However, zoo personnel probably realize that it may be an invaluable and inevitable outcome for keeping their Eternal Zoo Ark afloat—a situation that shows how conserving wildlife helps the conservation of zoos themselves.

The Wrongness of Captivity I’ve questioned the conservation policy by zoos and pointed to some of the welfare problems that zoos may face. However, does this mean that keeping animals in zoos is always wrong? Are zoos fundamentally immoral? In an historical article, originally published in 1976, the moral philosopher James Rachels raises the question of the right to liberty for animals. Rachels argues that the right to liberty is derived from a more basic right of not having one’s interests needlessly harmed. Applying this idea to the institution under consideration, can we truly say that the interests of all animals kept in zoos are by definition harmed? Is this because keeping animals in captivity is fundamentally wrong? But if so, what about animals living elsewhere in captivity, such as pets? And what if it turns out that some animals live in a positive welfare situation in zoos, that they are leading happy lives? Rachels

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writes that we have to distinguish both the kinds of animals involved and the degree of freedom required for their interests not to be harmed. He adds that lions may need to be completely free in order to thrive, whereas this “is not to say that the interests of chickens can be satisfied only in a state of total freedom: I can see no harm that would be done to their interests if they were kept captive while being allowed freedom to roam a large area, where they could do the things just mentioned [dust-bathing and building a nest].”56 I think that both criteria suggested by Rachels—kind of animal and degree of freedom—are important when considering holding animals in captivity. These apply when comparing the interests of pets and those of animals living in zoos. First, due to the long domestication process, pets such as dogs and cats have become more suitable for keeping in our societies than the animals typically kept in zoos. (This does not mean that I think the domestication process was justified.) Second, many dogs and cats may lead richer lives and have a larger degree of freedom than zoo animals. (Imagine that your dog or cat would be placed for the rest of her or his life into a zoo enclosure.) However, this does not mean that the welfare of pets is always better than that of animals living in zoos. There are many examples of bad and therefore unacceptable welfare circumstances of pets and other captive animals. Third, whereas we may have alternatives for animals living in zoos, there is no option of sending dogs or cats to the wild due to the domestication process. Rachels’s nuanced distinctions about kinds of animal and degree of freedom also hold for animals living within zoos. There may be a huge difference between on the one hand keeping frogs in a spacious green enclosure with ponds for swimming and on the other hand attempting to offer reasonable welfare conditions for polar bears, tigers, gorillas, or dolphins within a zoo setting. Still, the natural environment normally allows far more welfare autonomy because it’s a richer environment, is better suited to animals’ natural welfare needs, and offers them more choices. It is sometimes remarked that wildlife parks verge on the status of megazoos and that zoos approximate conservation parks, but the difference between both remains vast. Even a relatively small wildlife park such as Gombe (Tanzania) allows chimpanzees to roam over several square kilometres of rainforest, which is many times more than the largest zoo enclosure for chimpanzees (at best a few acres). Similarly, Gombe is far more complex and better meets the natural demands of chimpanzees than zoo enclosures might ever do. Sure, animals in the wild may have to pay a price for the freedom to make their own choices. Nature certainly contains risks—e.g., in terms of food scarcity, disease, or predators. Still, the advantages of a life in nature may be worth taking these risks. In addition, zoos have their own risks and animals

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in zoos may have less control in dealing with these (such as having no means to escape from aggressive conspecifics or noisy, stress-inducing visitors). We should not underestimate the welfare problems in zoos. Besides this, we have to see the flaws in the contention that animals are lucky to have food “offered on a plate.” It not only makes them dependent, but research shows that many animals actually prefer working for their food instead of taking it directly from an available food-source. Even in the presence of free food, rats and pigeons will spontaneously learn a behavioral task to obtain food.57 They have inquisitive minds and prefer to control events in their lives, to have welfare autonomy. However, is it never desirable to put animals in zoos, no matter how grim their prospects in the wild may be? Is it better to vanish in the wild than to lead a less rich life in captivity? What if we know that all chimpanzees in Gombe surely would become victims of the bushmeat trade over the next five years and that there is no way to avoid this, besides putting these chimpanzees in a captive setting for their own safety? Would it be more desirable to die free rather than to live in captivity? I’m not convinced that the first option would be the one to be preferred, or the one opted for by the chimpanzees themselves if they were to have a choice. Fortunately, the actual picture is not such a black-and-white one. Even were we to know that a particular area would certainly be destroyed, there are still in-between options—such as translocating animals to safer ground in the wild or to place them temporarily in a large sanctuary within their natural habitat (like the Jane Goodall Institute’s Tchimpounga sanctuary in Congo Brazzaville). These considerations bring us to my suggestion for a renewed policy for zoos.

Conclusion: An Ethical Course for The Zoo Ark? Numerous animals are living in deplorable welfare conditions in captivity—in substandard zoos, as (exotic) pets, in circuses, animal factories, or laboratories. A real solution for these problems is to be expected only from more stringent welfare laws, and these are urgently needed. However, as I suggested in 2000 in The Welfare Ark, the only ethical course I see for the Zoo Ark is in becoming a Welfare Ark for individual animals in need of help, and so for zoos to become sanctuaries. An example of an EAZA zoo that is fulfilling a sanctuary role is the primate rescue center Monkey World in the United Kingdom. This sanctuary has offered a new life to dozens of chimpanzees who were abused by photographers (along the Spanish coasts), as exotic pets, as circus animals, or in laboratories. Several of them had to work long days, were regularly beaten, had their teeth pulled out, or were put

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on drugs. In Monkey World these chimpanzees learn to live in social groups in green enclosures with a variety of climbing opportunities. In Hohenwald, Tennessee, The Elephant Sanctuary offers a new life to African and Asian elephants coming from zoos and circuses. The elephants can roam in herds through enclosures that count several hundred acres of pastures, woods, and streams.58 Such Welfare Arks may not only bring an invaluable contribution by helping individual animals in their care, but may also play an important indirect role of support to the conservation of threatened species in the wild by informing the public, raising funds, and sharing technical experience (such as sedation methods for translocating animals in the wild). Just taking into consideration the many animals in need of help might already result in a policy of not allowing these animals to breed. This would require that zoos give up the idea of assuring their own future through the breeding of nonthreatened species, but would also allow for far more flexibility in helping animals. And welfare considerations would mean that animals be allowed more privacy and visitors stay more at a distance (though this does not necessarily imply no visitors should be allowed at all). Given the values of zoos, we should be aware that some zoos might aim to offer sanctuary to animals coming from the wild in order to pursue their ambition as eternal arks populated with popular species with sufficient genetic variability (see above on the suggestion of extractive reserves). Why would it not be a good idea to transfer, for example, potential victims of the bushmeat crisis to zoos in the North? First, sanctuaries in the country of origin tend to suit the welfare needs of the animals much better—they are larger, more complex, and situated within their natural habitat. Second, such transfers to the North might result in stimulating creative yet unethical ways to obtain new “gene suppliers” for zoos or any other animals eagerly wanted by zoos. The Taiping Four saga seems to illustrate this point very well. Early in 2002 four young gorillas—three females and one male—were sent from Nigeria to Malaysia’s Taiping Zoo. Their import documents turned out to be falsified—the so-called captive born gorillas turned out not to originate from Nigeria’s Ibadan Zoo but to have been wild-caught in Cameroon. Though the authorities of Cameroon asked to send the gorillas back, they stayed for two years in Taiping Zoo and were in 2004 shipped to Pretoria Zoo, South Africa. Pretoria Zoo undertook considerable efforts to permanently keep the gorillas, who were placed into a newly created enclosure. Executive director Willie Labuschagne was quoted as saying that “we will most definitely use the gorillas as part of a national and international breeding program” and was also cited as saying that “his greatest wish is to secure a safe gene pool for

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gorillas.”59 After much political pressure by governments and organizations such as IPPL (International Primate Protection League) and IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare), the Taiping Four gorillas returned in November 2007 to Cameroon, more precisely to the Limbe Wildlife Centre sanctuary. We thus have to be aware that a sanctuary role by zoos as Welfare Arks should never serve as a cover to deliver animals to serve the self-interest of zoos as Eternal Arks. The change of policy proffered here may not look very appealing to many zoos, as their current policy and values are so different from what I am recommending. However, this seems to me the only justifiable course for zoos and it deserves to be given far more serious consideration. The zoo people who are in support of such a sanctuary role should not let themselves be overshadowed by those who promote a sustainable-use philosophy. This alternative position would allow for zoos a course that has the support of many people and organizations, because it combines the aim of protecting the interests of individual animals (both in captivity and beyond) with that of conserving species in the wild. Such a “welfare ark” course would have far more credibility than the current one of zoos as eternal arks populated with mostly nonthreatened, but highly charismatic and financially rewarding animals.

Notes 1. These variations in percentages are due to the limited number of listed species whose status has been evaluated and a bias toward evaluating particular species that are thought to be threatened. The first percentage refers to the percentage of listed species considered threatened and the second number to the percentage of evaluated species that is threatened. 2. IUCN, “Table 1: Numbers of threatened species by major groups of organisms (1996–2007),” IUCN, www.iucnredlist.org/info/2007RL_Stats_Table%201.pdf (September 8, 2008). 3. Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1992), 134, 140–141, 276–280. 4. IUDZG/CBSG (IUCN/SSC), “The World Zoo Conservation Strategy: The Role of the Zoos and Aquaria of the World in Global Conservation,” WAZA, www .waza.org/conservation/wczs.php (September 8, 2008). 5. Alexandra Zimmermann, Matthew Hatchwell, Lesley Dickie, and Chris West, eds., Zoos in the 21st Century: Catalysts for Conservation? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 6. IUDZG/CBSG (IUCN/SSC), The World Zoo Conservation Strategy. 7. Colin Tudge, Last Animals at the Zoo: How Mass Extinction Can Be Stopped (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1991).

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8. Anonymous, “List of approved EEP species programs as of January 1999,” in EEP Yearbook 1997/98 Including Proceedings of the 15th EAZA Conference, Berlin 2–6 September 1998, ed. F. Rietkerk, S. Smits, K. Brouwer and M. Kurtz (Amsterdam: EAZA Executive Office, 1999), 561–571. Thomas J. Foose, “Regional captive propagation programs worldwide,” in CBSG Regional Conservation Coordinator Committee: 1991 Annual Report, ed. anonymous (Apple Valley, 1991). AZA, “Species Survival Plan® Program,” AZA, www.aza.org/ConScience/ConScienceSSPFact/index.html (September 8, 2008). AZA, “Population Management Plans (PMPs),” AZA, www .aza.org/ConScience/ConSciencePMPFact/index.html (September 8, 2008). AZA, www.aza.org/CandS/SSP.xls (September 8, 2008). AZA, www.aza.org/CandS/PMP .xls (September 8, 2008). EAZA, “Breeding Programs—Statistics,” EAZA, www .eaza.net/index.php (September 8, 2008). 9. See www.iucnredlist.org/details/22563, www.iucnredlist.org/details/141921, and www.iucnredlist.org/details/141926 (October 31, 2008). 10. Ulysses S. Seal, “Life after Extinction” in Beyond Captive Breeding: Re-introducing Endangered Mammals to the Wild. The Proceedings of a Symposium held at the Zoological Society of London on the 24th and 25th November 1989, ed. J. H. W. Gipps (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 40. 11. Alexandra Zimmermann and Roger Wilkinson, “The Conservation Mission in the Wild: Zoos as Conservation NGOs?,” in Zoos in the 21st Century: Catalysts for Conservation?, ed. Alexandra Zimmermann, Matthew Hatchwell, Lesley Dickie, and Chris West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 307. 12. Mark R. Stanley Price and John E. Fa, “Reintroductions from Zoos: a Conservation Guiding light or a Shooting Star?” in Zoos in the 21st Century, 160–161, 165. 13. Lesley A. Dickie, Jeffrey P. Bonner, and Chris West, “In situ and ex situ Conservation: blurring the boundaries between zoos and the wild,” in Zoos in the 21st Century, 225. 14. Wilson, The Diversity of Life, 168–170, 309. 15. Charles Q. Choi, “Can the Amphibian Ark Save Frogs From Pollution/ Extinction? A repopulation plan for endangered amphibians,” Scientific American 2008, www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=amphibian-ark (June 26, 2008). 16. Anne Baker, “Animal Ambassadors: An Analysis of the Effectiveness and Conservation Impact of ex situ Breeding Efforts” in Zoos in the 21st Century, 145. 17. Tudge, Last Animals at the Zoo, 91. 18. Jon R. Luoma, A Crowded Ark: The Role of Zoos in Wildlife Conservation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987), 70. 19. Benjamin Beck, “Reintroduction, Zoos, Conservation, and Animal Welfare,” in Ethics on the Ark: Zoos, Animal Welfare, and Wildlife Conservation, ed. Bryan G. Norton, Michael Hutchins, Elizabeth E. Stevens, and Terry L. Maple (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 156. 20. Stanley Price and Fa, “ Reintroductions from Zoos,” 166. 21. Robert Loftin, “Captive Breeding of Endangered Species” in Ethics on the Ark, 177.

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22. Baker, “Animal ambassadors,” 145–146, 149–150. 23. Mark R. Stanley Price and Iain Gordon, “How to Go Wild,” New Scientist, no. 1688 (October 1989): 58. 24. Hillary O. Box, “Training for Life After Release: Simian Primates as Examples,” in Beyond Captive Breeding: Re-introducing Endangered Mammals to the Wild. The Proceedings of a Symposium held at the Zoological Society of London on the 24th and 25th November 1989, ed. J. H. W. Gipps (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 112–120. 25. Matthew Hatchwell, Alex Rübel, Lesley Dickie, Chris West, and Alexandra Zimmermann, “Conclusion: The Future of Zoos” in Zoos in the 21st Century, 348. 26. George Schaller, The Last Panda (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 245. 27. Bill Weber and Amy Vedder, In the Kingdom of Gorillas: The Quest to Save Rwanda’s Mountain Gorillas (London: Aurum Press, 2002). 28. B. Griffith, J. M. Scott, J. W. Carpenter and C. Reed, “Translocations as a Species Conservation Tool: Status and Strategy,” Science, 245 (1989): 478. 29. Sarah Christie, “Zoo-based Fundraising for in situ Wildlife Conservation” in Zoos in the 21st Century, 265. 30. Eleanor Sterling, Jimin Lee, and Tom Wood, “Conservation Education in Zoos: An Emphasis on Behavioral Change,” in Zoos in the 21st Century, 47. 31. Zimmermann and Wilkinson, “The Conservation Mission in the Wild,” 310. 32. IUDZG/CBSG (IUCN/SSC), The World Zoo Conservation Strategy. 33. Stephen R. Kellert and Julie Dunlap, Informal Learning at the Zoo: a Study of Attitude and Knowledge Impacts (A Report to the Zoological Society of Philadelphia of a Study Funded by the G. R. Dodge Foundation, 1989). D. L. Marcellini and T. A. Jenssen, “Visitor Behavior in the National Zoo’s Reptile House,” Zoo Biology 7, no. 4 (1988): 329–332, 336–338. Richard P. Reading and Brian J. Miller, “Attitudes and Attitude Change among Zoo Visitors” in Zoos in the 21st Century, 67–70, 86–87. 34. Dale Jamieson, “Zoos Revisited,” in Ethics on the Ark, 61. 35. See IUDZG/CBSG (IUCN/SSC), The World Zoo Conservation Strategy, and IUCN/UNEP/WWF, Caring for the Earth. A Strategy for Sustainable Living (Gland: IUCN/UNEP/WWF, 1991), 9–10. 36. Anonymous, “Niemand ontkomt aan Knut-gekte in Duitsland,” De Standaard 2007, www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelid=GK61AN8KN (April 7, 2007), Charles Hawley, “Polar Bear Turned Cash Cow: Knut the Business-Bear,” Der Spiegel 2007, www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,482368,00.html (October 14, 2008), and Madeline Chambers, “Move over Knut: Germany’s new polar bear cub debuts,” Reuters 2008, www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL098932 7920080409 (October 14, 2008). 37. Solly Zuckerman, “The Rise of Zoos and Zoological Societies,” in Great Zoos of the World: Their Origins and Significance, ed. Solly Zuckerman (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1979), 15–19. 38. Anonymous, “Ijsbeer Knut viert eerste verjaardag,” De Standaard 2007, www .standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF05122007_077 (accessed October 1,

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2008), Anonymous, “Nieuwe Knut is een meisje,” De Standaard 2008, www.standaard .be/Artikel/PrintArtikel.aspx?artikelId=7B1MCQJ1 (accessed October 1, 2008), and Joanna Partridge, “The Next Knut to be Raised by Hand,” Reuters 2008, www.reuters .com/news/video?videoChannel=2&videoId=74008 (October 16, 2008). 39. Alison Ames, Management and Behavior of Polar Bears in Captivity (S.L.: UFAW, 1990), 6, Anonymous, “Mammals Bred in Captivity during 1995/1996 and Multiple Generation Births,” International Zoo Yearbook 36 (1998): 518–519, Koen Margodt, The Welfare Ark: Suggestions for a Renewed Policy in Zoos (Brussels: Brussels University Press, 2000), 31–32, Bruno Van Puijenbroeck, “Nieuws over enkele zoogdieren uit onze collectie,” Zoo 4 (1980): 119–120. 40. Charles T. Feazel, White Bear: Encounters with the Master of the Arctic Ice (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990), 51, 60–63, 195. For a mother leaving her den with two cubs in their natural environment, see Anonymous, “Mother Polar Bear and Cubs Emerging from Den—BBC Planet Earth,” BBCWorldwide 2008, www.youtube .com/watch?v=OwZH_aT0FGI&feature=fvsr (January 6, 2010). The mother’s behavior stands in sharp contrast with that of Vera at Nürnberg Zoo (cf. video, n38). 41. Roger Boyes, “Celebrity Bear Knut to get ‘Racy’ Italian Playmate in Berlin Zoo,” Times Online 2009, www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/ article6742078.ece (November 24, 2009). 42. Ros Clubb and Georgia Mason, “Captivity Effects on Wide-ranging Carnivores,” Nature 425 (October 2003): 473. 43. Georgia Mason, “Stereotypies: A Critical Review,” Animal Behavior 41: 1015–1037. Regarding stereotypical behavior developing in Knut, see for example quinn168, “Knut the Suffering Polar Bear,” YouTube 2009, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YWtxqerp1mA (November 24, 2009). 44. Search on polar bears in app.isis.org/abstracts/abs.asp (October 1, 2008). 45. L. Kolter, “European Collection Planning for Bears,” in EEP Yearbook 1994/95 including the Proceedings of the 12th EEP Conference, Poznan 30th June—2nd July 1995, ed. F. Rietkerk, K. Brouwer and S. Smits (Amsterdam: EAZA/EEP Executive Office, 1995), 432. 46. Hawley, “Polar Bear Turned Cash Cow,” and Boyes, “Celebrity Bear Knut.” 47. For an excellent explanation of the concepts of stress, frustration, and boredom, see Françoise Wemelsfelder, Animal Boredom: Towards an Empirical Approach of Animal Subjectivity (Utrecht: Elinkwijk, 1993). 48. Trevor Poole and Graham Law, Inexpensive Ways of Improving Zoo Enclosures for Mammals (Potters Bar: Universities Federation for Animal Welfare [UFAW], 1996), 1–6. 49. Arnold S. Chamove, Geoffrey R. Hosey, and Peter Schaetzel, “Visitors Excite Primates in Zoos,” Zoo Biology 7 (1988): 359–368. 50. Tudge, Last Animals at the Zoo, 80–81, 86–87. 51. See, e.g., Robert Lacy, “Zoos and the Surplus Problem: An Alternative Solution,” Zoo Biology 10 (1991): 293–297 and Robert Lacy, “Culling Surplus Animals for Population Management” in Ethics on the Ark, 187–194.

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52. Donald Lindburg and Linda Lindburg, “Success Breeds a Quandary: To Cull or Not to Cull” in Ethics on the Ark, 199. 53. Ben Westerveld and Robert van Herk, “Ethiek leeft onder dierentuinpersoneel. Workshops tijdens Harpij-congres,” De Harpij, 19, no. 4 (2000): 27–28. 54. William Conway, “Entering the 21st century,” in Zoos in the 21st Century, 18. 55. Hatchwell, Rübel, Dickie, West and Zimmermann, “Conclusion: The Future of Zoos,” 352. 56. James Rachels, “Why Animals Have a Right to Liberty,” in Animal Rights and Human Obligations, ed. Tom Regan and Peter Singer (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1976, 1989), 128–129. 57. Wemelsfelder, Animal Boredom, 95–99. 58. See www.monkeyworld.org and www.elephants.com (October 31, 2008). 59. Zaa Nkweta, “Taiping Four,” Carte Blanche 2005, www.carteblanche.co.za/ Display/Display.asp?Id=2816 (October 12, 2008). See also Shirley McGreal, “Victory for IPPL: Taiping Four Gorillas Return to Cameroon!,” IPPL 2007, www.ippl .org/taiping-four-home.php (October 12, 2008).

CHAPTER TWO



Nooz: Ending Zoo Exploitation Lisa Kemmerer

Introduction This chapter highlights several criticisms of zoos, then provides a vision for new zoos: “nooz.” Offering a new name to these institutions makes a clear break from the old model, which is fundamentally exploitative. The common denominator between zoos and nooz is that both foster nonhumans who are neither domestic pets nor farmed animals—they keep “wild” animals. Nooz are nonexploitative, benevolent, and are designed for nonhumans, to provide safe-haven for those individuals who have been misused by zoos or science, or injured by humans. This essay also explores “benevolent” reasons for keeping nonhuman animals in zoos, such as captive breeding programs and injured wildlife, and acceptable parameters for nooz, including such topics as retribution for previous exploitation and the problem of carnivory.

Zoos Capture and Confinement In order to understand the importance of nooz, we must first be familiar with some of the damage that is inherent in zoos. Animals in zoos are used for science, captive breeding, perpetuation of species, education, entertainment, and profit. Ultimately, zoos confine nonhuman animals for human beings.

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Some zoos cause comparatively more harm to captive nonhumans, but all zoos exploit nonhuman individuals for human ends. Even the casual visitor is likely to suspect that keeping an elephant alone in a small, stale enclosure is morally questionable. This is but the tip of the iceberg. Capturing elephants for zoos continues to contribute to the hasty disappearance of wild elephants. The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) recently reported that U.S. zoos gained permission from authorities in Swaziland to capture and import eleven wild elephants, further decimating dangerously depleted herds, reducing Swaziland elephant populations by a whopping twenty-five percent. Elephants have a complicated social structure, which is critical to proper social development. Baby elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life. . . . When an elephant dies, its family members engage in intense mourning and burial rituals, conducting weeklong vigils over the body, carefully covering it with earth and brush, revisiting the bones for years afterward, caressing the bones with their trunks, often taking turns rubbing their trunks along the teeth of a skull’s lower jaw, the way living elephants do in greeting.1

Elephants are captured young, when they should be near their mothers, and transported thousands of miles to zoos around the world. Elephants, like humans, live in community and engage in activities that cannot be replicated in a zoo setting—no matter how wonderful the enclosure. Elephants enjoy large herds and hundreds of miles when living in the wild. How many elephants can one zoo keep? Can zoos allow the dead to decompose on site so that elephants can perform mourning rituals? Zoo requirements for elephants are 400 sq. ft. indoors and 1,800 square feet outdoors, roughly the size of six parking spaces.2 Sixty percent of zookept elephants suffer from painful and dangerous foot ailments caused by standing on unnatural surfaces,3 as was the case for Bunny, a zoo reject who had been housed alone for most of her life: Several years ago, Bunny began to show signs of foot problems. Complications from foot infection [are] the number one killer of captive elephants. Elephant feet are not designed for standing for prolonged periods on hard surfaces. They are made for walking on natural substrate. Elephants love to walk—miles every day. But most captive elephants don’t have that opportunity. Too much time spent on concrete, restricted exercise, poor foot care, and obesity result in some of the chronic conditions that contribute directly to life-threatening foot infection.4

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It is not surprising that elephants, who live for seventy years in the wild, generally do not live half as long in captivity.5 The AWI notes that pachyderms, one of the longest-lived animals in the wild, die young in captivity due to a lack of exercise, inadequate diet, poor living conditions, neglect, loneliness, and depression.6 Capturing wild elephants (to replace those who die young) also contributes to the escalating problem of rogue elephants. Rogues kill people and destroy villages, kill and rape rhinoceroses, and display antisocial behaviors previously unrecorded among elephant populations.7 Research scientists (see Gay Bradshaw’s work, for example) note that rogue elephants lack the social structure necessary to maintain civil behavior due to human interference with wild herds, destroying their social structures. On what moral grounds do we travel to foreign countries, capture individuals, and transport them back to our land for our purposes? (This sounds vaguely familiar.) It is heartening that half a dozen zoos have eliminated their elephant exhibits in the last decade (including the San Francisco Zoo), while several more are in the process of eliminating elephant exhibits (including the Bronx Zoo). Unfortunately, seven other zoos are investing heavily (hundreds of millions of dollars) in “improved” elephant exhibits.8 If we move away from the exploitative model provided by zoos, and consider what is just, compassionate, and therefore what constitutes the moral high ground, elephants “should be left to wander freely with their families and friends through their native savannahs, playing in watering holes and mud pits, and interacting with one another as they choose.”9 Orcas suffer a similar fate, and like elephants, “Orcas are big business: wild-caught Orcas can net their captors a cool $1 million apiece.”10 Russian authorities limit the number of orcas that may be taken from Russian waters to ten orcas per year. After capture, these giant mammals are forced to switch from swimming freely to capture mackerel and salmon, to bleak holding pens in crowded cities around the world. They are taken from bonded family groups, in which they communicate with a specific dialect, travel, socialize, and forage as a group, and placed in isolated, empty tanks, where not even the water that surrounds them shows any sign of life.11 Dolphins are among the most intelligent and active animals, swimming up to forty miles a day, and remaining in motion even when sleeping. Like orcas, dolphins are social creatures, living in pods and tend their young for four or five years. Most females never leave their birth pod. Humans hold an estimated one thousand captive dolphins snatched from their home in the sea.12 As with orcas, capture entails pursuit to exhaustion. A net is then lowered, the pod is trapped, and the dolphins are pulled from

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the water. Dolphins between the age of two and four are kept; the rest are thrown back. “Some drop dead on the deck, from shock. Many are injured.”13 53 percent of dolphins who survive the violent capture die within 90 days. The average life span of a dolphin in the wild is 45 years; yet half of all captured dolphins die within their first two years of captivity. The survivors last an average of only 5 years in captivity. Every seven years, half of all dolphins in captivity die from capture shock, pneumonia, intestinal disease, ulcers, chlorine poisoning, and other stress-related illnesses.14

Yet we continue to capture dolphins from the seas to replace the dead. Captured dolphins are generally kept in twenty-five square foot concrete tanks. They have nowhere to swim, nowhere to dive, no family, no pods, and they cannot use sonar between such close walls.15 Captive dolphins often swim silently in repetitive circle patterns, with their eyes closed, the equivalent of swaying and pacing for confined land animals. Some are so bored that they bang their heads against walls, trying to create stimuli in their stale environment.16 Dolphins, who can live forty-five years in the wild, live just a little over five years in captivity, and only a few of those years are captive years. Georgia has built a new state-of-the-art aquarium for large sea mammals. But whales and dolphins are “large, intelligent, long-lived, socially complex mammals, predators” who often hunt cooperatively and can swim “a hundred miles in a day.”17 Whatever state-of-the-art enclosures we might devise, such creatures are “inherently unsuited to display in zoos . . . because too much of their behavior is compromised by confinement.”18 Elephants, orcas, and dolphins are captured and sold because people pay to stare at them in captivity; these great beasts significantly increase revenue to zoos, marine parks, and aquariums. In the process, their life expectancy is vastly reduced, and their quality of life is destroyed, often to the point of stereotypically neurotic behaviors.19 Capture upsets and harms wild populations, and wild animals often suffer from illnesses and injuries in captivity. While newer pens for elephants and orcas are much larger, and lovely to the human eye, compared to the African savanna, or the Pacific ocean, these enclosures are akin to a human locked in single-car garage, with an open top, a few toys, and food and water, for the rest of their life. Those who suggest that perhaps one day the natural environment will be so devastated that confinement in zoos will be preferable, need to ask themselves if they would prefer to take their chances in a diminished natural environment, or be captured by aliens—some other species—and kept in a

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garage-like pen for the rest of their life, without any other option being offered, and without hope of escape. Disposal While capture and the long-term effects of confinement are daunting moral problems, disposal of unwanted animals is yet more problematic for zoos. Zoo inmates who readily reproduce need not be captured from the wild. Instead they must be disposed of when they reach puberty. Animals exploited by zoos are usually discarded when they are no longer profitable. Many zoos depend on baby animals to attract paying customers. Young adults are discarded to make room for a new crop of attractive babies. Since the public will not tolerate zoos killing animals, these young hopefuls are sold to dealers, who in turn sell them to research laboratories, roadside petting zoos, circuses, canned hunts, or into the “exotic pet” trade.20 Beanie, a gibbon long under the care of the International Primate Protection League (IPPL), was born in a zoo. He was cute when young, and zoo visitors enjoyed watching him through the bars. But as one might predict, he grew up to be just another adult gibbon, and was sold to a research laboratory, where he became very ill. As a result of his illness, he became both blind and epileptic.21 Once disabled, even research facilities were no longer interested in Beanie, and if IPPL had not lobbied for his life, he would have been euthanized. “Zoo” animals are also sold to circuses, where normal species behavior is replaced with contrived acts for the sake of personal profit through the use of negative reinforcement. “The tools of the trade today are much the same as the tools used by trainers in the past: whips, bullhooks, metal bars, chains, electric prods, muzzles, human fists.”22 Kelly Tansy, a former Ringling Brothers performer, reported to the Performing Animal Welfare Society at a press conference in Sacramento: I saw an elephant being beaten in what appeared to be a disciplinary action. The beating was so severe that the elephant screamed. I have come to realize, through all the circuses that I have worked for, that mistreatment of animals is a standard part of training and is thought to be a “necessary” part of exhibiting them. I have seen chimps locked in small cages constantly when not performing; elephants chained continuously; and even animals being beaten during performances . . . . There is no way that an animal can even begin to fulfill a decent life while traveling on the road with the circus.23

It is not surprising that wild animals exploited in circuses sometimes rebel against those who restrain and manipulate them. When they do, they are

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destroyed. Between 1990 and 2004, more than one hundred people were killed, and forty-three injured, by captive elephants.24 Tyke, a twenty-oneyear-old elephant, “was riddled with nearly 100 bullets before dying in the streets of Honolulu after she killed her trainer and tore out of a circus tent.”25 Anyone who pays a zoo entrance fee shares responsibility for Tyke’s (and Beanie’s) terrifying, prolonged, and painful existence at the hands of humans. Still other “zoo animals” are shipped off to canned hunts or safari parks where trophy hunters pay large sums to shoot “exotic” animals. The hunted are trapped in a fence, with no way to escape. Accounts of these “hunts” are gruesome, with incompetent “hunters” firing at animals who have no hope of escape. Sanctuaries for wild animals are chronically full to capacity, partly because zoos perpetually breed animals in order to attract visitors to see cute babies. Alan Green, an investigative journalist who wrote Animal Underworld, documented zoos “looking to rid themselves of six hundred mammals, nearly four hundred reptiles, thousands of fish, hundreds of birds, and a variety of invertebrates” on a single day.26

Nooz Nooz will not purposefully seek out prisoners from the wilds, or breed prisoners to entertain human beings with cute baby animals. What will nooz do, what will nooz not do, and why? Captive Breeding In the United States alone, more than 1,000 species of plants and animals are endangered or threatened.27 We lose at least one species of plant or animal every twenty minutes, roughly 27,000 species a year.28 In light of this horrifying reality, most people believe that zoos are helping to preserve the endangered, that zoos have the best interest of animals at heart, that they save lives and species. Most people defend captive breeding on the assumption that such programs benefit those who are bred. Is this so? Captive breeding and subsequent re-introduction of a threatened species is an important and in some cases very successful tool for species conservation. Critics point to the need to conserve/restore habitat, list examples of failures, decry the cost, and argue we should rescue species before they are on the brink of oblivion. Fair enough. But, captive breeding saved the bison. Wolves roam Yellowstone and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Peregrine Falcon is off

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the endangered species list, golden-lion tamarins thrive in the Brazilian forests, whooping cranes perform their mating dances along river banks in the west, and many more species might similarly be rescued. Zoos, botanical gardens and aquaria have found new purpose and direction, providing a safety net when other protective measures have failed. . . . Once places for people to stare at “curiosities,” [z]oos today are centers of captive breeding and opportunities for public education to heighten awareness about endangered species.29

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) reports, with regard to amphibians, that “The zoo and aquarium community is working together to ensure that this entire class of organisms continues to exist,” and with regard to sea life, that “AZA-accredited aquariums and zoos are vital participants in advancing ocean conservation science and education.” The AZA claims: “Through our collective conservation, education and research programs, elephants in our care play an essential role in the survival of the species in Africa and Asia.” Not surprisingly, most people accept AZA claims, and both zoos and aquariums are widely praised for their munificence and beneficial work for those very individuals they imprison and exploit. But a great deal is lost for wild animals that are captured and exploited for breeding programs. They lose their freedom, autonomy, families, familiar companions, and homes. Basically, they lose everything that is of meaning to most of us, short of their bodily existence. Are such programs in the best interest of those who are captured and imprisoned? Are they deprived in this manner for their benefit? Ultimately, captive breeding schemes have little to do with the individuals who are captured and imprisoned as pawns to our purposes. Captive breeding exploits reproductive abilities. Individuals are stripped of all that is meaningful in exchange for being manipulated sexually—in exchange for being bred by humans. Captive breeding stems from a human interest in genetic diversity—a biological state that we deem beneficial to us. Furthermore, we enjoy having these species in “our” world. Offspring from captive breeding often fall victim to the same fate as their endangered ancestors because of the ongoing and core human problems of overpopulation, greed, and indifference. Though capturing and breeding elephants is generally good fun for humans, who get to gape at them and their offspring, we must ultimately change our own behavior if we are to save elephants, or any other species. Manipulating other species in our breeding programs is not a viable solution to the ongoing problem of human selfishness, hubris, tendency to overconsume and overbreed, and general ignorance

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of the web of life, the earth’s carrying capacity, and our rightful place as land animals, mammals, and great apes on planet earth. Consider the proboscis monkey, of which only about 200 remain.30 Rather than focus on zoo breeding programs, we must ask, “Why is the proboscis monkey at risk?” Answers are clear. We have decimated their habitat. Our expanding numbers have encroached on the forests while logging and hunting for profit have driven the proboscis monkey nearly to extinction. Is captive breeding a reasonable answer when these gentle primates no longer have anywhere to live in their native Borneo? If we truly have their interests in mind, will we capture those who remain, haul them away to foreign lands, and instigate captive breeding, or will we take measures to curb human population growth and prevent human encroachment on to proboscis monkey lands, take measures that will prevent the need to hunt and log in these areas, and launch vigorous programs to prevent poaching? Consider Mexican wolves, who once thrived on abundant elk, deer, and many smaller animals in the forests, grasslands, and shrublands of northcentral Mexico, southeastern Arizona, southwest Texas, and Southern New Mexico. Cattle ranching boomed in the nineteenth century, overgrazing devastated habitat. Human hunters competed with wolves for the remaining wildlife, and of course also did not want wolves feeding on their profits—their calves. This led to strong anti-wolf sentiment, and “the Mexican wolf was killed off by ranchers and farmers.”31 Mexican wolves were ultimately placed on the endangered species list. A trapper captured a pregnant Mexican wolf and four males for captive breeding. Some fifty zoos joined the breeding program for Mexican wolves.32 Nonetheless, our ongoing distaste for wolves, rooted in our taste for cowflesh and bolstered by a fear that some wolf might eat a cow (or an elk) before we can, persists. Human greed is remarkable; while we will defend our own right to eat other animals even though such a diet kills us, we are unwilling to allow true carnivores what they need to survive. We trap and shoot predators as a matter of course in ranching lands. Consequently, many captive-bred wolves, once released, were shot. 101 wolves were released, of which twenty-three were soon killed by humans, and another nine were killed by careless and speedy drivers.33 Perhaps most discouraging, Fish and Wildlife Services “has authorized the removal of 70 Mexican wolves over the past decade at the behest of public lands livestock ranchers.”34 “Fewer than fifty-five endangered Mexican gray wolves remain in the wolf recovery area of New Mexico and Arizona.”35 Unless we curb human population growth, slow our pace of life, and educate ourselves about animals who are driven to the brink of extinction by human expan-

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sion, greed, and indifference, captive bred animals—and endangered species in general—do not have much hope for survival. We must somehow come to understand that we do not have a god-given or evolutionary right to exploit all that exists just because we can. Common sense suggests that we would do well to stop enslaving other animals for our purposes (breeding programs), and attack species problems at their roots. Inevitably, human actions cause species depletion, and endanger diversity. We need to change our own lives and outlook. The morality of captive breeding is yet more questionable when we examine the fate of “successful” breeding programs. Wolves were just removed from our current and fast-growing list of endangered species. Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, the states where these wolf populations live, are now entrusted to “manage” wolves in order to maintain this newly energized species. However, the governor of Idaho, Butch Otter, doesn’t seem much interested in wolf conservation: He noted that the “uninvited and unwelcome population of wolves in Idaho clearly has gotten out of hand,” and announced: “I’m prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself.”36 Montana seems to think similarly. Mike Volesky, advisor for governor Brian Schweitzer, noted that “Montana could have a public wolf hunt” soon.37 And they did. Meanwhile, Wyoming’s governor, Dave Freudenthal, commented that reducing wolf packs has always been his state’s objective.38 If Mexican wolves had thrived, they would not have been treated any differently. We want some wolves, but not very many. We want diversity, and we are delighted to open fire on any number we deem to be excessive—never mind that their numbers are miniscule when compared to our own. It is morally suspect to capture, breed, and release individuals because we prefer to have them in this world—in controlled numbers—much more controlled than our own numbers. It is highly morally questionable to breed and release naïve individuals into hostile environments rife with poachers and rushing traffic. It is morally reprehensible to breed and release individuals—on the grounds that we would like more of them in “our” world—and then make these same creatures targets for our deadly “sport.” Some would argue that we do not do this for the individuals themselves, or even the species as a whole, but on behalf of the environment and ecological systems in general. Perhaps we can better explore the morality of such actions on behalf of the overall natural world, by replacing Mexican wolves and proboscis monkeys with human beings. If captive breeding is in the best interest of the individuals involved, then we would doubtless do the same for human beings, all else being equal. But the last purebred Maori (indigenous to New Zealand) died at the end of the twentieth century. No breeding

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program was proposed or created—though we would not have needed to imprison Maoris, or strip them of all that they deemed meaningful save their bodily existence, to create such a breeding program. Most of us readily agree that it would be quite strange, and immoral, to control and manipulate human breeding—even if we lose the Maori forever as part of our biological diversity. Though we are primates, people are understood to be individuals first and foremost, not a race or a species. Is a single Mexican wolf an individual first and foremost, or a species? If it is right to sacrifice individuals for the overall ecological system, why is this not right with regard to human beings? Furthermore, if this is right with regard to human beings, then we had best get busy and reduce our numbers—by any means necessary—on behalf of the overall ecological system. We are not eager to give up anything, to make any personal sacrifices, but we are quick to deprive other species of everything meaningful in their lives for our breeding ends. If we are to interfere on behalf of species, we must not harm or damage individuals. To protect species, we must protect individuals by maximizing habitat. This is likely to assure the continuance of endangered species in the long run—not for our good, but for theirs, because they exist, strive to persist, and prefer not to be killed or captured. Given adequate environments, animals will thrive. Of course we must act before it is too late for a given species to rebound. We must set ourselves to be quicker to notice when our actions harm individuals of other species, and we must show a willingness to change our ways on behalf of individuals and ecosystems. This type of endangered species program will take much more work and dedication from all of us—personal sacrifice on the part of human beings—and will require an international effort. Instead of manipulating other creatures in zoos, this plan requires us to reexamine and alter our lives. No wonder we have not chosen this more plausible method of protecting individuals of endangered species. Nooz will not participate in captive breeding programs because such programs are fundamentally selfish, and because there is a much more effective way to preserve species. If we wish to protect eco-diversity, we must preserve habitat, and protect individuals who live within those habitats. Exploited and Damaged Nonhumans Nooz will provide exploited or human-damaged “wild” animals with secure, spacious quarters where they can live out their lives in comparative peace, as partial reparation for past wrongs done. In this sense, nooz will function like contemporary sanctuaries for farmed animals and domestic “pets,” designed and maintained for residents, not for human gawkers.

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It is time to release exploited unfortunates from their cages, whether zoo cages, lab cages, circus cages, or cages in private homes. It would be grossly immoral to release all of these creatures into unfamiliar surrounding if they are unlikely to survive. One of the most tragic victims of such human stupidity was Lucy, a chimpanzee used for sign language studies, and brought up like a human child in the home of the Temerlins. By the time Lucy was ten, she had grown dangerously strong, and so the study was terminated. “The Temerlins decided it would be best if Lucy were released in Africa. The trouble was that Africa was as foreign to Lucy as it would be to any ten-year-old who had never been outside Oklahoma.”39 Though volunteers in Africa did what they could to prepare Lucy for life in the jungle, she was frightened in her new surroundings and fearful of other chimpanzees. She “repeatedly signed ‘Please help. Lucy wants out. Please help.’”40 Nonetheless, Lucy was released and her body was soon found, minus hands and feet. The humans she had come to trust had betrayed her one final time.41 Animals cannot be released into the wild if they are not suited to survival in such surroundings. There are alternatives. The Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary, located in the Florida Keys, provides an example of what nooz might accomplish. Though there was dissent in the rank at Sugarloaf, as well as conflict with legal authorities, this is perhaps to be expected in the unchartered realms of animal liberation, realms that inherently challenge conventional practices. This sanctuary protected and maintained individuals who had been wrongfully exploited by humans, and as a result, could not be confidently released into the wilds. These dolphins were kept in lagoons with gates that opened onto the ocean, and could be opened if it was determined that the dolphins could survive in the wild. The dolphins lived in natural sea waters, and had only to swim from their opened gates if they were up to the task of survival in the wilds, allowing residents to choose between returning to the open sea, or remaining in more familiar surroundings, where they are tended by humans. Like Sugarloaf, nooz can create safe, natural places for captive animals to exist for their own sake, not for human entertainment, “education,” or profit, with the hope of rehabilitation and release always in the fore. The Elephant Sanctuary, in Hohenwald, Tennessee, is an excellent and very successful example of how nooz might tend those wronged by zoos and circuses. “Since 1995, twenty-four elephants have found sanctuary in Tennessee. They live out their lives with the freedom to roam the natural habitat of the Sanctuary, making new friends and special relationships as the years pass.”42 The first elephant confiscated by the USDA, Delhi, was sent to The Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary; later Lota and Misty arrived after a USDA lawsuit against the Hawthorn Corporation. Ultimately, The Tennessee

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Sanctuary rescued eleven elephants from the Hawthorn Corporation, which was found guilty of nineteen counts of cruelty to elephants.43 Each elephant arrives at the Tennessee sanctuary with his or her own horrific story of capture and separation from family and community, transportation in tight confinement and chains, further confinement, illness or severe injury, violence in response to “dangerous” behavior, and ultimately, rejection. The Elephant Sanctuary now houses nineteen such misused elephants, most of whom have come from zoos. They are not “used” for human purposes at The Elephant Sanctuary; they live in their own community, sharing time with one another as they choose, and wandering or grazing at will: The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, is the nation’s largest natural-habitat refuge developed specifically to meet the needs of endangered elephants. It is a nonprofit organization, licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, and accredited by the Association of Sanctuaries, designed specifically for old, sick or needy elephants who have been retired from zoos and circuses. Utilizing more than 2,700 acres, it provides three separate and protected, naturalhabitat environments for Asian and African elephants. Our residents are not required to perform or entertain for the public; instead, they are encouraged to live like elephants.44

Since March of 1995, The Elephant Sanctuary has established “the first prototype refuge representing the future of enlightened captive elephant management.”45 In the process, they have acquired “2,700 acres of diverse habitat with caretaker residence, complete with a 25 acre spring-fed lake.”46 For the safety and well-being of the elephants, they have added a 550 acre perimeter “people” fence, a 500 acre corral, a 2 stall quarantine barn, a 6 stall Asian elephant barn, a 5 stall African elephant barn, a 6,000 square foot hay barn, quarantine barns and facilities to accommodate elephants that have been exposed to and suffer from tuberculosis, and they have purchased a semi-trailer to transport rescued elephants. The Elephant Sanctuary has rescued nine endangered Asian elephants and three endangered African elephants. They have created educational outreach presentations for thousands of school children, both nationally and internationally, and are members of Project DIANE, a live, interactive, educational teleconferencing computer network. Additionally, they are members of The Association of Sanctuaries, they are licensed with the United States Department of Agriculture, and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. They maintain a 22 member staff, have a year-round internship program, a bi-monthly Volunteer Day, maintain a membership

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of 76,000, and have established the “Save Jenny Trust” to ensure ongoing care for the elephants. The Elephant Sanctuary has also created innovative healthcare treatments for elephants suffering from life-threatening osteomyelitis, and established the first Elephant Health and Welfare Institute. Toward further advancements in our understanding of how we might help these previously misused elephants, The Elephant Sanctuary plans to install twenty additional field cameras around the elephant habitat to observe behavior. They also hope to pioneer noninvasive research on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in wild-caught elephants living in captivity, and to create a nonintrusive education center. Of course they will also continue to rescue old, sick, or needy elephants, and offer them a long-term home, where they will no longer be exploited for human ends, and with this in mind, they hope to expand their facility to accommodate up to 100 elephants. Finally, they are planning the “research and execution of the reintroduction of de-programmed captive elephants into a semi-wild environment in Southeast Asia.”47 Nooz will be designed for residents, not for visitors. Animals in nooz will exist for their own sake, not for human entertainment, “education,” or profit. Nooz will provide safe haven for wronged individuals, refuge for those who are damaged and disinherited. Nooz will be places of nurturance and safekeeping, a place where we might redress some of our wrongs against other creatures. Ultimately, if captive nonhumans can be rehabilitated and returned to the wild, nooz will see to their release. Healing the Wounded Nooz might play an important and much needed role in tending wounded animals. It is difficult to find a veterinarian who will treat a garter snake, or who knows how to handle a wounded bat. Nooz will employ veterinarians who specialize in the care of wild animals. Veterinary care will not be provided by way of intruding in the natural lives of animals, but as another form of partial reparation for harms done. It is our responsibility to clean up after ourselves, to tend the wounded and repair the damage we do to others through our self-absorption and ostentatious lifestyles. Humans mow over deer and porcupines, skunks and starlings, toads and garter snakes with their rushing automobiles. We drive as if our appointments were more important than their lives. Because we do so much damage, nooz will remain open twenty-four hours a day to tend the wounded, whether those harmed by cruel children, or those maimed by rushing motorists, nooz will help make amends.

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Nooz will also be responsible for noting when permanently damaged nonhumans—such as those missing wings or legs—appear to be seriously depressed, with no hope of improvement in their living condition. Just as surely as I know when a chicken, dog, or cat is suffering, deteriorating, or depressed in my care, nooz veterinarians will be alert to depressed patients. No matter how fine the pen, no matter how private or natural the settings, some birds will fail to thrive if they can never fly again, or must live alone, and some animals will never be happy in confinement, or without companions, or the hunt. Such animals will not be forced to continue living in nooz when they are miserable. Nooz will not assume that life is always preferred to death. Nooz specialists will be alert for nonhumans who are languishing unhappily with no hope of improvement. If we can offer no renewed hope, we must let them go. Nooz staff will always have the residents’ best interests in mind. Sedentary Citizens: A Symbiotic Relationship? If an individual, say an amphibian, scarcely moves from one month to the next, and subsists only on vegetation, is there anything wrong with harboring such a being in a nooz for human entertainment? In exchange for human gaping, the amphibian will be fed and watered, and sheltered from harm. The living quarters will be large enough that the resident is in no way restricted—their range must be no larger than the quarters provided. Is this a fair exchange? Is any harm done if we benefit by watching this creature lie about, and they benefit by having their basic needs provided? We cannot know if any harm is done to a sedentary creature through such captivity. We cannot ask such a creature if he or she is as happy in captivity as in the wild. We cannot ask if an amphibian prefers familiar home territory, and the challenge of foraging for their own food, to the safety of nooz confinement. We can know, if we remove such an animal, say a sea urchin, from a natural setting, we change that ecosystem. Because we have taken that urchin, another urchin’s eggs will not be fertilized by our captive sea urchin, and a certain otter, who would have eaten this particular sea urchin, must seek another dinner. Whenever we remove an individual from an ecosystem, we affect that ecosystem, and so it is better not to take sedentary creatures into captivity. Inasmuch as we cannot know the preferences of other creatures, it is best to let them be. Inasmuch as humans tend to be exploitative, and to imagine that other creatures are not harmed by our actions, it is best to keep our

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hands off of other creatures. History suggests that we are not to be trusted, and that it is best to leave such creatures in their natural surroundings. Captive Carnivory Carnivores imprisoned in zoos are fed on other creatures, many of whom are raised and killed for this purpose. Bethany Dopp, who worked at Zoo Montana in Billings, spent time in a bunny breeding facility, tossed “meat balls” to wolves at feeding time, watched eagles feed on dead lab rats, and was asked to chop up gassed mice and feed their bodies to small carnivores. Dopp notes that zoo visitors are unaware of the bunny breeding facility, housed in a small shed where rabbits are allowed to breed at will. When a doe gives birth, she is caged with her offspring. Once weaned, most babies are held in the same cage until they reach four or five pounds, at which point her young are fed to other prisoners at the zoo. When Dopp asked zoo workers how old the rabbits are when they are killed, the response was, “four to five pounds.” Apparently rabbits age by the pound at ZooMontana. Some baby bunnies are rotated into the petting barn, where children enjoy the bunnies until they reach four to five pounds, at which point they are fed to carnivores, and replaced by younger bunny-fodder. Dopp writes: They only use white rabbits so that they can swap the bunnies out at the “4 to 5 pounds” food range without upsetting visitors. Then the kids can’t say “what happened to that little brown and white spotted bunny I loved?” They don’t want to have to say, “It’s been gassed and fed to the Golden Eagle, Jenny.”48

At ZooMontana, before rabbits and mice are fed to other zoo prisoners, they are gassed in a red cooler that has been modified into a little gas chamber. They added a clear window on top and a hole for the gas tube. The window was so they could see when the “breeder” rabbits were dead. They jokingly referred to it as the “red box of death.” Mice were put into a big plastic jar and gassed, as this wasted less gas.49

Not all carnivores are big enough to consume a four to five pound rabbit, so some of the baby rabbits are killed as newborns. Staff call these newborns “pinkies” because they are naked and blind.50 Mice fill this same need. They are bred and used to feed smaller carnivores, and ZooMontana has two long

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shelves of cages filled with mice who produce babies until they are too old to conceive, at which time they are also fed to zoo prisoners such as snakes, birds, or wolverines. For even smaller carnivores, mice are also fed as “pinkies.” “Pinkie mice,” tiny naked newborn mice, are not worth the gas it takes to kill them, so zoo keepers kill them by smashing the baby mices’ tiny heads between their fingers. This method is cheaper, and they are “only mice,” which means, at the zoo, that they are “only food.”51 Rats are also “food” at ZooMontana, particularly for eagles. But rats are not bred in Billings; they are shipped as corpses from labs in Bozeman. Dopp remembers: I asked what sort of lab and was never given an answer other than, “I don’t really know.” I said that it seemed weird feeding “lab animals” to “zoo animals,” and I wanted to know what sort of experiments the rats were used for before turning into eagle food. I mean, really, what are they testing if they can safely feed the dead rats to someone else? Once again, I was never given an answer. One person said they thought it had something to do with breeding different fur colors, but I only saw white rats.

Dopp’s experience reminded me of a zoo visit when I was a child in Seattle, where I saw a rabbit sitting in the same cage with a very large snake—very large. My parents told me that the snake had to eat, too. Even as a small child I could grant the truth of their response, and I also knew that this was not a sufficient answer. A live rabbit dropped into a boa constrictor’s cage, unable to escape, destined to become the snake’s slow-death dinner—on what grounds did humans decide that this was the proper and right death for the rabbit, the proper and right meal for the snake? Wild carnivores kill those who are weak, sick, old, young, injured, or slow. Zoos provide prisoners with flesh from the bodies of animals who are perfectly healthy, and who would have contentedly gone on living, had they not been killed to feed zoo prisoners. How might we justify sacrificing the lives of hundreds of individuals to feed a tiger, polar bear, or orca? Why should one animal, even a “rare” species, be favored over hundreds of other individuals who are healthy and prospering? No individual is “rare”—all individuals are unique. Because we capture and enslave animals, and make them dependent on us in zoo settings, we also use other animals as expendable flesh. One infringement leads to the other. Many humans are omnivores who support the exploitation of farmed animals with their dollars. They do so out of habit, and because they have ac-

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quired a taste for flesh. When we choose to eat flesh, we unnecessarily cause extreme suffering and premature death to hens, cattle, turkeys, pigs, fish, and other creatures. We have no nutritional need to eat animal products; we have many other options. In contrast, when a tiger kills a gazelle, she has no other option. She cannot choose to open the cupboard and make vegan lasagna. We can. Carnivores cannot make a compassionate selection from a supermarket shelf. We can (including anyone reading this book, pretty much everyone else in the Western World, and millions of others.) True carnivores rightly eat other creatures because they have no other choice short of death. We do have other choices, and so the choice to eat flesh, which causes prolonged suffering and pubescent death, is morally problematic. Humans rarely recognize their cruel exploitation of farmed animals as such, and so we rarely recognize our cruel exploitation of wild animals on behalf of true carnivores. While there can be no reasonable moral objection to one creature eating another when the aggressor has no choice, if we choose who will be eaten by whom, there is much that might be questioned. True carnivores must have flesh to survive, and once they are captured and confined, they are removed from their natural place in the food chain. Captive carnivores cannot select the wounded, old, or the sickly. We decide who will perish for their sustenance. Those who work at nooz, which cater to nonhumans and maximize noninterference in the natural world, will not be responsible for deciding which animals should live, and which should die, and nooz will therefore not kill animals to provide food for carnivores. Nonetheless, carnivores may reside at nooz, provided they have been exploited or harmed by humans and cannot be released into the wild. Nooz staff will not kill on their behalf. Such carnivores will only be fed the flesh of those already deceased. Such carnivores will subsist on roadkill. As a backup plan, they can be offered cats, dogs, goats, cows, horses, and other domestic animals that have died from natural causes, and whose bodies do not pose a health risk to the carnivores. Finally, should we by some miraculous measure run short of these sources, we have an indefinite number of human corpses, which are environmentally difficult to dispose of and could feed captive carnivores indefinitely. Humans who wish to have their bodies fed to carnivores ought to be granted this option as an alternative to other expensive and ecologically destructive disposal methods. While the supply of flesh from roadkill is likely more than adequate for all captive flesh eaters, provided we establish methods of transporting the deceased to nooz, if an adequate supply of flesh cannot be acquired through the above three means, nooz cannot keep carnivores. No animals will be killed

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under the assumption that they are rightly sacrificed for the life of another nonhuman. If by some remote chance food cannot be secured from those already deceased, captive carnivores will be euthanized to prevent them from starving. (If they could have been released, they would have been, so release is not an option.)

Conclusion Zoos are fundamentally exploitative. Zoos imprison nonhumans for profit. They provide entertainment and “education,” including the idea that nonhumans may be imprisoned for our ends. Zoos must be closed down, and nooz opened to house retired “zoo animals,” “lab animals,” and other “wild” animals who need medical care or rest—especially those who have been harmed by humans—or exploited by humans such that they are no longer suited for life in the wild. Nooz residents will have spacious, natural areas in which to live, as natural as possible, and they will live for their own sakes. Nooz will only keep carnivores if they can be fed on roadkill or corpses. Nooz will help both children and adults to learn that nohumans must not be caged or exploited for our profit, entertainment, or education.

Notes 1. Charles Siebert, “An Elephant Crackup?” The Reporter 39, no. 1 (2007): 511. 2. Annie Flanzraich, “Activists Protest Treatment of Elephants in Many Zoos,” Daily World: Aberdeen Washington, Associated Press, July 21, 2007. 3. Annie Flanzraich, “Activists Protest.” 4. “Everyone Loves Bunny,” Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary, www.elephants.com/ bunny/bunny.htm (July 5, 2007). 5. Flanzraich, “Activists Protest.” 6. Carol Buckley, “The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee,” form letter (May 2004), 1–2. 7. Siebert, “An Elephant,” 6. 8. Flanzraich, “Activists Protest.” 9. “Save Swaziland’s Elephants,” AWI Quarterly 52, no. 2 (2003): 20. 10. Erich Hoyt, “Keeping Russia’s Orcas Wild and Free.” AWI Quarterly 52, no. 2 (2003): 6–7. 11. Hoyt, “Keeping Russia’s,” 6. 12. Tom Regan, Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 136. 13. Regan, Empty Cages, 136.

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14. Dee Finney, “The Plight of the Captive Dolphins: the Dream and the Reality,” www.greatdreams.com/eeyore/dolphins.htm (July 1, 2004). 15. Finney, “The Plight.” 16. Finney, “The Plight.” 17. “Stepping Backwards—Atlanta’s New Aquarium,” Animals International: The Magazine of the World Society for the Protection of Animals 73 (2006): 20–21. 18. “Stepping Backwards,” 20. 19. Finney, “The Plight.” 20. “Canned Hunts: Unfair at Any Price,” Fourth ed. Humane Society of the United States, Booklet, 6. 21. Shirley McGreal, “International Primate Protection League,” form letter (Spring 2004). 22. Regan, Empty Cages, 130. 23. “Testimony from an Insider,” The Circus: Cruelty for Entertainment, pamphlet. 24. “Cruelty is Not Entertainment,” pamphlet, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), Norfolk: PETA, 2005. 25. “Cruelty is.” 26. “Canned Hunts,” 6–7. 27. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “PopPourri,” The Reporter 39, no. 1 (2007): 2. 28. Sierra Club. “PopPourri,” The Reporter 38, no. 3 (2006): 2. 29. “Captive Breeding and Species Introductions,” www.personal.umich.edu/ ~dallan/nre220/outline23.htm (4 April 2009). 30. “Caught in the Crosshairs: Wildlife Faces the Population Challenge,” The Reporter, A Publication of Population Connection 39, no. 1 (2007): 12–17. 31. “The Mexican Wolf,” www.boomerwolf.com/mexwolf.htm (April 4, 2009). 32. Tim Vanderpool, “El Lobo’s Long Journey Home: Mexican Wolves Struggle to Reclaim Territory in the Southwest,” Defenders: The Conservation Magazine of Defenders of Wildlife (Summer 2006): 14–19. 33. Vanderpool, “El Lobo’s,” 19. 34. “Wolves Under the Gun,” AWI Quarterly 57, no. 2. (Spring 2008): 2. 35. “Wolves Under,” 2. 36. “Administration Moves to Delist Wolves: Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho Eager to Resume hunts,” In Brief (Spring 2007) 23. 37. “Administration Moves,” 23. 38. “Administration Moves,” 23. 39. Evelyn B. Pluhar, Beyond Prejudice: The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 275. 40. Pluhar, Beyond Prejudice, 275. 41. Pluhar, Beyond Prejudice, 275. 42. “The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee,” The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, www.elephants.com/aboutSanctuary.php (4 April 2009).

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Lisa Kemmerer

“The Elephant.” “The Elephant.” “The Elephant.” “The Elephant.” “The Elephant.” Bethany Dopp, pers. com., June 2009. Dopp. Dopp. Dopp.

CHAPTER THREE



Through a Frame Darkly: A Phenomenological Critique of Zoos Bernard E. Rollin

Three years ago, I received a phone call from a New York Times reporter covering New York City television. After doing a content analysis of the material covered in a week on New York cable television, he was surprised to find that the most prevalent topic was animals. Though he was surprised at this result, I was not. As a lecturer who has done 1,200+ lectures worldwide, mostly on animal issues, I am often adrenalized and overstimulated after a lecture, and seek comfort in television programs, hoping to watch Clint Eastwood shoot a bad guy. What I most often find is what I am trying to escape—animal topics and issues. My own community hosts two Animal Planet stations on our cable system. I also know from living in New York that the only way a person can engage strangers in conversations is to have a dog or other animal. Even cynical, hard-bitten, seen-it-all New Yorkers melt at the sight of a puppy. One can only speculate as to why this hunger for animals is ubiquitous. I do know that in my career as an animal advocate fighting for better animal welfare for research animals and food animals I have been able to tap this sentiment to good effect. For example, as part of a group drafting federal laws assuring proper treatment of laboratory animals, I found that our work garnered widespread support from across the political spectrum, as does my current work aimed at eliminating some of the most egregious aspects of confinement agriculture. Perhaps what is going on in urbanized society is a longing for greater intercourse with nature. When I lived in New York, I recall meeting a child from 57

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Harlem who fully believed that concrete was natural and that grass and vegetation were artificial. Fish tanks are famous for their calming effects; hence their presence in dentists’ offices. There is evidence that pets accelerate recovery from heart attacks, and help prevent their recurrence. Animals can be utilized to break through the frightful shell in which emotionally disturbed people are locked, and the brightening of nursing homes by animals is wellestablished. There is a dramatic film of a very old man, silent and grim-faced and rigid for twenty years, speaking for the first time when handed a puppy, smiling and intoning “pretty.” Murderers are rehabilitated by working with horses and dogs. Robert Stroud—the birdman of Alcatraz—was redeemed in an otherwise violent life by his classic work on birds. What, in the face of all this, are we to say of zoos? On the surface, they are a perfect vehicle for filling the need for human-animal interaction. Where else can an urban child—or for that matter a rural child—encounter the majesty of the lion, the tiger, the giraffe? And where zoos were once indeed prisons for animals, the enclosures are larger now, more naturalistic. A field has developed known as “behavioral enrichment,”1 aimed at providing reasonable approximations of opportunities for animals to “do their thing.” Animals in zoos live longer on the average than their wild counterparts, are better nourished, and their health is protected by veterinarians. They are not typically harmed in experiments or fated to be eaten. In the face of all this who but an “animal crazy” or a curmudgeon could find anything wrong with zoos? Dale Jamieson, in a classic paper entitled “Against Zoos,” has detailed a number of thoughtful ethical reasons to question zoos.2 In his discussion, Jamieson considers arguments for zoos based on amusement, education, scientific research, and preservation of species, and concludes, on utilitarian cost-benefit grounds, that none of these arguments, nor their aggregation, provide sufficient justification for keeping wild animals in captivity. It would be difficult, I think, to do better in that arena than Jamieson has done. I wish to move the critique in a different direction, one rooted in the phenomenology of the zoo experience, to create a different set of reasons against maintaining zoos. When I was Ph.D. graduate student in the Columbia University Department of Philosophy during the 1960s, I went through a very black period of my life. Polluted air and a great deal of stress in the graduate program contributed to my suffering severe and chronic asthma, necessitating visits to the emergency room, sometimes five nights a week. The asthma curtailed my physical activity, which in turn rendered me more susceptible to asthma. My physical condition, and the fear asthma endangered, in turn contributed

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to the stress of a Kafkaesque graduate program that had 300 students and only one advisor to talk to students before one was ready to write the dissertation. In one seminar, there were seventy-five students enrolled, yet it was convened in a room holding twenty. In addition, the comprehensive exams covered 16,000+ pages of philosophy, and virtually none of the texts were covered in the courses. I daresay that the treatment of students at Columbia contributed a great deal to the student willingness to “riot” in 1967. In sum, though I never got a formal diagnosis, I was seriously depressed and physically debilitated. It probably didn’t help that I worked all night and slept 7 am to noon. When I could not sleep, I grew more depressed. When I was psychologically at my worst, I would go to the Bronx zoo. I believed then, and for the next 40 years, that I went to the zoo to be cheered up by the contact with animals. Many times, after all, I was waiting at the gates for the zoo to open. Yet when I began thinking about this paper, and why I was drawn to the zoo in my darkest moments, I realized that what was going on psychologically was nothing like being made happy. It was, rather, more like gloating over the plight of some beings who were far worse off than I was. Though I was trapped, caged by my condition, I knew (or at least hoped) that there was an escape. I had taken and passed the formidable comprehensive exams, and I planned to seek a job in an unpolluted, nonstressful environment when the exams were done and I was ready to write. (The prospect of writing held no fear for me.) In contrast, the animals were eternally trapped, without even hope of escape. What I thought of as joy was thus better characterized as spite. I understood my situation; however bad it was, I could hope and even anticipate better times. The animals, however, were perpetually doomed to their suffering, with no escape, no hope, no anticipation. In a pathological and ignoble way, then, I used the animals’ backs as a ladder to climb out of my own misery. There is no term in any language expressing that psychological state— perhaps there should be. There is surely an element of that in people being drawn to freak shows as well as to excursions to madhouses occurring in the nineteenth century. The closest term is the German word Schadenfreude— taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. But what I am discussing is not Schadenfreude. As Nietzsche perceptively points out, Schadenfreude stems from feelings of inferiority—the satisfaction comes from the leveling power of misfortune making those we envy our equal.3 The phenomenon I am describing would better be termed “ontological solace derived from something being worse off than I am”—surely that could be expressed in one word in German.

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Now I cannot say for certain that my recollection is accurate. I may well be reinterpreting my old experience in the light of my current interest in animal ethics. Against such skepticism I can only say that I have described what I remember. And I can further buttress that I am accurate by pointing out that I only once went to a zoo again when I emerged from my situation in New York, even before I began work in animal ethics. (On that occasion, I reluctantly took my small son to a zoo at his request.) On the occasion I did go before turning to animal ethics, I was repulsed and saddened, and left quickly. What does all this tell us about zoos and most people in general? Very little. But I think something similar happens more often than nonappreciative people would be willing to admit. Jamieson quotes Edward Ludwig’s study of a Buffalo, NY zoo published in 1981.4 According to Ludwig’s reports from zookeepers, the terms most often employed by visitors about the animals are “cute,” “funny-looking,” “lazy,” “dirty,” “weird,” and “strange,” predicates that bespeak nothing like respect or wonder, but rather come closer to the state I described. Even “cute,” which seems at first blush positive, is a mark of dismissive patronizing. In any case, it does not betoken the sort of authentic connection with animals we argued that people are hungry for. I am not suggesting that my personal, pathologically-derived use of the zoo experience is ubiquitous or even widespread. I rather wish to argue that, experiences like mine aside, the contact with animals in zoos is pathological in its own way, fundamentally flawed and inimical to achieving the experience of encountering animals we alluded to at the beginning of this paper. In the eighteenth century, rich gentry would tour nature with a picture frame, subordinating the unbounded dimensions of the natural world to a contrived limitation. Whatever we might wish to say about what such people were experiencing, we can affirm with confidence that they were not experiencing nature, but rather reducing it to artifice, and limiting perceptually what is inherently and intrinsically unlimited. If such people were to boast of their aesthetic experience of nature, we would scoff. Indeed, we would feel that rather than capturing the beauty, sublimity, or grandeur of nature, they were reducing it to, paradoxically, a picture of itself. Something analogous happens at zoos. Lions, or elephants, are sublime in nature, inspiring awe and fear. I got a taste of this when I took an open van tour through Kruger Park, where we were warned in advance that the van could be charged by an elephant, or attacked by a lion—unlikely but possible. And the way Kruger park is set up, one may drive through it directly through the habitat of a dazzling array of species, and, if one is lucky, see them as they live, in as close to reality as possible, in its terror and majesty. I did in fact see

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an impala with a stick protruding through its side, clearly doomed. We could drive over hundreds of miles, but were not allowed to leave the vehicle. We were in a frame, or a cage on wheels, not the animals. We looked upon a landscape with surprising and limitless possibilities, not one framed by human artifice, and inherently predictable. Even if I did go to zoos before Kruger, which I don’t, I never would have gone again after Kruger. In a zoo, the lion or elephant, to take an obvious case, but also the birds, and crocodiles, and reptiles and rodents, are framed by us. They are dioramas, not animals. I recall seeing the white tigers through the glass window at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, and much to my own amazement was moved to tears, not at the grandeur of the animals, but at the horror of framing these bundle of powers for anyone to look at, not having earned the right to do so. Better dead, I thought, than a caricature of its inherent majesty. Horribly, from a moral point of view, I felt some sense of justice when Roy of Siegfried and Roy, the owners and exhibitors of these animals, was mauled by one of them. In my other writings, I have claimed, following Aristotle, that an animal is defined by its telos, the set of powers constitutive of its nature—the “pigness of the pig,” the “lion-ness of the lion.” The animal is what it does, following its nature as predator, or rooter, or burrower. The tiger in the Mirage window is not a tiger, but the body of a tiger, not hugely different from a stuffed tiger. The tiger is a tiger only when it is “burning bright in the forests of the night,” not languishing waiting for a handout of food in a city no self-respecting tiger would ever approach, let alone live in. And, in fact, this is the essence of zoos. Whether truncating the hundred mile hunting range of a lion to under an acre, or limiting the soaring and prey scanning of a hawk, the zoo frames the animal for the convenience of an audience that doesn’t care, except to be titillated, briefly amused, and perhaps, take solace in there being something worse off than they are. Telos is a concept I resurrected from Aristotle while attempting to construct a viable animal ethic in the late 1970s. Aristotle’s worldview was that of a universe of natural kinds, where the essence of things was what they did—their natures were their function, end, purpose, and goal. While modern science’s regnant paradigm is the machine, and it attempts to explain all phenomena in terms of physics mechanically, even biological entities, Aristotle was at root a biologist, for whom living things and what they did and how they functioned was the dominant model for reality. Physics, for Aristotle, was as it were the biology of dead matter—even nonliving things had natures. When one drops a stone, it falls to its natural place, the earth, because it is primarily made of earth, and the natural place for earth was the center of the Earth, also the center of the universe.

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It was this concept I took as central to animal ethics. To base moral obligations to animals—or for that matter to humans—simply on maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain, as utilitarians do, and looking at the results strictly quantitatively seemed to me too impoverished and austere. Certainly avoiding pain is important to living things, but at least as important is fulfilling their biological and psychological natures—“fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly” as the song goes. Telos is the “pigness of the pig” the “cowness of the cow.” To restrict a bird so it cannot fly probably does not cause it pain in the ordinary sense, but is surely significantly unpleasant, distressful, an unsurmountable obstacle to its being a bird and a happy bird. Respecting telos included concerns about pain; the converse is not true. Telos became the guidepost and benchmark for me in criticizing myriad use of animals in society, be it putting rodents—nocturnal burrowing creatures—in polycarbonate cages under constant light in research; or social monkeys in single cages; or sows in stalls 2’x 3’x 7’ for their entire productive life when it is known that in nature they will cover a mile a day foraging. Society seems to agree with this approach as it has, worldwide, dismantled confinement agriculture when it came to understand such agriculture’s violation of telos, or when it demands “environmental enrichment” for laboratories and zoos. This account provides a philosophical underpinning for my phenomenological experience of revulsion and sadness at the tigers in the Mirage in Las Vegas, or dancing bears in circuses. (The latter, when seen at night in their cages, will endlessly weave in what behaviorists call stereotypical behavior, behavior epidemic among animals whose telos is violated, particularly in terms of physical space.) An animal, on my account, is a bundle of powers, waiting to be actualized. The tiger in the Mirage window is no longer a tiger, with no potential for tigerness, no more so than if it were kept alive on a respirator. Zoos celebrate, not the animals, but our mastery of the animals, our ability to override telos. (Circuses go further and actually celebrate the perversion of telos.) They trivialize telos, reducing the lion to “pretty” or “cute,” the crocodile to “yucky”; the hunting bullet that is an eagle to an empty cartridge; the whale to an ornament in a fish tank, the monkey to a neurotically compulsive masturbator, at whom we laugh contemptuously. The panting polar beat atop a fiberglass “iceberg” in desert heat in one zoo I visited is a bitter and eloquent attestation to my point. In zoos, animals are, in Heidegger’s terminology, “ready at hand,” in other words, there as our tools for amusement, not in their own teleological magnificence. What is wrong with zoos, then, is not only what they do to animals, who experience depression, madness, stereotypy, learned helplessness, but also

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profound “denaturing.” The lion, for example, loses his “lioness.” A friend of mine owned a tenth generation zoo lion so far removed from lion nature that he walked the animal, and kept it in a cage with no roof that a real lion would have escaped from in a heartbeat—this animal never tried. Would zoos be fine if we artificially made the animals joyful, for example pharmacologically? I don’t think so, though they would certainly cause less suffering. For the harm that remains is to ourselves, to our own souls. Instead of fulfilling our ancient yearning for interacting with nature, we are accepting an ersatz, synthetic, degenerate perversion of that encounter. I am reminded of the construction of Disney World, where the real swamp was destroyed to create a plastic swamp with plastic vegetation and robotic animals for a boat ride, the new swamp being, in the minds of the designers, more swamplike. A friend of mine once invited me to go to a strip club with him, and was shocked when I told him I had never been and had no desire to go. Why not? Because for me, seeing gum-chewing, bored women, surgically enhanced to meet the current male erotic ideals, does not meet my desire for erotic stimulation, which is infinitely better served by a real woman, in no way as well-endowed, but real, stripping for me out of a conscious desire to awaken my desire toward her. Zoos are to our primordial need for interacting with animals as strip clubs are to our erotic urges. A reader of this essay has suggested that the following problem arises for the foregoing analysis: “How is it that people have loving relationships with pets, yet are not turned off by the zoo experience? [In other words] if zoos are so bad and people have genuine experiences with animals, how come folks don’t find zoos disgusting?” This reader has then argued that, for the reason quoted, the stripper analogy “breaks down.” Not so! In fact the very same situation exists with strip clubs. I have friends who are happily married, and sexually satisfied in that marriage, yet visit strip clubs with some regularity. When I ask them how they can go to such places and do they not find them degrading, they reply that they go for titillation, not for satisfaction, and their wives in fact sometimes go with them! Thus despite having a fine relationship with their spouses, they are quite comfortable going to a place that would be degrading were it not for that relationship. This is a legitimate parallel to those who love their pets yet go to zoos. Even more to the point, the reader has ignored the widespread phenomenon psychologists call compartmentalization, wherein people keep separate in their minds conflicting beliefs and never consider them as conflicting. A simple example can be found in some of my biological scientist colleagues who accept evolution in their professional lives, yet are religiously creationists. The animal area is replete with examples of such phenomena. I am

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acquainted with scientists who dote on their pet dogs, yet perform horribly invasive experiments on “research dogs.” In the same vein, people who learn of Descartes’ view of animals as thoughtless machines devoid of feelings assume that Descartes did not have direct acquaintance with dogs, for “no one who has been around dogs could possibly deny their awareness.” In fact, Descartes raised Spaniels and gave them as gifts, so obviously he did have direct experience with such animals. Many dog fighters are quite attached to their dogs, yet continue to fight them, and many hunters profess (honestly I believe) deep love for the kind of animals they hunt. As a species, we excel at ersatz self-delusion, from strip clubs and inflatable dolls to the new phenomenon of cyberpets, like Ibo the Sony robot dog, or the key-chain sized artificial pets that flourish with attention and languish, starve, and die if neglected. Ibo can recognize a given individual, solicit play behavior, wag its plastic tail, even cuddle. Some people have argued that such toys are the perfect “pet” for old people and nursing homes. After all, they do not urinate, defecate or otherwise make a mess; can be put in a closet at night, and provide attention and companionship to the lonely. No more so, in my view, than the artificial vagina or dildo provides a sex “partner.” Pets provide a reciprocal, give and take relationship, machines do not, even though desperate people can apparently convince themselves that they do. That we can convince ourselves that poor substitutes replace the real thing does not make these substitutes the real thing—Cool Whip and Arby’s provide paradigm cases. In effect, I am saying that, in addition to hurting the animals, zoos hurt us as well, passing off a poor, far off the mark experience as the real thing. The obvious question arises: How, then, are we to provide the real encounter with unframed animality that people long for in a world of cities and suburbs? For some people, perhaps, such a yearning is a reason they hunt, paradoxically annihilating the source of the experience they seek. (Few hunters would give up the killing dimension of hunting.) For others, it is provided in photographing wildlife or birding, or simply walking in the wilderness—doing some work, in short, to win or earn the primordial experience. (Edward Abbey criticized the building of boardwalks, easy paved paths, automobile roads in natural parks as inimical to the very essence of what one seeks in such places, arguing that the experience of nature does not come cheap or easily, but should be earned.5) There is probably no easy way to provide the encounter with animals, but there are better ways. Probably the best way, technologically quite practicable, is to place video cameras in places where wildlife gather, for example waterholes. This has in fact been done. Though the viewer (and listener) is

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still recovering an image, it is an image of reality, not a false image. Such cameras could be placed virtually anywhere with minimal intrusion. One might need to watch for hours before one sees a lion, or never see one—that is a far truer picture of wild nature than is the zoo, where the animal is there whenever you feel like seeing it. Alternatively, the Desert Museum in Arizona suggests itself as a far better zoo than its more grandiose rich cousins. The Desert Museum involves walking through natural portions of desert salted with animals who naturally live there, though they are fenced in. Thus is a better picture of animal life for viewers, and surely better for the animals—remember the polar bear exhibit we mentioned. In Africa, one finds game ranches, essentially very large chunks of land fenced in, where the animals live their lives until culled (compare that to the pig in the crate!) Such living zoos could fairly easily be constructed—Kruger Park is the archetype of such places. I was delighted to learn that a coyote had been seen in Central park a couple of years ago. Again, there is no guarantee one will experience a given animal—just as is the case in nature! For cities like New York, one could create such places as the Desert Museum in Central Park with indigenous fauna—indeed, Central Park is such a place if one bothers to take the time. And there is indeed a rich urban ecology of animals who live there, from rats and mice and pigeons to peregrine falcons living in the concrete canyons of the city. And a place where people could interact with domestic animals—sheep, pigs, goats, cattle—could go a long way to instilling in children (and adults) the thrill of interacting with another species. (I will never forget my visit to the Catskill Game farm where I could once in a while pet the deer who lived there on a large acreage.) Institutions like that, or like Farm Sanctuary or other rescue groups, could provide people with no agricultural background the wonder of meeting domestic animals who are not traumatized by socializing with humans, yet are quite exotic to city dwellers. (Believe it or not, I once saw urban people encounter cattle on federal land, and respond with a combination of fascination and fright—“what are those things?”). Yet another approach is provided by the advent of “critter cams,” tiny video cameras that can be mounted unobtrusively on animals, fitted with enough memory and power to allow us to observe their form of life without adversely affecting their behavior. Doubtless others can envision other more ingenious modalities for meeting the need we have for seeing and hearing and touching animals while not being the equivalent of strip clubs. But the key point is that today’s zoos do not began to meet that need, and indeed, create an attitude that discourages

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respect and awe, and substitutes self-congratulation at our ability to dominate nature.

Notes 1. Hal Markowitz, Behavioral Enrichment in the Zoo (New York: Van Nostrand, 1982). 2. Dale Jamieson, “Against Zoos,” in In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985). 3. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), 127. 4. E. G. Ludwig, “People at Zoos: A Sociological Approach,” International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems 1981, 2(6), 310–316. 5. Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968).

CHAPTER FOUR



Beyond Zoos: Marianne Moore and Albrecht Dürer Randy Malamud

Marianne Moore’s poetry stands as a striking example of art that teaches a great deal about animals without necessitating their constraint, and without involving (even figuratively) people’s spectatorial presence, as all zoos and most zoo stories do. A stay-at-home type who never ventured to exotic foreign habitats (she infrequently even left Brooklyn, making friends from Manhattan cross the river to see her), Moore read about animals and looked at pictures of them. She nurtured her imagination—and, in turn, her audience’s—creating poetry about animals without recourse to animal captivity. Others who write about animals may share Moore’s attitude, determining to integrate animals into art from a distance and without disturbing their natural existence, but Moore is remarkable for the extent and determination with which this ethos explicitly informs her poesis. With one exception, her animal poems do not derive from or relate firsthand encounters with animals, but rather, they come from a bestiary of her mind. Moore’s poetic bestiary is the best-known component of her oeuvre. Animals are “Moore’s most frequent concrete subject,” writes Margaret Holley. “She wrote approximately forty poems featuring animal subjects from ‘A Jelly-Fish’ in 1909 to ‘Tippoo’s Tiger’ in 1967.”1 Animals featured in these poems include the buffalo, pigeon, arctic ox, ostrich, snail, elephant, rat, horse, lizards, porcupine, ibis, goose, vulture, and loon. In a letter to T. S. Eliot, Moore referred to some of her poems as “animiles”; Holley writes that

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this term “means literally ‘pertaining to animals,’ but it is also loosely perhaps an echo of something like ‘Anglophiles,’ the form of affinity.”2 Moore found her animals in books, magazines, libraries, pictures: and she makes these sources unequivocally clear. A headnote to “The Arctic Ox (or Goat),” for example, informs that the poem is “Derived from ‘Golden Fleece of the Arctic,’ by John J. Teal, Jr., who rears musk oxen on his farm in Vermont, as set forth by him in the March 1958 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.”3 The first reference to the title animal in “The Jerboa” carries an endnote reading: “‘There are little rats called jerboas which run on long hindlegs as thin as a match. The forelimbs are mere tiny hands.’ Dr. R. L. Ditmars, Strange Animals I Have Known (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951), p. 274” (263). Endnotes to “The Plumet Basilisk” cite an Illustrated London News article titled “The Chinese Dragon,” describing the behavior of such lizards and folklore about them, and a discussion in Animals of New Zealand about another lizard called the tuatara. “The Frigate Pelican” cites Audubon’s work, while “An Octopus” cites an Illustrated London News article as the source for the poem’s colorful descriptions (“ghostly pallor changing / to the green metallic tinge of an anemone-starred pool” [71]). George Jennison’s Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome provides a source (at one remove) for Xenophon’s observation in Anabasis of an ostrich, used in “He ‘Digesteth Harde Yron.’” The image of “a chameleon with tail / that curls like a watch spring” and vertical tiger stripes in “Saint Nicholas” (196) carries an endnote reference: “See photograph in Life, September 15, 1958” (293). Moore’s frequent use of direct quotation in her poetry parallels her “use” of animals. She uses the raw material out of which she crafts her verse without appropriating it. She does not exhaust her imaginative fodder in any way, nor affect the way other people may later wish to use that material: it remains just as she found it in her sources. The same cannot be said of zoo animals. In response to an interviewer’s question about her extensive quotations, she said, “I was just trying to be honorable and not steal things. I’ve always felt that if a thing had been said in the best way, how can you say it better? . . . If you are charmed by an author, I think it’s a very strange and invalid imagination that doesn’t long to share it. Somebody else should read it, don’t you think?”4 Moore is explicitly referring to plagiarism when she says people shouldn’t steal things, but this sensibility also explains her proclivity to borrow (or “share”) animals rather than “steal” them—as, I believe, zoos steal both the physical animals and their more metaphysical essence and integrity. She seems happy to share things, not needing to own them—a characteristic antithetical to the dominionist ethos that underlies zoos.

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Moore presents her poetic animals on the same level as people; we perceive them directly, reciprocally, one-on-one. The intellectual and aesthetic experience her poetry offers is antithetical to the nonreciprocal paradigm of the spectator as voyeur. As she brings animals into the realm of human art, she does so with a wariness about what that action means and what presuppositions it embodies: Moore does not “anoint” her animals with the benevolent gift of our culture; she does not presume that the animals who enter her ken are necessarily ennobled by the poet’s touch. “Critics and Connoisseurs,” for example, contrasts an ant’s natural behavior oblivious to the human artist’s attention—what she calls “unconscious fastidiousness”—with the more consciously fastidious people who are stiffly precise, able to produce artworks that are “well enough in their way” but no match for the insect’s innate, ineffable splendor (38). She realizes that the introduction of animals into human art may well result in an awkward discomfiture, a clash of cultures; and that human culture may very well show itself to have less integrity, less inherent stability and appropriateness, than the animals’ world. Pamela White Hadas proposes that Moore believes “animals and animal nature. . . present a definite threat to art.”5 Moore’s poetry tempts one to surmise that she preferred animals to people. “She consistently used animals to represent desirable qualities,” writes Bernard F. Engel; “it is man who is guilty of greed, falseness, misuse, and other errors that she condemned.”6 Her animals often deflate human presumptions to intellectual superiority. (Such an “unpatriotic” comparative analysis of species would seem impossible at the zoo: the people who pay to attend them would hardly accept the suggestion that they are not the imperial animal.) People have none of the power over Moore’s poetic animals that we do over zoo animals—if anything, the animals in her human-animal encounters have the advantage over us in their free-spirited, natural, unfettered complexity. In “The Plumet Basilisk” she calls the Malay Dragon “the true divinity / of Malay” (21), and she seems to feel most of her animal subjects warrant a similar tribute, enjoying a kind of supreme perfection in their own setting. The dazzling difficulty of Moore’s poetic and her diction increases in proportion to the magnificence of an animal’s attributes and insights. The reader has to work hard, and not always with assured success, to appreciate her animals; we have to position ourselves carefully, sometimes awkwardly and uncomfortably, to find a point of view that allows us to see Moore’s animals. This situation offers a direct antithesis to the construct in which caged zoo animals wait for people to walk by and ogle them, easily, for as long (or short) a time as the spectator wishes.

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Only when Moore’s animals come into contact with people do they appear less than majestic. “The Jerboa” links human treatment of animals with nationalist bravado and slavery: the way we use animals—as beasts of burden harnessed to amuse us, to satiate our appetites, to appease our superstitions—betrays our basest behavior. The poem describes how people kill animals and harvest their resources to indulge our follies, using goosegrease paint and ground rhinoceros horn in frivolous rituals. People appropriate the natural world like thieves, without appreciating its harvest, out of a sense of entitlement: believing that “The bees’ food is your / food” (12). Our relation to animals is characterized by cruelty, possessiveness, and competitiveness: They had their men tie hippopotami and bring out dappled dogcats to course antelopes, dikdik, and ibex; or used small eagles. They looked on as theirs, impala and onigers. (10)

“He ‘Digesteth Harde Yron’” dramatizes the barbarity of conspicuous consumption. In “The Arctic Ox (Or Goat),” people are ridiculed for the way we exercise the seminal act of imperial dominance over animals, naming them (as Adam did in Genesis): “The musk ox / has no musk and it is not an ox / illiterate epithet” (193). When animals have the misfortune to become engaged with human society, Moore warns throughout her animal poems, their dignity and essential existence are put at great risk. Moore attended Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Zoo, as she mentions in her essay “Brooklyn from Clinton Hill,” relating a brief uncritical objective description. Her single poem about a zoo, however, more intricately problematizes the zoogoing experience. In “The Monkeys,” Moore laments the dissipation of experience from a youthful zoo visit: the dimness of the poet’s recalled sensation implicitly contrasts with the eternal vividness of her own literary bestiary. The rarity of zoos as a source for her animal poetry probably indicates disaffection or disapproval—a sense that zoos did not provide the kind of stimulating and usable inspiration that printed reference sources did. Besides being her only zoo poem, “The Monkeys” is unusual among Moore’s animal verse in several ways. The differences between this poem about captive animals and her others suggest how she feels zoos distort the cultural examination and representation of animals. The title, for example, is misleading7: the poem mainly features not a monkey but a large cat. Normally Moore’s

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poetry—especially her animal poetry—is marked by a focal sure-handedness: she knows what she wants to examine, and sets sharply about the business of doing so; if there are preliminary digressions (as, for example, “The Steeple-Jack” begins with an odd evocation of Dürer), they are structurally and poetically functional. But the monkeys in this poem are only a distraction. The speaker must plod through a panorama of animals—monkeys, zebras, elephants, small cats and a parakeet—before discovering the one she seeks. Winnowing out a single zoo animal from the crowd is mimetic of a zoo experience, with its overwhelming profusion of animals. Bob Mullan and Garry Marvin observe that for most zoo visitors, their experience is not intensive or of a long duration . . . watching consists of merely registering that they have seen something as they move quickly past it. For example, in a recent study of visitors to the Reptile House in the National Zoo, Washington D.C., the average time recorded for people in the entire house was 9.7 minutes, with an average of only 0.44 minutes spent in front of each enclosure.8

Perhaps as a way of evoking this dizzying overload, zoo stories commonly build up, indirectly, the approach to the central animal; zoo visitors must first briefly encounter and bypass an array of other clattering animals vying unsuccessfully for attention. In “The Monkeys,” Moore negotiates the animals that obscure her vision from the animal who will not appear until the middle of the poem, “that Gilgamesh among / the hairy carnivora—that cat with the // wedge-shaped slate-gray marks on its forelegs and the resolute tail” (40). An unusual distance and hesitancy marks her foray among the other animals, and those relegated to the role of minor characters appear uncomfortable, undignified. The monkeys “winked too much and were afraid of snakes.” That is all Moore says about them, despite the poem’s title; it is as if the monkeys had made a sort of desperate showy bid for attention, for prominence, but were jostled out of the spotlight by the competing hordes of animals. The monkeys seem dissatisfied—as does Moore—because the zoo does not allow each animal its due attention or proper appreciation. The awkwardness in this opening deluge reflects Moore’s inability to approach these animals as she does in all her other animal poems. The parakeet appears “trivial and humdrum on examination,” which is not to say that it is essentially trivial and humdrum, only that it looks that way—people perceive it that way—in the zoo. The elephants, “with their fog-colored skin / and strictly practical appendages,” are not explicitly “humdrum” like the parakeets, but manifest a blasé colorlessness, or foglike murkiness, atypical of Moore’s bestiary. (Her poem “Elephants” does these

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animals more justice; those compelling elephants were inspired not by zoo animals but by Cicero’s observations and a lecture-film entitled Ceylon, the Wondrous Isle.) The zebras are “supreme in / their abnormality”; describing their coloration as abnormal implies a normative context—that is, they are unlike any of the other zoo animals; a zebra wouldn’t seem abnormal in its natural habitat, surrounded by other zebras. “Abnormal” carries a pejorative connotation, and again, Moore does not apply such characterizations to animals outside the zoo bestiary. (The zebra is also “supreme,” but the mitigated, paradoxical nature of this compliment diminishes her usually effusive admiration for animals.) Contrast the self-assured immodesty of a free animal in “The Buffalo,” which “need not fear comparison / with bison, with the twins, / indeed with any / of ox ancestry” (28). The zebra’s “abnormality” suggests that people burden captive animals with an unnatural self-consciousness, and an unfortunate rivalry with their artificial zoo neighbors, that derive from human standards and perceptions. After Moore observes all these animals, her attention finally settles on the cat (not identified by any more precise zoological nomenclature or popular name, unlike nearly all the other animals in her poetry—suggesting that captivity has stinted its identity). That cat makes what the poet calls an astringent remark, a single (eighty-two-word!) sentence—about the nature of people, the nature of animals, art and epistemology, the workings of human society, the condition of the natural world, the relation of people to animals, the relation of art to the natural world, the relation of human society to the natural world, the vanity of human society—expansive in its philosophical resonance and profundity. Moore’s animals do not speak human language elsewhere; the cat’s monologue indicates another difference between this and her other animal poems. Perhaps she feels that the unique depiction of a captive animal in her oeuvre justifies the animal’s unique recourse to human language, to make sure people don’t overlook what this zoo animal has to say. The aggressive, confident certitude of the cat’s speech is a slap in the face, certainly not what people would expect a captive animal to be telling us from behind zoo bars, especially after Moore has depicted the cat against the backdrop of unremarkably diminutive animals—twitching monkeys, trivial birds. This ironic effect is certainly intentional: Moore implies that people can contain and suppress some of the animals some of the time, but not absolutely. The caged animals were tamed for the first half of the poem; in the second half, the cat (on behalf of the natural animal kingdom) explodes in the reader’s face and gives immensely more than one bargains for in the zoo. What the cat has to say is bitingly incisive, uncompromisingly

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brutal. It is as if one has ambled too close to the cage and has been gouged and bloodied by the cat’s lashing out, although the metaphorical “assault” is ideological rather than physical. Surprising us with a stark departure from a conventional, predictable zoo experience, Moore warns against the unexamined presupposition of dominionist complacency people bring to the zoo. The poem suggests she has not returned to this zoo in the twenty years since the encounter; understandably, one would not repeatedly subject oneself to such unsettling outbursts. The cat says: “They have imposed upon us with their pale half-fledged protestations, trembling about in inarticulate frenzy, saying it is not for us to understand art; finding it all so difficult, examining the thing as if it were inconceivably arcanic, as symmetrically frigid as if it had been carved out of chrysoprase or marble - strict with tension, malignant in its power over us and deeper than the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp, rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber, and fur.” (40)

Critics have amply discussed what they perceive as the poem’s main brunt, the critical manifesto that happens to emanate from a cat. But they dissociate this weighty dictum, privileging intellectual abstraction over the poem’s precise reference to the physical context of the zoo. Bonnie Costello realizes the cat “may be speaking on behalf of nature or on behalf of the artist,” but finds a human aesthetic dictum finally more interestingly complex and pertinent. “As the voice of the isolated artist it speaks against a public, including critics, who put art in a special category. As the voice of the public it speaks against critics and their high-sounding interpretations.”9 Hadas believes the cat describes and then rebuts the frenzied protestations of a critical-artistic voice that asserts art must be difficult. The animal does not agree that art has power over us simply because it offers flattery (insincere words or difficulty that flatters the initiated “understanding” of the selfordered priests of interpretation) in exchange for the raw materials of life, the commodities of world-market exchange. The artist must offer flattery, fulfillment of arcanic expectations, in exchange for the necessities of life. Whereas it should be the other way around? The cat attacks vain literary work and the suspect livelihood of a conspiracy of artist-critics. Quite rightly.10

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Engel writes that the poem is about Moore’s “preference for criticism that has an emotional basis and her scorn for merely intellectual methods.”11 The poem’s zoo setting has remained largely unexplored—regarded as tangential, irrelevant, simply preliminary. Costello notes that the opening zoo construct has metaphorical and structural functions: this opening and the cat’s speech “depend on each other, in several ways,” she writes. “In the first half the images are presented primarily as literal ones. . . . The figure in the second half is obviously allegorical, bearing only a secondary relation to the creaturely setting from which it is drawn.”12 Engel, too, perceives the zoo as symbolically functional, seeing the animals as “a parliament of literary critics.”13 But a fundamental and also fairly obvious aspect of “The Monkeys” is its direct zoological and ecocritical commentary. Critics have too quickly glided over the implications of a caged zoo animal discussing art, other than to observe that the irony of this unexpected reversal typifies Moore’s poesis, and they miss her fascinating consideration of the cat and art, and of the cat as art (in a derogatory, formulaic, affected sense of “art” as cloistered artifice). Human culture, zoo culture, and nature all converge here (and battle things out) at a weird Sophoclean crossroads. In “The Monkeys,” Moore addresses how we treat our planet—comprising minerals, plants, and animals as well people and human art—and what zoos signify about our record. Art is, indeed, one component of what exists in the world, but a fairly small one, and certainly not the only one—other entities such as rye, hemp, flax, platinum, and timber, similarly comprise a substantial part of the ecostructure in which we exist. And art is made out of several of these raw materials, such as flax, platinum, and timber, but art is not the only thing they can be used for. Ultimately the raw materials that overflow the poem’s last line are important in their own right, not just because art, or anything else, can be made out of them. Moore is, partly, trying to decenter an adulatory fixation on art, trying to contextualize more rationally the relative function of the materials, resources, artifacts, that surround us. The cat inscribes itself into this catalogue of raw materials via the horses, fellow animals. The caged animal pontificates so prolifically because the stakes are so direct: it is literally trapped, captive, within one version of our cultural practices, the zoo. The cat realizes, not theoretically but from firsthand experience, the dangers of people’s conceptions of their right to use, fashion, manipulate, contrive the resources in the world around them—whether timber, horses, or zoo animals—for their own “artistic” education and delight. The cat’s theoretical pronouncement boils down to this: Art exists in a manipulable, contrived, and undesirable realm. But this statement is most signifcant in its relevance to the cat’s larger eco-

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logical statement about its condition (and the condition of all other animals, trees, minerals, resources): given that art exists in this ingenuine, corrupt condition, there are victims, of which the cat itself is one. Anything used in the cause and processes of art is “imposed” upon (to use the cat’s own word), and stripped of its integrity, stripped of its power to determine how it is regarded and constructed as subject. In the tyrannical hands of its manipulators, art is “malignant / in its power over us.” The cat is simply told, “it is not for us to understand art”—that is, that its function as subject on the canvas (in the cage) where it now finds itself is beyond its comprehension. The artists, the controllers, the manipulators, know what they’re doing; shut up and smile. We people are doing the hard work, practicing upon the other (in Stephen Greenblatt’s terminology14), “examining the thing” (as the cat says). The poet and the cat share a voice in “The Monkeys.” Their ultimate point, above and beyond the other injunctions, is, don’t desecrate the planet; don’t contrive with its hemp, platinum, and horses (and implicitly its cats, monkeys and other zoo animals) the way you do with art. Respect the essence and integrity of rye, flax, and fur, without having to make something out of them, or transform them into (what people would erroneously believe to be) some higher condition. “Fur,” as the poem’s last word, neatly embodies the dialectic opposition between the idea of an animal as a unique living creature and as a commodity—it is a reader-response challenge: if we recognize the fur not as an animal but only as a commodity, then we have failed Moore’s test.15 Art perverts natural existence if it serves as a medium whereby a valueless material, “flattery,” can be exchanged for real things such as rye and timber, and such perversion betokens a world in which people have lost sight of the inherent value that natural objects possess. Moore’s cat warns that people should not delude themselves by believing that just because we can make dense, clever art, we can ignore the costs and victims of our culture. She presents spectacular animals made dull and abnormal by cages at the poem’s opening; at the end, she shows the natural bounty of plants, animals, and minerals dully represented as merely ingredients for appropriation by industrial/commercia1 human culture, like items on an inventory sheet. People must regard our own cultural and artistic achievements, Moore suggests, against the more important backdrop of nature and the unfortunate mark we have left on it. Zoos typify our failure to perceive the proper perspective within our macrocosm: we see caged animals as a kind of “art,” but we remain oblivious to costs and dangers that far outweigh any value of our art. People behave badly in our world: abusively appropriating its resources, imprisoning its animals, and justifying such habits by the conceit that we are

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doing something very intricate, and something the victims that inhabit the natural world cannot begin to understand because they are too stupid, too unhuman. Animals’ inability to engage in art except as subjects, as fodder, then implicitly legitimizes their relegation to the passive, captive role of raw material. The Western imperial sensibility resonates in the background of this ethos. As John Berger describes the ideology that constrains the animal as cultural subject to passivity: “animals are always the observed . . . They are the objects of our ever-extending knowledge. What we know about them is an index of our power, and thus an index of what separates us from them. The more we know, the further away they are.”16 Marian Scholtmeijer describes how people often dishonestly consider and portray animals, in order to reassure ourselves about our relation to the world in a way that Moore’s ethically probing consideration would disallow: Refusal to recognize animal reality is a hedge against the guilt we would feel as we make use of their bodies were we to see them as sentient individuals rather than commodities . . . as Richard Tapper (citing Claude Lévi-Strauss) observes, animals “are good to think with.” As living beings, whose content we have decided is inaccessible, animals are peculiarly primed to vitalize thought without—so we think—impeding its freedom. We have a liking for the effect of animals upon our thoughts, as long as they do not challenge their instrumentality as mediators of culture. In all cases, there is a certain presumptuousness behind the philosophical position that the human mind constructs reality. That presumptuousness reaches a critical point, however, when we involve other living beings in our cultural projects.17

Moore recognizes what Scholtmeijer calls the cat’s “animal reality” as few people, certainly very few zoogoers, do. She does not force her cat into a subservient role as a passive mediator of culture, but rather depicts the cat as challenging this role eloquently. The cat deflates what Scholtmeijer calls the cultural presumption that the human mind constructs reality; conversely, the cat deconstructs human reality as it is posited in the zoo. Earlier, I briefly noted a reference to Albrecht Dürer in Moore’s poem, “The Steeple-Jack”: Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this, with eight stranded whales to look at; with the sweet air coming into your house on a fine day, from the water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish. (5)

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The Renaissance artist recurs in Moore’s writing. Darlene Williams Erickson identifies several points of connection: Dürer’s works rank among the treasured “old things” from “When I Buy Pictures.” Moore had been fascinated by Dürer since her trip to Paris in 1919. References to the German painter turn up in two other of Moore’s poems, “Then the Ermine” (“like violets by Dürer”) and “Apparition of Splendor” (“Dürer’s rhinoceros”). For the July 1928 issue of the Dial, Moore wrote an important review of an exhibition of Dürer prints at the New York Public Library. The seeds of “The Steeple-Jack” can be found in that review. . . . Moore makes the point that the “reliquary method of perpetuating magic” is ordinarily to be distrusted, but not so with Dürer. . . [and] that seeing such work “commits one to enlightenment if not to emulation, and recognition of the capacity for newness inclusive of oldness.”18

Costello notes that Moore, like Dürer, “was absorbed by the particular”; they shared “a passion for observation” and a “fascination with the strange in the real.”19 Just as Moore based her depictions of animals on secondary sources rather than the creatures themselves, Dürer, too, began his study of engraving in his father’s goldsmith shop, from “pattern books—albums filled with all sorts of designs of birds and beasts, flowers, and exotic peoples.”20 A later influence was the writing of Erasmus of Rotterdam, a scholar whose “Latin correspondence and literature are enlivened by references to animals” and who advocated “appreciation for the gifts of the animal as teacher.”21 Erasmus believed animals could enlighten people in such wide-ranging disciplines as art, architecture, domestic economy, and social values. The same faith in animals’ pedagogical wisdom permeates Dürer’s and Moore’s art: Colin Eisler writes that Dürer’s prints “may have been used by teachers following Erasmian progressive ideals. . . . Supreme imitator of the way animals look and live, [Dürer] also became teacher of human ways along with those of the squirrel or hare, lion or stag beetle.”22 Moore, too, teaches human ways along with animals’ ways and via animals’ ways—the cat’s lesson to people in “The Monkeys” epitomizes an Erasmian model. Out of Dürer’s hundreds of animal works, I focus on the one Moore alludes to in “Apparition of Splendor,” his 1515 woodcut. Rhinoceros testifies to the ability to create art about animals at a remove, without directly exploiting them. Further, it indicates how great the power of such nonexploitative animal art can be. The fascination with this work in later art and culture attests to how widely such art can be recycled, and how much energy is stored in such representations. Zoo stories tend to draw on and perpetuate the

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negative energy surrounding zoo animals; zoo stories tend to be sad stories. Moore’s and Dürer’s animals combat this negativity with an imaginative panache that offers an exemplary ideal for cultural interaction with animals. Moore specifically admires Dürer’s Rhinoceros in her essay on him, noting “that in the best pictures he has obtained his sense of fact second hand, filtered through prior representations, a tendency of course akin to her own drawing of the particular from books, pictures, films. She writes of Dürer that ‘liking is increased perhaps when the concept is primarily an imagined one—in the instance of the rhinoceros, based apparently on a traveler’s sketch or description.’”23 Dürer never saw a live rhinoceros (as Moore presumably never saw a live plumet basilisk or arctic ox). His source was another picture and a description, by the Moravian printer Valentine Ferdinand, whose text Dürer reproduces on his woodcut: They call it a rhinoceros. It is represented here in its complete form. It has the color of a speckled turtle. And in size it is like the elephant but lower on its legs, and almost invulnerable. It has a sharp strong horn on its nose, which it starts to sharpen whenever it is near stones. The stupid animal is the mortal enemy of the elephant. . . . Because that animal is so well armed, the elephant cannot do anything to it. They also say that the rhinoceros is fast, lively and clever. The animal is called “Rhinocero” in Greek and Latin. In India it is called “Ganda.”24

In some ways, Ferdinand contextualizes this rhinoceros unfortunately—calling it “stupid” (although he contradicts himself subsequently) is an irrelevant exertion of human presumptions to superiority. Ferdinand experienced the animal under conditions of imperialist domination and captivity, “in Lisbon when the great beast was shipped there in May 1515, sent from the farthest reaches among Portuguese Maritime conquests, Cambay in northwest India.”25 Dürer is implicated to a degree in this context—at a remove, so less damningly, but nevertheless Ferdinand’s experience affects Dürer’s cultural interaction with the animal. But I think the cultural outcome finally invokes praise, rather than condemnation, of Dürer’s ethics of representation. I acknowledge that this ethical stance may have been unconscious or unintended: drawing animals from life was not considered a necessary technique in the aesthetic of this period, so Dürer was not necessarily rejecting the ethos of the immediate captive animal subject; but nevertheless, especially in the legacy of Dürer’s representation, we can (as Moore did) acclaim his art as an important ethical statement for our own time if it was not as clearly so for his own. The

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rhinoceros had already been caught, and Dürer’s disseminated image allowed people to experience a rhinoceros without any others having to be caught, imprisoned, and exhibited. Dürer himself (who often travelled under difficult conditions to get to something he wanted to draw) could have done what Ferdinand did—witnessing and recording as a spectator the display of a captive animal as imperial booty—but chose not to. Dürer’s audience, the vast majority of which had never seen a rhinoceros, was “shown” one by the artist, who similarly had never seen one. An important transmission, a recycling, of culture has thus taken place, concerning animals, without the direct implication in the dynamics of captivity by either producer or consumer. If Ferdinand was implicated at second-hand because he went to see the animal an imperialist had captured, then Dürer is implicated at third-hand, and his viewers at fourth-hand: this complicity is not negligible, but at least it lessens at each remove. Dürer’s picture and text do not in any way apologize for this remove from nature, or attempt to atone for it or conceal it. On the contrary, the work proudly proclaims its distance from the original subject—proudly, because the artist is all the more talented for having produced this representation out of his own mind, without direct experience. The enduring popularity of Dürer’s Rhinoceros further testifies to the power of an aesthetic representation derived wholly from the artist’s mind. The rhinoceros as Dürer depicts it has striking idiosyncrasies: “the complicated cut of the fierce beast’s covering recalls those of courtly armor,” writes Eisler. “The animal has a strangely ‘dressed’ look, like some revolting pet lovingly clad by a proud owner.” But “this personal quality is one of the many reasons why Dürer’s print remained the definitive image of a rhinoceros centuries after its many inaccuracies and strange little additions—such as the spiral dorsal horn above the shoulders. . .—had been noted.”26 A contemporary of Dürer’s, Hans Burgkmair, also made a rhinoceros print the same year, but without the extra horn and stylized armor: “Burgkmair’s more accurate rhino never caught on. People wanted to believe in the rhinoceros just as Dürer first showed it. If nature was demonstrably different, he was right and reality was wrong.”27 Joan Barclay Lloyd confirms that “Dürer’s beautiful, but largely imaginary, figure . . . became the standard picture in Europe of a rhinoceros for nearly two hundred years.”28 The cause of art triumphs in Dürer’s work, and most importantly (as Moore and her cat would appreciate), without cost to nature. Rhinoceros had eight printings; by the seventeenth century, when the woodblock was showing signs of decay, two Dutch printers restored the image by preparing “an additional woodcut, inked in grey to be printed over the first one to create a chiaroscuro effect, lengthening the old block’s life and enhancing the image’s rich graphic quality to suit the new Baroque style.”29

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Dürer’s work thus shows one of the consummate indications of enduring art, the modification by artists of subsequent eras who combine both the original and more contemporary attributes. Other subsequent representations of a rhinoceros indebted to Dürer’s—situating viewers at a fifth-hand remove from the original animal imprisoned by Portuguese imperialists—include appearances in Maximilian’s Hours and the triumphal arch on his coat of arms, as a statue in Paris celebrating the ascension of King Henri II (1547), in sculptured reliefs in Schönborn castle, in white china for the Porcelain Palace in Dresden (1731), in Jan Joesten’s 1660 book Curious Descriptions of the Nature of Four-Footed Animals, Fish and Bloodless Water Animals, Birds, Crocodiles, Snakes, and Dragons, and in a silk painting based on Joesten’s drawing (thus, at sixth-hand remove from the original), by the Japanese artist Tani Buncho in 1790.30 Dürer’s image demonstrated an energy of recirculation and proliferation, exhibiting a vitality generally absent from the cultural representation of zoo animals (as Moore’s predominantly dim recollection in “The Monkeys” typifies). When a zoo animal dies, it is dispatched to the prosector or the glue factory and another is acquired to replace it, whereas Moore’s and Dürer’s animals have an enduring power and worth that testify to the strength of animals’ cultural potency in a context free from captivity. I like Costello’s characterization of both Moore and Dürer as “realist[s] of the imagination and not of nature.”31 I do not mean to argue that an animal of the imagination is inherently better than a natural animal. Rather, an animal of the imagination is a more fitting thing to expect from artists, from people and for people, as a representation of nature, than an imperial appropriation of the thing itself. Moore and Dürer recognize the vast potential and also the limits of human perception, cognition, and appreciation. They give their audience as much as they can in the realm of the imagination, forgoing as irrelevant and inappropriate any attempt to “capture” the natural. Moore herself provides a fitting terminus to the centuries of recycling Dürer’s animal representation (and the dual aesthetic and environmental connotations of “recycling” are appropriate—both are ways to conserve our planet’s resources). Her “Apparition of Splendor,” about the attributes of the plain old porcupine, begins by recalling Dürer’s fabulous creature: Partaking of the miraculous since never known literally, Dürer’s rhinoceros might have startled us equally if black-and-white spined elaborately. (158)

Moore does not mean to deny the imaginative sense of rhinocerosness Dürer achieved when she suggests it could have been just as amazing if it

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were a porcupine. Rather, she implies that any animal transformed through art into the realm of vivid aesthetic consciousness has an equally fabulous potential. Moore’s poetry pays homage to the “miraculous” power of animals in purely imaginative art, a miracle in which she invites like-minded readers to partake.

Notes 1. Margaret Holley, The Poetry of Marianne Moore: A Study in Voice and Value (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 128. 2. Holley, 79. 3. Marianne Moore, The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 193. All references to Moore’s poetry, given parenthetically in the text, are from this edition. 4. Marianne Moore, A Marianne Moore Reader (New York: Viking, 1961), 260. 5. Pamela White Hadas, Marianne Moore: Poet of Affection (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1977), 103. 6. Bernard F. Engel, Marianne Moore (Boston: Twayne, 1989), 9. 7. The poem’s original title was “My Apish Cousins.” Engel suggests that the title change offered a neater and more subtle irony. The new title explicitly informs that an animal is conveying the message; “the poem’s original title . . . made somewhat more obvious the ironic comparison of human and animal” (43). 8. Bob Mullan and Garry Marvin, Zoo Culture (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1987), 133. 9. Bonnie Costello, Marianne Moore: Imaginary Possessions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 31. 10. Hadas, 122. 11. Engel, 45. 12. Costello, 30. 13. Engel, 43. 14. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 15. “The Arctic Ox (Or Goat)” expresses Moore’s feelings about fur: “To wear the arctic fox / you have to kill it. Wear / qiviut—the underwool of the arctic ox - / pulled off it like a sweater; / your coat is warm; your conscience better” (193). 16. John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?,” in About Looking (New York, Pantheon, 1980), 14. 17. Marian Scholtmeijer, Animal Victims in Modern Fiction: From Sanctity to Sacrifice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 5. 18. Darlene Williams Erickson, Illusion is More Precise Than Precision (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1992), 74. 19. Costello, 194.

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20. Colin Eisler, Dürer’s Animals (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 9. 21. Eisler, 26. 22. Eisler, 27. 23. Costello, 194. 24. Eisler, 269. 25. Eisler, 269. 26. Eisler, 270. 27. Eisler, 271. 28. Joan Barclay Lloyd, African Animals in Renaissance Literature and Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 91. 29. Eisler, 271. 30. Eisler, 271–274. 31. Costello, 194.

CHAPTER FIVE



Respectful Stewardship of a Hybrid Nature: The Role of Concrete Encounters Chilla Bulbeck

Introduction In most westerners’ lives, commercial representations of wild animals and nature, for example in television advertisements or on roadside billboards, overwhelm our interactions with material wild animals. The scientific or environmental messages relayed at zoos and other encounter sites struggle for attention against this flood. For example, environmental management authorities warn tourists that crocodiles at Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory are dangerous, but crocodiles are presented in commercial information as “amusing, unreal, even soft and comical.” The warnings that crocodiles must be respected are outnumbered in roadside signs en route to Kakadu by a factor of around forty to one.1 Dominating the virtual nature landscape in September 2006 was the death of ‘television star and wildlife conservationist’2 Steve Irwin,3 as a result of being struck across the chest by a stingray’s barb. In the week following Irwin’s death at least ten stingrays were found dead and mutilated on Queensland beaches, two with their tails cut off, prompting speculation that they had been killed by Irwin’s fans as an act of revenge.4 Some of Irwin’s critics would not be surprised that his fans expressed their grief as vengeance on sting rays. Animal rights activists and wildlife documentary producers condemned Irwin’s methods as interventionist showmanship:

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Irwin made his career out of antagonising frightened wild animals, that’s a very dangerous message to send to children. . . . If you compare him with a responsible conservationist like Jacques Cousteau, he looks like a cheap reality TV star.5 You don’t touch nature, you just look at it. . . . [Although it] goes very well on television, . . . [Irwin would] interfere with nature, jump on animals, grab them, hold them, and have this very, very spectacular, dramatic way of presenting things.6

Referring to the controversial incident during a show at Irwin’s Australia Zoo in January 2004 when Irwin held his baby son while feeding a crocodile, Germaine Greer remarked The whole spectacle was revolting. . . . The crocodile would rather have been anywhere else and the chicken had a grim life too, but that’s entertainment at Australia Zoo. . . . That sort of self-delusion is what it takes to be a real Aussie larrikin [rascal]. . . . What Irwin never seemed to understand was that animals need space. There was no habitat, no matter how fragile or finely balanced, that Irwin hesitated to barge into, trumpeting his wonder and amazement to the skies. There was not an animal he was not prepared to manhandle. . . . Every creature he brandished at the camera was in distress. The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin, but probably not before a whole generation of kids in shorts seven sizes too small has learned to shout in the ears of animals with hearing ten times more acute than theirs, determined to become millionaire animal-loving zoo-owners in their turn.7

Interestingly, Greer’s comments, rather than those of Irwin’s other critics, drew a counterattack from outraged Australians, including political leaders: “extreme, radical rubbish” (then Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie)8 and “a bucket load of politically correct pap” (then Australian Labor Party foreign affairs spokesman, now Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd).9 Greer was described as “a poorly sketched caricature of a harridan” and a “feral hag” (newspaper columnist John Birmingham).10 The events and commentary surrounding Steve Irwin’s death prompt the questions addressed in this chapter. Can humans have intimate interactions with wild animals that support rather than negate environmental conservation? Can we have zoos that teach a respectful stewardship of the natural world? Can we have any managed wild animal encounters that do not relay the “wrong” messages? What is the relationship between representations of animal encounters—virtual narratives—and actual encounters with wild animals? Are “showmanship” and “conservation” in necessary and inevitable contradiction when it comes to our wildlife ex-

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periences? Are there masculine and feminine ways to interact with nature, and is one way “better” than the other? I commence with a discussion of zoos as vehicles for conservation, move on to a review of animal encounters in the “wild,” and conclude with an argument that zoos and wild animal encounters are not perhaps as conceptually different as we think, that all the world is now a “hybrid” nature and that humanity’s obligation within it is one of “respectful stewardship.”

Zoos: Rembrandts in the Rain? At their foundation, zoos in London and Paris trumpeted the achievements of empire, displaying exotic animals as spoils of imperial conquest in rows of cages. Today, however, public zoos in western metropolises feel obliged to proclaim their role in conservation. The zoos’ conservation agenda has been established by two main documents: the World Zoo Conservation Strategy published in 1993 by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the European Union’s 1999 Zoos Directive ensuring that all member states’ zoos commit themselves to conservation.11 A recent indication of the conservation approach is the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums’s 2008 theme: “Changing Climates . . . changing zoos.”12 Instead of chimpanzee tea parties and elephant rides, animal “shows” are now based on scientific knowledge to display animals’ “natural” behaviors. At the same time, zoos educate the public concerning the need to conserve endangered habitats, given that biological diversity is “diminishing hundreds of times more rapidly than at any time during the past 65 million years.”13 Naturalistic enclosures seek to imitate these “diminishing” ecosystems. In Calgary Zoo, a sign “history behind bars” notes that the disappearance of habitat is the “most serious problem wild animals face today” and that zoos are “the last refuge” for breeding and reintroduction programs. Zoos express their commitment to conservation with endangered species breeding programs, many of which seek ultimately to return the species to the wild. In this scenario zoos become arks, as Gerald Durrell14 put it, filled against the rising tide of homo sapiens. Zoos are immensely popular and, on this ground at least, would appear to be perfect vehicles for educating people concerning how to participate in habitat and species conservation. There are around 100,000 zoos worldwide, and the equivalent of about one tenth of the entire population of the world visits one of the 1,200 federated and accredited zoos each year. Annual visitation rates in North America, Europe and Japan amount to around half the population of those regions.15 It is estimated that almost all capital city

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dwellers visit their zoo at some stage in their lives16 and that, in most cities, about 20 percent of the population visits the zoo annually (in terms of crude numbers).17 Nevertheless, while the zoo-going public might realize they ought to go to the zoo for an education, many admit they go primarily to view the animals or show the animals to their children.18 Zoo publicity often expresses this tension between entertainment and education, proclaiming that zoos can be fun and good for you (and the world) too. Adelaide Zoo’s slogan from 1961 to 1963 was “Visit the zoo: laugh and learn.”19 The London Zoo, where the use of the name Zoo originated, promises its visitors “Knowledge,” “Conserve,” but also “Something Special” and a “Great Day Out.” Endangered species breeding programs also operate in contradiction with the zoo’s main task of exhibiting animals for the entertainment/edification of visitors. The “unfashionable brown jobs” (neglected toads, snakes, newts and lizards), as Gerald Durrell calls them, and other subjects of captive breeding programs do not necessarily capture visitors’ attention in the way that charismatic megafauna do. The endangered Regent Honeyeater and green and golden bellfrog are bred off display at Taronga Zoo in Sydney.20 Indeed, in order to maximize successful breeding for release, animals must be bred off display as they must not become habituated to living with humans, which is necessary for successful display of animals. Furthermore, argues Keekok Lee, it is not the “wild” species but another, immurated, species that is actually saved: with different skeletons, different levels of adrenalin emission, and a different gene pool. Those in captivity would “never meet and interbreed with” those in the wild, “except in cases of deliberate human intervention.” The “human intervention” of ex situ breeding in zoos for release in the wild has also been condemned as very expensive, saving only a very few species, critics recommending that resources be dedicated to in situ conservation instead which can also focus on habitat preservation.21 To critics like Lee,22 the caging of animals inevitably contradicts any purported message of conservation or education. Berger claims that animals in zoos cannot give us a self-sufficient gaze; they are prisoners, “something that has been rendered absolutely marginal.”23 A zoo is the equivalent of an art gallery leaving its Rembrandts out in the rain.24 Furthermore, zoos’ conservation messages are blunted by the requirements of securing and then pleasing sponsors. At the visitors center for the Port Phillip Penguin Parade in Victoria, there is no discussion of the major threat posed to penguins by oil spills, the focus on feral animals possibly because BHP and Esso are major sponsors.25 “At Sea World [San Diego] pollution and extinction and endangerment are only obliquely mentioned; when they are, they come up as more problems that research will solve. They have no discernible social locations

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or causes.”26 At Adelaide Zoo, McDonalds trumpets its sponsored rainforest, inviting visitors to “see the first rainforest bred in captivity.” The overall message is “that saving the environment does not require substantial changes to individual, commercial and industrial activities,” but that a manufactured “habitat” in a zoo will do the trick,27 thus making it seem that “(w)ildness itself is really obedient—to human beings, especially those that run corporations.”28 Do encounters with animals in more “authentic,” less “managed” settings, offer a superior conservation message?

The Pleasures and Costs of Close Up and Personal Many who experience a chance encounter with a wild animal have felt something indescribable, ineffable. This “haecceity,” as Deleuze and Guattari describe it, takes us out of calculated space and time, out of a sense of our bodies as human bodies: we watch whales and “become whale”; we watch a sunset and “become horizon.” Deleuze calls this “smooth space,” where the only things are affects. Using these concepts, Mark Halsey criticizes the regulation of eco-tourist encounters, such as the Great Australian Bight Whale watching park where a short contained walkway has replaced the previous openness that allowed visitors to “follow the whales” along the coast, to find a whale for themselves. Halsey argues that haecceity is no longer possible in the park; visitors can no longer “become whale.”29 On the other hand, unregulated visitors in sufficient numbers interrupt mating or hatching, or separate baby animals from their mothers. Even in the “last wilderness,” Antarctica, improperly disposed of waste carrying a potentially fatal domestic poultry disease spread to wild flocks of Antarctic Adelie and Emperor penguins.30 Wildlife tourism can also cause roadkill, pollution from waste disposal and other damage to habitat, and interruption of foraging, for example spotlighting wildlife at night.31 Furthermore, given that there is normally an entry fee, animal encounter sites must improve on the unanticipated chance encounter with animals.32 This means that visitors generally expect a close encounter, and with an animal that appears to have chosen the meeting. Thus there is considerable pressure on site managers to lure animals into an encounter or to take visitors close to wild animals. “Making another being eat out of our hand—that yields a special thrill all the greater if the animal is first made to beg and if it is large enough to crush us in another setting.”33 As Tuan suggests, humans can receive the “wrong” messages at “authentic” animal encounter sites, just as they can at zoos. Furthermore, feeding animals in national parks is often tantamount to signing their death warrants, whether they are bears in Yosemite Park in the USA or

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dingoes on Fraser Island off Queensland.34 Macaques have become aggressive beggars in Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong.35 In Thailand, the response is to file the teeth of and administer amphetamines to gibbons and monkeys, making the monkeys both active and safe in their contact with the tourists. In Amboseli National Park in Kenya, vervet monkeys raiding the lodge for food find themselves in uncomfortable proximity with each other, causing fights as well as tourist bites.36 Elephants fed with bananas overturn and rattle cars in Uganda. Iguanas on Galápagos are leaving their territories to beg from tourists.37 Habituation to provisioning can attract animals’ predators, induce loss of foraging skills, entice provisioned animals to turn to commercial crops (for example birds acquiring a taste for orchard fruit) and reduce animals to a diet with inadequate nutrition.38 From 1993 feeding dolphins was prohibited in United States waters because provisioned dolphins stole baits from fishing lines and crab nets, thus increasing complaints from fishers as well as threats against dolphins.39 Because of the desire to feed, some national parks accept the existence of “sacrifice animals,” which are fed by tourists and destroyed when they become troublesome,40 clearly posing questions of interspecies etiquette41 for human visitors who thus sign an animal’s death warrant. A common response to the contradiction between the desire for a close behavior-rich encounter and the negative impact this can have on wildlife is orchestrated feeding. If the tourist group enters the habitat, the interaction is controlled by a guide to minimize risk to both tourists and animals, while a carefully monitored amount of food is supplied and the impact on animal behavior is regularly assessed.42 An alternative is an animal display enclosure as part of the visitors’ center, which might house orphaned animals and sick or injured animals undergoing treatment. The tourist encounter with these animals is also interpreted by guides or rangers. “(F)ace-to-face interpretive contacts with the public” have been described as the most successful behavior regulators; they can also provide education for future behavior and attitudes. Without such regulation and monitoring, widespread ignorance, carelessness, and selfishness means that it is not unusual for visitors to feed “inappropriate ‘food’ items, shout, throw objects and chase wildlife in an attempt to elicit a response.”43 Such are the actions of “larrikins . . . in shorts seven sizes too small,” as Greer described Steve Irwin’s imitators. The above critique of zoos and other animal encounter sites might suggest that humans should foreswear interacting with wild animals. In deference to carbon miles, tourists should stay home and enjoy television programs or wildlife films.44 The greenest zoo might be the virtual zoo with satellite links to the Amazon, Great Barrier Reef, and Antarctica or a virtual real-

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ity sensorium in downtown New York or Sydney.45 Wildscreen@Bristol is such an electronic zoo, Bristol hosting the leading film festival of wildlife filmmakers. The site offers wildlife films and an ARKive, or “digital Noah’s ark” consisting of “a storehouse of knowledge about the world’s endangered species” (www.arkive.org.uk).46 While the virtual experience reduces the impact of humans travelling to authentic encounter sites, some writers argue that only through encounters with actual animals will humans learn respect, understanding, and emotional connection. Research demonstrates that emotional connection or emotional response is necessary to produce mental or behavioral change and a stronger emotional experience may encourage greater commitment to change.47 Moreover “that experience had to be direct, in nature itself,”48 rather than merely reading about it or even viewing it.49 My research also reveals the powerful impact of the tactile experience of cuddling koalas or stroking dolphins.50 Jack Turner51 suggests that the greatest threat to the environment is what he calls “abstract nature.” This is the kind of nature sold by Nature Company52 or watched on television as nature documentaries, Flipper, Skippy, or the nightly weather forecast. Turner contrasts this abstract wild with actually experiencing the awe of being in the concrete wild. Ironically, city-dwellers, who are usually the most strident advocates of nature, fail to preserve nature because they do not really know what they are trying to save.53 Few citysiders ever experience that attention, perception, and emotion of confronting a grizzly bear, when “you feel yourself as part of the biological order known as the food chain.”54 Such attention suggests a respect which runs counter to human domination, creating something more like a stewardship. The question arises, however, as to whether or not humans can learn respect for the “wild” world from feeding lorikeets in a wildlife sanctuary, from training their dog to “fetch,”55 from raising and killing the chickens we eat in our own backyards:56 whether or not we can learn to conserve “wild” animals through our emotional connection with domesticated animals. The final section responds to this question by suggesting that an opposition between wild and domesticated is no longer tenable in a planet utterly transformed by human intervention.

“Respectful Stewardship” . . . Germaine Greer’s interpretation of Steve Irwin and the outraged response to her comments suggest that gendered dualisms may characterize our interpretation of the nonhuman world. Males on average might be more likely

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to respond in terms of either domination (e.g., hunting) or rationality (e.g., science) and females in terms of maternal nurture (e.g., animal rescue) or emotionality (e.g., treating pets as family members).57 Nicholas Smith argues that Australians do not reject feral cats because of the damage they do to wildlife, dingoes also doing much damage. Rather the feral cat is condemned as feminine (and foreign) by contrast with the dingo which is celebrated as masculine (and Australian).58 Such gendered dualisms can be charted as follows: Female cat feral (domestic out of place) foreign Germaine Greer nurture–love of animals emotional/spiritual love/identify with Gaia/ mother earth

Male dog wild (‘natural’ in place) Australian Steve Irwin conquest—domination and control of animals rational/scientific scientific management of complex biomes

My proposal of a “respectful stewardship of a hybrid nature” attempts to dissolve such stark oppositions, to combine management and awe, mind and heart, and even, where necessary, nurture and conquest. This hybridized approach rejects both oceanic merging with the natural world and disengaged dominion over it. These two approaches are more common among the Australians participating in my current research project than is the complicated balancing of the two.59 In their comments on the value of sustainable development, a minority of respondents valued growth ahead of the environment, which was reduced to a raw input for economic development (the domination model). The majority wrote in terms of nurturing the environment, even merging with it. In the former camp were comments that “sustainable development . . . seems counter to the entire structure of economic/industrial development and indeed to the history of humankind” (father, Perth); “without people or progress there’s not much point in having an environment” (male, high school student, Perth). Some of those taking the opposite tack went so far as to express misanthropy toward fellow humans as environmental destroyers:60 We have to look after our planet. Human life is a parasite, all we’re doing is feeding off mother nature without giving back. That needs to change (male, high school student, Melbourne).

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Man has brought this pox upon itself. Leave the environment out of it (male, high school student, Perth). The environment is about the strongest thing that I feel because nobody can stick up for the environment and animals but people can easily stick up for people (mother, Perth).

Oceanic merging was explicit in these comments: We are part of the planet not owners of it . . . humans are not necessarily better than anything else on the planet (female, high school student, Sydney). Humans and the planet are one thing, you know. We have sort of separated that and made it as though we rule the planet but we should be taking care of what we have been given (female, high school student, Perth).

The final quotation combines both the idea of oneness and stewardship: “we should be taking care of what we have been given.” Kay Milton, in line with Turner’s discussion of the concrete wild, suggests that merging with the environment is dangerous as it deprives nature of its “wildness,” its independence, its ability to terrify us and turn on us.61 Val Plumwood62 identifies a hybridized approach to the environment by claiming we must acknowledge human instrumentalism but also limit it through a meaningful dialogue with earth others. I have called this “respectful stewardship,”63 an attitude captured by one respondent in my research who describes the environment as a “sacred factory” (mother, Melbourne). The environment is not something that we can completely control either by recasting it in a warm and fuzzy way or by exploiting it heedlessly, but nor does it have independence from the massive consequences of human activity inflicted on it. I am not calling for a rejection of our scientific knowledge of animal behavior or of climate change (the “masculine” approach to nature). But I am arguing that this should be combined with the equally valued understanding that comes from embodied experiences of specific tracts of nature (the “feminine” approach of emotional connection). Carers of golden eagles never expect thanks or even intimacy from the eagles they rehabilitate. However, they must become aware of the bird’s subjectivity if they are to heal it.64 Plumwood draws an analogy with mothers—and indeed fathers—of infants: “The mother does not have to give herself over to the oral pleasures of the child. We can be delighted that our local bandicoot colony is thriving without ourselves acquiring a taste for beetles.”65 Hybridized responses to nature mean both that scientists respect the experiences of people who

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rescue wild animals or visit zoos and that sentimental pet-owners or dolphinlovers show willingness to learn about aspects of the natural world that are not extensions of Lassie or Flipper. Our willingness to forgo our “homo sapiens dividend,” to adapt Connell’s66 notion of the patriarchal dividend, requires empathy: putting ourselves in the other’s place, seeing the world to some degree from the perspective of an other with needs and experiences both similar to and different from our own.

. . . of a “Hybrid Nature” Keekok Lee offers a provocative, and convincing, argument that zoos do not provide experiences of “wild animals in captivity,” an oxymoron. Rather visitors to zoos see “artefactual species”—animals who bear only a “morphological” resemblance to their wild kin. They live in “naturalistic habitats,” “simulated habitats” which are engineered to look natural—engineered for the benefit of humans rather than the animals.67 Zoo animals experience “hotelification,” or food prepared in zoo kitchens and served up to them. Rather than subjugation to survival of the fittest, zoo animals receive medication to prolong their lives. They are tamed, their behavior altered to allow the human interaction necessary for their management. They are “immured” animals, animals within walls. The visiting public are correct to see zoos as entertainment. Zoo visitors enjoy animals that look wild behaving in domesticated ways, a cheetah going for a walk on a leash like a dog, an orca obeying human commands.68 Contra the argument of Hancocks and others that conservation education is the only justification for zoos,69 Lee argues that zoos fail in their justifications of “research, conservation (ex situ) and education” because of the “ontological dissonance between zoo animals and wild animals in the wild.” Visitors are not viewing wild animals within natural environments but animals exhibited within a context “which is human-designed and human-controlled to promote human ends, albeit including, that of educating humankind in the need for conserving wild species in their wild habitats.” Lee cites two studies to support her claim. Kellert’s research in 1979 reveals that zoo visitors do not express more concern about biodiversity than other respondents in his survey but rather were concerned about the welfare of the exhibited animals. In a 1981 study, visitors to European zoos “were less sensitive to the need to respect nature than hikers, even after their visits.”70 Another study reveals that knowledge about animals increases only minimally following a visit to the zoo, and sometimes decreases, while some visitors left some zoos with more negativistic or doministic attitudes than they had

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when they entered.71 However, these studies were all conducted before the watershed transformation of zoos to their conservation commitment in the 1990s. Studies today may discover other outcomes. Indeed my own research reveals that the attitudes of visitors to animal encounter destinations in Australia and New Zealand with a strong conservation message displayed higher commitment to conservation than visitors to other sites. Of course, visitors committed to conservation may be drawn to the latter sites and those less engaged with environmental issues may be drawn to zoos: my research did not assess causality.72 We need more recent research on the impact of zoos’ conservation messages on the perceptions and actions of visitors. Do some visitors still come away with more doministic attitudes, given that animals are necessarily immurated? Or do visitors’ emotional responses encourage openness to education for conservation? While I agree with Lee that zoos do not display wild animals, I would argue that neither does the wild world contain “wild” animals in the terms Lee defines them. Wild animals “have come into existence, continue to exist, and go out of existence, entirely autonomously, and therefore independently of human intentionality and agency.” They exist “by themselves”‘ and “for themselves.”73 My notion of a “hybridized nature” suggests that there are no animals left on the planet that exist entirely “by themselves” and very few whose existence “for themselves” is not constantly interrupted by human intervention, whether the interruption is intentional or not. There are no more untouched wildernesses; everything is “hybrid nature” already transformed by humans who are part of it. Humans displace animals, competing with them for resources like water, fresh air, and food. Humans then act in a much less effective attempt to protect these very same animals, in wildlife sanctuaries or in outlawing animal cruelty.74 The concept of hybrid nature thus accepts the vast imbalance in power and destructive potential between humans and the rest of the world. Daniel Janzen suggests that we understand so-called wilderness as “wildland gardens,” gardens that grow “wilds.” As gardens, we use them for sustenance but we also attend to them with “care, planning, investment, zoning, insurance, fine-tuning, research, and premeditated harvest.”75 While some might find this approach too managerialist, the concept of “hybrid nature” calls for constant debate concerning the extent of intervention that will best meet the needs of nature and of humanity. Respectful stewardship is not a result, but a process, an active debate which we must come to with as much honesty and integrity as we can. It requires us to seek the facts that weigh against and with our desires, to feel and know the other and so de-center our “selves” and our interests, to understand that humans have made a world in which we easily dominate other species. Thus we have more duties than we have rights.

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I believe we can learn empathy for wild animal others through connection with domestic companions as well as animals immurated in zoos. In both cases, we are forced to consider the difficulties of discovering the needs of an animal other over whom we can easily assert dominion and for whom we may readily have self-interested affection.76 Vicki Hearne, an animal trainer who has studied philosophy, retorts to critics who consider it cruel to “work” a dog or horse: “We are in charge already, like it or not.” Good training enables a domestic animal to find its most noble self, indeed a trained tracking dog can do something the trainer cannot. The training is based on “love” as well as knowledge, and its objective is “shared commitments and collaboration . . . a mutual autonomy.” This occurs when the dog has taken the idea of “fetch” to be something she wishes to do to the best of her ability. In tracking, then, the handler cannot merge with the dog, because “it is only in the dog’s answering illuminations that you know whether you have said anything at all, or what you have said.” Hearne asks What gives us the right to say “Fetch!”? Something very like reverence, humility and obedience, of course. We can follow, understand, only things and people we can command, and we can command only whom and what we can follow.77

As Raimond Gaita puts it, an animal’s “freedom . . . exists only when a concern for its welfare is transformed by respect for its dignity.”78 Similarly, zoos can only achieve their proclaimed role in habitat conservation if they both “follow” and “command” animals in their care,79 recraft themselves as a “welfare ark” as Margodt80 puts it. Furthermore, instead of condemning the public’s desire for entertainment, for enjoying animals that look wild behaving in domesticated ways (a cheetah going for a walk on a leash like a dog), zoos should work with their unique animal species to promulgate the idea of a “hybrid nature.” Zoos have become more honest about the difficulties of breeding animals for release in the wild, the ethical dilemmas of managing their populations, and even about the management of animals and exhibits to appear naturalistic (for example in behind the scenes tours). Such discussions accept that zoos are “nurturing and creating . . . new immurated, artefactual species”81 but that these also make a contribution to saving “hybrid nature.” Many zoos are extending their research, educational and fund-raising activities to encompass wildlife habitats.82 For example, Chris West, the Chief Executive Director of Zoos SA, which is responsible for the zoo in Adelaide and the open plains zoo in Monarto, an hour’s drive away, describes

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all our work and what we stand for: the survival of wild animals in sustainable habitat, in a world of balance in which humans temper their consumerism to allow for a more equitable distribution of resources with other species on our one small planet.

He goes on to say that work “in the field,” particularly with native species, must expand, as must attention to “the needs of the small and less glamorous types, such as frogs” as well as projecting “our message of environmental and conservation responsibility more powerfully.” Climate change and water pressures create huge challenges and require “a polity” of “committed and active people” as well as those with “scientific input” to continue the “deep heritage of land stewardship.”83 In keeping with West’s message, the zoo is engaged in breeding programs, including the “highly endangered Orange-bellied Parrot,” Woman pythons, and a partnership with Philippines Biodiversity Conservation Program to deliver “in situ conservation outcomes” in the Philippines. A group of school children have become involved in saving the Painted Dog in Zimbabwe; another group spent a night in Monarto’s bush camp “to reconnect to nature and to understand our footprint on our earth”; Zoo Youth coordinators shape how kids “see animals and conservation.”84 Encounters with Adelaide zoo’s animals seek to promote fundraising for endangered animals and other environmental responses framed within both a conservation message and frank discussions of the difficulties and outcomes of managing immurated animals, for example the Woman pythons when released into the wild were devoured by Mulga snakes.85 While conservation is the message promoted by the Adelaide Zoo—and other zoos—only a longitudinal study of its visitors and friends can assess the impact of that message.

Conclusion City zoos are a potential portal to more “authentic” wilderness experiences, but this does not mean that they must—or indeed should—claim that their animals are “wild.” They offer one particular example of hybridized nature, a nature for which the public have increasingly demanded respectful stewardship. This respectful stewardship can shape human obligations in other settings. If the encounters are framed appropriately, experiences with animals in city zoos can counter the disconnection people experience when they view the “abstract wild”: unrealistic apprehensions of nature conveyed by “cute” cartoon images or Steve Irwin wrestling with a crocodile. The role of zoos in heart and mind conservation is particularly relevant for those too poor, too

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ill, or too old to visit nature in more distant parts. As Richard Jakob-Hoff, Senior Curator, Auckland Zoological Park, suggests: I don’t believe that conservation happens in zoos any more than I believe conservation happens on Little Barrier Island [the habitat of the endangered kakapo, for which Auckland Zoo has a breeding program]. Conservation can only really be achieved by changes in the human mind which result in changes in our behavior.86

At various sites, ranging from our back garden to a distant rainforest, we can learn to feel the natural world differently, not as a place to express our rejection of the feral other, or our yearning for oceanic connection with the mother. We can learn the obligations of respectful stewardship in which we humans are both apart from and a part of “nature.”

Notes 1. Joan Bentrupperbäumer, “Human Dimension of Wildlife Interaction,” in Wildlife Tourism, ed. David Newsome, Ross Dowling and Susan Moore (Clevedon: Channel View Publications, 2004), 82–112 (at 107). 2. While Steve Irwin became famous through his wildlife documentary series The Crocodile Hunter, he claimed his most important work was conservation: “I consider myself a wildlife warrior. My mission is to save the world’s endangered species” by purchasing “large tracts of land” and founding the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation, later renamed Wildlife Warriors Worldwide. “Steve Irwin,” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Irwin (March 15, 2008). 3. Among a population of 20 million Australians, Steve Irwin’s memorial service attracted a television viewing audience second only to Princess Diana’s funeral (2.39 million viewers compared with 6.2 million viewers); Pope John Paul II’s funeral in third place drew only 750,000 viewers. Margaret Gibson, “Whom do we Mourn? Public Mourning in the Age of Celebrity,” Nexus: Newsletter of The Australian Sociological Association 19, no. 3 (2007): 12–13. 4. BBC News, “Irwin Fans in Revenge Attacks,” September 12, 2006. news.bbc .co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5338118.stm (March 15, 2008). 5. Dan Mathews, vice president of animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “Steve Irwin,” Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Irwin (March 15, 2008). 6. Jean-Michel Cousteau, a producer of wildlife documentaries and son of Jacques Cousteau. “Steve Irwin,” Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Irwin (March 15, 2008). 7. Germaine Greer, “That Sort of Self-Delusion is What it Takes to be a Real Aussie Larrikin,” The Guardian, September 5, 2006, www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/ sep/05/australia (March 14, 2008).

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8. “Premier Blasts Greer’s Irwin Jibe” Sydney Morning Herald, September 7, 2006. www.smh.com.au/news/national/premier-blasts-greers-irwin-jibe/2006/09/07/115722 2236936.html (March 14, 2008). 9. Katherine Kizilos, “Rudd Joins Chorus: Stick a Sock in it, Greer,” The Age, September 7, 2006. www.theage.com.au/news/national/rudd-joins-chorus-stick-asock-in-it-greer/2006/09/06/1157222201283.html (March 14, 2008). 10. Matt Price, “Let’s Hope Germaine Greer is Thick-skinned,” The Australian, September 6, 2008. blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/ comments/greers_sting_in_the_tale/ (March 15, 2008). 11. Keekok Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 93–94. 12. Chris West, “A Year of Transformation,” ZooTimes (The Official Magazine of the Royal Zoological Society of SA Inc.), March 2008: 3. 13. David Hancocks A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 244. 14. Gerald Durrell, The Stationary Ark (London: Collins 1976). 15. Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour, 112, 161. 16. Geoff Hyde and Brian King, “A Survey of Visitor and Community Attitudes to the Melbourne Zoo” (Footscray: Tourism and Marketing Studies, Footscray Institute of Technology, 1987), 8. For Melbourne: Nicole A. Mazur, “Zoos, Government Wildlife Agencies and Conservation Organizations: Partners? Colleagues? or Adversaries?” (paper presented at the ARAZPA/ASZK Annual Conference, Darwin, April 17–22, 1994), 3, 7. For Adelaide: see also Stephen R. Kellert, with the assistance of Joyce K. Berry, Activities of the American Public Relating to Animals (Washington: Department of the Interior, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 1978), 50, 52. 17. Bob Mullan and Garry Marvin, Zoo Culture (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1987), 132–133. 18. Mullan and Marvin, Zoo Culture, 135; Amanda Townsend, “Attitudes, Perceptions and Behaviour Among Visitors at the Adelaide Zoo” (honors thesis submitted for Bachelor of Arts, Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 1988); Stephen R. Kellert, “Policy Implications of a National Study of American Attitudes and Behavioral Relations to Animals” (Washington: Department of the Interior, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 1978), 58; Kathryn Moar, “Determination of Visitors: Perceptions of the Adelaide Zoo” (honors thesis submitted for Bachelor of Science, Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide), 38. 19. Kay Anderson “Animals, Science and Spectacle in the City” in Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature–Culture Borderlands, ed. Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (London: Verso, 1998), 45. 20. Sian Powell, “The New Zoo,” The Weekend Australian Magazine, February 22–23, 2003, 27–31 (at 31). 21. Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour, 87, 94–99. 22. Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour, 104–105.

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23. John Berger, About Looking (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 22. 24. Jim Grant, interview January 3, 1993; see also Mazur, “Zoos, Government Wildlife Agencies,” 4, 6. 25. Christina Harwood Jarvis, “If Descartes Swam with Dolphins: The Framing and Consumption of Marine Animals in Contemporary Australian Tourism,” doctoral dissertation (Melbourne: Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne, 2000), 134–135. 26. Susan Davis, Specular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 231. 27. Nicole Mazur, After the Ark? Environmental Policy Making and the Zoo (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 203. 28. Davis, Specular Nature, 231. 29. Mark Halsey, “Molar Ecology: What Can the (Full) Body of an Eco-tourist Do?” in Deleuzian Encounters: Studies in Contemporary Social Issues, ed. Peta Malins and Anna Hickey-Moody (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 145–148. 30. Thea Williams, “Exotic pests a threat,” The Advertiser, October 10, 2000, 13. 31. David Newsome, Ross Dowling, and Susan Moore Wildlife Tourism (Clevedon: Channel View Publications, 2004), 43–44, 205. 32. Mullan and Marvin, Zoo Culture, 80–82. 33. Yi–Fu Tuan Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), 80. 34. Adrian Peace, “Dingo Discourse: Constructions of Nature and Contradictions of Capital in an Australian Eco-tourist Location,” Anthropological Forum, 11, no. 2 (November 2001): 175–94. 35. John M. Edington and M. Ann Edington, Ecology, Recreation and Tourism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 36. 36. E. J. Brennan, J. G. Else, and J. Altman, “Ecology and Behavior of a Pest Primate: Vervet Monkeys in a Tourist-Lodge Habitat,” African Journal of Ecology, 23, no. 1 (1985): 35–44. 37. Edington and Edington, Ecology, Recreation and Tourism, 37, 41. 38. Newsome et al., Wildlife Tourism, 43–44, 205. 39. Mark Bryan Orams, “Managing Interaction Between Wild Dolphins and Tourists at a Dolphin Feeding Program, Tangalooma, Australia: The Development and Application of an Education Program for Tourists, and an Assessment of “Pushy” Dolphin Behaviour,” doctoral dissertation (Brisbane: University of Queensland, 1995), 99–100. 40. Janet Richardson, Ecotourism and Nature-based Holidays (Sydney: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 22. 41. e.g., see Anthony Weston, Back to Earth: Tomorrow’s Environmentalism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). 42. Newsome et al., Wildlife Tourism, 207; see Orams, “Managing Interactions,” for the development of a dolphin feeding program at Tangalooma near Brisbane in Queensland.

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43. Newsome et al., Wildlife Tourism, 209–210, 73. 44. Krippendorf in Marc L. Miller and Berit C. Kaae, “Coastal and Marine Ecotourism: A Formula for Sustainable Development?,” Trends, 30, no. 2 (1993): 35–41 (at 40). 45. Kaye Healey, Animal Rights: Issues for the Nineties (Wentworth Falls Healey: Spinney Press Australia, 1992), 33. 46. Gail Davies, “Virtual Animals in Electronic Zoos: the Changing Geographies of Animal Capture and Display” in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, ed. Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 254. 47. Bentrupperbäumer, “Human Dimension,” 88; Orams, “Managing Interaction,” 54, 56. 48. Bentrupperbäumer, “Human Dimension,” 88. 49. Heather Aslin, “Speaking of the Wild: Australian Attitudes to Wildlife,” doctoral dissertation (Canberra: Australian National University, 1996), 321. 50. Chilla Bulbeck, Facing the Wild: Ecotourism, Conservation and Animal Encounters, (London: Earthscan, 2005), 32–39, 91–103. 51. Jack Turner, The Abstract Wild (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1996), xv. 52. Jennifer Price, Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America (New York: Basic Books, New York). 53. Turner, Abstract Wild, 28. 54. Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape (London: Macmillan, 1986), 201. 55. e.g., see Vicki Hearne, Adam’s Task: Calling Animals By Name (New York: Random House, 1987). 56. e.g., see Andrea Gaynor, “From Chook Run to Chicken Treat: Speculation on Changes in Human-Animal Relationships in Twentieth-Century Perth, Western Australia,” Limina 5 (1999): 26–39 (at 37). 57. e.g., see Kellert’s data summarized in Bulbeck, Facing the Wild, 241–245, and my own findings in Bulbeck, Facing the Wild, 220, 227. 58. Nicholas Smith, “The Howl and the Pussy: Feral Cats and Wild Dogs in the Australian Imagination,” Australian Journal of Anthropology 10, No. 3 (1999): 288–305. 59. The comments come from a five year Australian Research Council supported study of young Australians’ attitudes to a range of social issues, involving a total of 1,240 questionnaires and 150 interviews completed across four states (South Australia made up 53 percent of the sample, Western Australia 25 percent, New South Wales 12 percent and Victoria 10 percent). Socioeconomic diversity was achieved by sampling high school students (in the second last or last year of high school) across the spectrum from elite private to working-class government schools, located in capital cities and in regional centers. The majority of questionnaires were completed at school in a single class period (59.5 percent of all the questionnaires). The students

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took a near identical questionnaire home to their parents to complete and post back to me (18.9 percent). I also surveyed first year university students studying women’s studies or social sciences (12.3 percent) and youth service clients, aiming in particular for services for early school leavers, for indigenous youth and young people with sexuality issues (9.7 percent of all questionnaires). 60. Adrian Franklin, Animals and Modern Cultures: A Sociology of Human-Animal Relations in Modernity (London: Sage, 1999), 194. 61. Kay Milton, Loving Nature: Towards an Ecology of Emotion (London: Routledge, 2002), 82. 62. Val Plumwood, Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 63. Bulbeck, Facing the Wild; see also Milton, Loving Nature, 53. 64. Suzanne M. Michel, “Golden Eagles and the Environmental Politics of Care” in Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature–Culture Borderlands, ed. Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (London: Verso, 1998), 176, 178. 65. Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 160. 66. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1995), 82–83. 67. Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour, 2, 25–29, 106, 35–39; see also Mullan and Marvin, Zoo Culture, 28; Nigel Rothfels, Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 200–202. 68. Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour, 107, 64–66, 116. 69. Hancocks, A Different Nature, xviii. 70. Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour, 102–105. 71. Stephen R. Kellert and Julie Dunlap, “Informal Learning at the Zoo: A Study of Attitudes and Knowledge Impacts,” A Report to the Zoological Society of Philadelphia of a Study Funded by the G. R. Dodge Foundation, Philadelphia; Hancocks, A Different Nature, xviii citing Kellert and Dunlap’s research. 72. Bulbeck, Facing the Wild, chapter 2, especially 54–55, table 3.18 on 236. 73. Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour, 50, 19. 74. Margaret Stone and Jonathan Stone “Principles and Animals,” Current Affairs Bulletin, 63, no. 3 (1986): 4–13 (at 6–7). 75. Daniel Janzen, “Gardenification of Wildland Nature and the Human Footprint,” Science 279 (1998): 1312–1313. 76. See Kathleen Szasz, Petishism: Pets and their People in the Western World (London: Hutchinson, London, 1968); Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 102, for human relations with pets 77. Hearne, Adam’s Task, 48–49, 53, 106, 76. 78. Raimond Gaita, The Philosopher’s Dog (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2002), 41. 79. Hancocks, A Different Nature, xviii. 80. Koen Margodt, The Welfare Ark: Suggestions for a Renewed Policy for Zoos (Belgium: VUB Universiteit Press, 2001).

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81. Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour, 4. 82. e.g., see Hancocks A Different Nature, 174–175. Further evidence of this shift in orientation for Adelaide’s zoos comes from a content analysis of photographs in the managing body’s magazine ZooTimes. Photographs of animals with humans comprised over 40 percent of the total photographs in the magazine during the early 1980s and around 20 percent through much of the 1990s. In the March 2008 issue, they constituted only 11 percent of the photographs. The trend for representing humans cuddling animals is also downward, no such photographs appearing in the March 2008 issue of ZooTimes or almost any other issues since the late 1990s, by contrast with over 20 percent in the late 1980s (My thanks to Silvia, the Adelaide Zoo librarian, for providing access to back copies of ZooTimes). 83. Chris West, “A year of transformation,” ZooTimes (The Official Magazine of the Royal Zoological Society of SA Inc). March, 2008: 3. 84. These examples are taken from articles in the March 2008 issue of ZooTimes. 85. Greg Johnston, “It’s Deadly Out There,” ZooTimes (March, 2001): 21. 86. Richard Jakob-Hoff, “Zoos as Conservation Tool” (paper presented to the Department of Conservation Management Techniques Training Course, Pirongia, New Zealand, May 27, 1993).

CHAPTER SIX



Whale and Human Agency in World-Making: Decolonizing Whale-Human Encounters Traci Warkentin and Leesa Fawcett

Inside the Ark there was a Well of darkness and a multitude of voices— and the air was already fetid with the stench of animals confined without windows. There were also heavy smells of rancid pitch and the fresh cut planks of gopher wood, which gave off a perfume of almost sickening sweetness.1

Noah. A flood. Animals marching two by two up the gangplank. The story is well-known. The ubiquity of biblical narratives throughout the world makes it likely that many, many people have heard the story of Noah’s Ark, or, at least, some version of it. However, it is very unlikely that anyone else has imagined it quite like Timothy Findley has in his provocative novel Not Wanted on the Voyage. One of the radical features that makes Findley’s narrative so unique is that he has dared to imagine what the experience of the Ark might have been like for the others on board, particularly the animals. Inspired by Findley’s subversive text, we begin with the assumption that Noah is not the only subject on the Ark, nor is his reason the most lucid. The figure of Noah, as portrayed by Findley in Not Wanted on the Voyage, serves as a metaphor for a traditional Western conceptual framework in need of re-visioning. In our critique of Noah, we stage an ontological mutiny with the “other” animals captive on the Ark. Through our feminist–multispecies alliance, we challenge the patriarchy and colonialism of animal captivity (including gene bank models of preservation), 103

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and imagine radical restructurings of human-animal relations. Grounded in specific narratives of whale-human interactions, we strive to decolonize whale encounters. With the intellectual help of the late feminist philosopher, Val Plumwood, and postcolonial theorists, such as Ilan Kapoor and Homi Bhabha, we expose a pervasive crisis of “othering” in Western approaches to whale-human interactions and explore nature-culture entanglements as discussed by Donna Haraway. Inspired by Karen Barad, we then propose transformative encounters within which the touch of encounter requires responsibility, reciprocity, and recognition of these meetings as intra-active relations. We are particularly attentive to the sociomaterial contexts of zoos and aquariums as we imagine transformative encounters through which humans and whales come to matter.

Zoo Ark and Species Salvation The Well of darkness itself was right at the centre of the ark and its depth was the depth of the lower three decks. Above it, the upper and only open deck (where Noah had his quarters in the Castle and his Chapel with its Pagoda) formed a roof from which there hung a number of unlit lamps. Each of the other decks was open to the Well—and each was a labyrinth of corridors and passageways that ran behind and in between the various cages, pens and stalls where the animals were housed.2

Who do zoos save, and from what? The potential joyfulness of encountering another free living animal is unrivalled, and an experience one would assume is common to many. The knotted complexity of meeting a caged animal should be unusual, but instead it is ordinary. The public and urban availability of zoos is to be commended, while what they teach us about other lives and compassionate encounters between species is questionable. Individual animals live and are “met” in zoos and aquariums, yet they are witnessed, for the most part, as representatives of a particular species. Here it begins to become evident how certain ideas about Noah’s Ark have seeped into Western popular imaginations and seem to have taken a particular hold within the secular natural sciences. Notions of salvation and preservation have long been associated with zoos and wildlife conservation, and still appear in many forms today. Take, for example, this opening statement from a website showcasing the 2008 Watson Fellowship project titled “Designing the Ark: Zoo Architecture and its Influence on Conservation,” led by Catherine Brinkley, a student of Wellesley College: “Much like Noah of the Old Testament, zoo curators present sam-

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ples of wildlife, hoping to protect them from the flood of urban sprawl and industrialization by raising environmental awareness of the ills of industry and deforestation.”3 Often, similes and metaphorical references to the story of Noah’s Ark are invoked when aquariums and zoos present themselves as scientific institutions engaged in larger wildlife conservation efforts. Beyond their claims of educating the public about biodiversity and environmental issues, zoos and aquariums promote their captivity of individual animals as contributing to preserving the species. John Berger argued persuasively that as animals disappeared from human’s daily life, zoos became more popular.4 As a result, “[t]he ‘zoo ark’ was born,” writes Fiona Sunquist in her article for the International Wildlife magazine titled “End of the Ark?—Zoos,” in which she traces the evolution of zoos and their perceived roles in society. She further comments that “[t]his new idea that zoos could provide a temporary haven to save the last remnants of the Earth’s disappearing creatures came as a public-relations bonanza.”5 Indeed the idea of the “zoo ark” has been strongly embraced by the public and scientists alike. Captive breeding programs abound and have become the gold standard upon which the success of aquarium and zoo husbandry is largely judged. Biologists, veterinarians, trainers, and keepers attempt to facilitate and manage the reproductive activities of animals under their care, with the greatest emphasis on those belonging to endangered species. These efforts vary widely across zoos and aquariums but the results are consistently poor as the majority fail to reintroduce any bred animals into wild habitats.6 According to a 1994 study of reintroduction projects, the success rate of survival tends to be low, with only 11 percent actually establishing wild populations.7 Moreover, research has shown that captive breeding programs are not only less effective than habitat conservation projects, they are dramatically more expensive. Zoologist Sky Alibhai and veterinarian Zoe Jewell have been conducting a long-term research study of black and white rhinos in Zaire for over a decade, and are actively involved in wildlife conservation in the area. Comparing the cost of in situ (wild habitat) conservation to ex situ (captive) conservation, Alibhai and Jewell have shown that the entire annual operating costs for the Garamba National Park are equivalent to the cost of keeping just sixteen rhinos in a zoo (one captive rhino costs $16, 800 versus the $1,000 cost of maintaining one rhino in wild habitat).8 They argue that beyond cost effectiveness, money put toward the maintenance of Garamba National Park would protect 31 Northern white rhino, as well as the many other animals who live there, including 4,000 elephants, 30,000 buffalo, and “the entire giraffe population of Zaire!”9

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Despite the relative cost and low success rates, captive breeding programs continue to run in zoos and aquariums all over the world. To these ends, Sunquist points out that: [t]o minimize inbreeding, zoos came up with an elaborate computerized mating system known as the Species Survival Plan, or SSP. All captive gorillas, for example, or Siberian tigers or snow leopards, were entered into the system as single populations, providing zoos with records so they could exchange animals in breeding loans.10

Referring to an SSP for endangered tiger species in her recent book When Species Meet, Haraway explains that “the purpose is to provide a genetic reservoir for reinforcing and reconstituting wild populations.”11 The general idea is that animals already existing in zoos and aquariums can be genetically catalogued and the information pooled globally across institutions to form a “master blueprint”12 for each endangered species. Such a network of zoos, aquariums, computer data banks, breeding programs, and animal loan systems is thus considered a virtual Ark, ideally designed and maintained by humans (countless Noahs, if you will) to protect endangered species from extinction. Rife with financial language, this gene bank model of DNA repositories and animal loans and transfers is demonstrative of the commodification of captive animals. Since so few zoo animals are ever released back into wild populations, skeptics ask whether captive breeding is not more of a rationalization for keeping animals in captivity while encouraging visitors and increasing revenues.13 SSPs and the management of captive populations have many shortcomings which have been rigorously detailed elsewhere.14 Considered here are those shortcomings most directly related to the sexism, racism, and crisis of reason suffered by our figurative Noah. To begin with, SSPs assume a fundamental moral justification for keeping animals in captivity for the purposes of display and management. They function with the notion of an individual animal as a generic representative of the species, which assigns value to the species over and above any single individual.15 Furthermore, they ignore the individual developmental and behavioral history of each animal, which has particular repercussions for survival outside a captive environment. Appealing to a preservation mentality, captive animals are presented as ambassadors, representatives of their counterparts living “in the wild,” whose own freedom is sacrificed to ensure the survival of the species. This transposition of identity and value, from unique individual to an interchangeable member of a species, is the ethical underpinning for many conservation biology and wildlife

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preservation strategies, such as an SSP. Vital decisions are made based upon these values. Setting aside problems with the very definition of “species,”16 the status of an individual is further diminished as the captive-animal-as-speciesrepresentative is then reduced to a carrier of the genetic material which characterizes the species. The genes become reified as entities which can be protected and manipulated, and considered more valuable than the actual life lived by a “whole” animal.17 In effect, the species is conceptualized as a machine which can be divided up into smaller and smaller parts. A pod of orcas, for instance, can be seen as a collective machine, isolated first from complex relations with habitat and other beings. Multiple layers of context are stripped away conceptually and physically as an orca is taken from the pod and isolated in captivity, tissue is taken from the orca and isolated in a lab, cells are isolated from the tissue and so on down to the smallest unit of genetic material, which is what is actually “preserved.” As evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin persuasively argues, each individual organism is a unique amalgamation of a whole body being in the world, with internal genetic and cellular events, and external environmental relationships.18 In the zoo’s process of preserving the species, we misplace the whole animal and all of the lived complex inter- and intra-actions. J. P. Rini’s cartoon (featured in Haraway’s When Species Meet) satirically portrays this dramatic loss. A female and male figure, presumed to be Noah and his wife, peer over the side of the Ark at the crowd of various animals waiting expectantly to board. The male figure announces, “Actually, we’re only taking tissue samples.”

Staging an Ontological Mutiny On the second deck there were birds and reptiles and insects caged and confined with bars and wire. . . . On the third deck, the beasts of medium size were housed in pens and box stalls. Gutters ran beside the passageways here and emptied into spillways that, in turn, were emptied through spouts into the waters outside. . . . On the fourth and lowest level were all the beasts whose size it had been feared would sink the ark: and here the darkness was absolute.19

In our complex technological cultures, the mechanistic paradigm evident in captivity and wildlife conservation programs, such as a SSP, seems like a hangover of rationalism, a conceptual framework which orders the world into old dualistic categories like mind/body and civilized/savage.20 The late feminist philosopher, Val Plumwood, observed that dualisms “create a radical

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discontinuity between the group identified as the privileged ‘centre’ and those subordinated.”21 Plumwood identifies dualisms as sets of interlocking oppressions that police the boundaries against any unlawful flow of ideas across the divide, for example, between human and animal. She has a sophisticated analysis of the power of dualisms in human-animal relations and practices. For instance, she claims one of the reigning assumptions embedded in the success of dualistic power inequities is to radically exclude or hyper-separate the Other as inferior, as something that humans have no continuity with.22 In European cities in the 1860s there were travelling exhibitions of dead blue whales, and these offer a vivid example of radical exclusion. Although they are the largest mammal on earth, blue whales were killed, preserved (badly—they sold perfume to overcome the stench), and publicly exhibited. In one such exhibit near Gothenburg, Sweden “having tea inside the whale was a popular attraction for those who could afford it.”23 The radical exclusion of animals, such as the kind exemplified by afternoon tea inside a blue whale, is typically made possible by a conceptual homogenization of all “Others.” With the “Master” at the center, everything else is just “the rest.” There is no allowance for distinction in “inferior” others. They are thought of as a uniform group which conforms to a certain stereotype that categorizes them as “naturally” inferior to the Master. An obvious example is the casual and ubiquitous Western categorization of humans and animals, where humans are identified as a distinct species and every other species in the Kingdom Animalia is lumped together. At another scale, the homogenization of animals serves to erase individuality among those of the same species. At aquariums, like Sea World, orcas are not presented to the public by unique names; rather, they are indiscriminately called “Shamu.” Each individual is seen as a generic representative of the species Orcinus orca, and this attitude is extended to all of the captives at Sea World. While conducting field research at Sea World, Orlando, for instance, coauthor Traci Warkentin overheard a family exclaim: “Okay, we’ve done the dolphins,” as they left the dolphin pool.24 On the surface, this comment may seem harmless, but homogenization such as this can lead to indifference and objectification toward the dolphins. When dolphins are perceived only as objects of entertainment, human subjects tend not to concern themselves with ethics. Objects can be used as mere means to ends, like profits for Sea World, rather than ends in themselves. Thus, as Plumwood warns, “[h]omogenisation supports instrumentalism, incorporation, and radical exclusion.”25 As a result, a conceptual wall divides superior human subjects from inferior animal objects, and the practical consequences are that animals can be owned as property and treated as consumable products.

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The great wall constructed between human and animals runs parallel, unfortunately, to the divide between some privileged humans at the center and other humans constructed on the periphery. In 1906 at the Bronx Zoo, the racist caging and exhibition of Ota Benga, a Congolese man of the Batwa people exemplifies this haunting history.26 Ota Benga was housed in the Monkey House where he appeared in “the cage wearing a loincloth, frolicking with the animals, with bones strewn about his feet suggesting the notion that Ota was a cannibal.”27 There was a sign on the exhibit which read: “The African Pygmy, Ota Benga. Age: twenty-three years. Height: 4 feet 11 inches. Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Exhibited each afternoon during September.”28 As Timea Szell notes “the language here is identical to that used to denote other animals.”29 Fortunately, African-American clergymen, like Reverend R. S. MacArthur of the Calvary Baptist Church protested, “We send missionaries to Africa to Christianize the people and then we bring one here to brutalize him.”30 Ota Benga was eventually released to the clergy because the Bronx zoo director William Hornaday labeled him “unmanageable;” tragically, Ota Benga committed suicide ten years later.31 Since we are staging a mutiny on the zoological ark we count Ota Benga as an ally32 because “he was deeply curious about the ways of white people. A hunter par excellence, Ota initially tracked and followed the crowds at the zoo . . . he was fascinated by the very concept of the exhibition of caged animals—some of whom were made to act in ‘human’ ways to amuse and excite the public.”33 Despite how outraged we are by the fact of Ota Benga’s zoo captivity, a crucial question is the one posed by Hari Jagannathan Balasubramanian: “What is it that most of us do not condemn today and are complicit with that in 2107 will seem utterly outrageous?”34 Perhaps, in 2107, zoos will seem utterly outrageous. Lewontin (2000) explains that as organisms develop in specific places they “create, modify and choose the environments in which they live.”35 Beings are always in dynamic, reciprocal relation to their environments as they make, remake, and move through their worlds. Of course, zoo animals have agency, but it is a limited form, with overseers and confinement supposedly for their-own-good, and for the good-of-their-kind. Aquarium and zoo animals can act, albeit in a captive social environment where their choices are severely circumscribed. Captured animals are denied the sociality of their own birthright, place and choice, and restricted from immersing themselves in the immense sociality of their worlds.36 Theoretical particle physicist, Karen Barad’s relational ontology acts as a corrective for rationalism’s violent isolation of being. Relata-within-relations

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is a conceptual idea proposed by Barad, whereby the word “relata” is substituted for words such as entities, objects, subjects, or things to highlight that everything is in relation. In Barad’s theory on agential intra-action, her radical theoretical shift assumes bodies in relation matter more than objects. As Barad describes, “[a]ll bodies, not merely ‘human’ bodies, come to matter through the world’s iterative intra-activity—its performativity.”37 What, then, are the intra-actions of captivity and who comes to matter? What do aquarium animals perform and for whom?

Unsettling the Ark: Materiality and Agency in Captivity The ark—becalmed and heaving beneath the fog—was surrounded on all sides by hundreds of playful and frolicking creatures—leaping out of the water, waving their flippers at the ark and its occupants and calling out: “Hallo! Hallo!” before they fell back beneath the surface. . . . “Stop!” cried Mrs. Noyes—searching wildly for Noah. “Stop! Can’t you see they want to be friends?” . . . But Noah refused to hear her . . . “Madam—he called down through the smoke of his beard—as he raised his arm and the black umbrella to heaven—these are the creatures of hell! Pirates from the pit! Spewed from Satan’s mouth! Do your duty woman. Kill them!” Mrs. Noyes turned away. Sick.38

At the various sites, and in the diverse spaces, of informal animal encounters—in aquariums, zoos, museums, on wildlife trips—humans and other animals interact. Some of the more generic assumptions implicit in many of these practices are: animals are resources; animals are there to entertain us; and animals are exotic others that we can sensationalize and romanticize. Many of these interactions reproduce colonizing aspects of human-animal relations. How can we decolonize human relationships with animals and the colonizing representations that often make up these spaces? Along with the compassionately rebellious Mrs. Noyes (Noah’s wife) and her talking cat, Mottyl, it may be time to consider abandoning ship. If we recognize with postcolonial studies that the colonizer and the colonized are interdependent, we may be able to destabilize human understandings of animal captivity. We will rely on postcolonial studies scholar, Ilan Kapoor39 to help us in our endeavor, as he draws on the theories of the late Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. We are well aware that postcolonial studies are focused on human subjugation, but we will use their theoretical insights to peer into animal subjugation. It would be safe to say a globally dominant set of common actions is to catch, drug, and violently remove animals in order to secure them in captivity. Our purpose, like Spivak’s,

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is to “advocate the modes of ‘negotiation’ and ‘critique,’ which unsettle the dominant from within.”40 We intend to cause indigestion from within the belly of the beast, so to speak. Kapoor elucidates Homi Bhabha’s notion of “hybridity” as an ambivalent “psychic process in which the colonizer fears, and so distinguishes himself from, the colonized ‘other,’ but simultaneously needs or desires the other’s existence from which to oppositionally be recognized as master.”41 The ghost of Ota Benga is whispering between these lines. An important aspect of Bhabha’s work shows “how hybridity can create openings for agency”42 because “the discursive instability, while rendering the master’s narrative contradictory and ambivalent, can also empower the subaltern to resist and interrupt it.”43 Just as Ota Benga would visit the zookeeper’s office and cause havoc on many an occasion before he was eventually “freed.” Kapoor recounts Bhabha’s example of resistance found in the nineteenth century records of Christian missionaries who tried to convert Indian villages (outside Delhi). The villagers resisted and demanded “an Indianized Gospel [or a ‘vegetarian Bible’!] . . . using the powers of hybridity to resist baptism and to put the project of conversion in an impossible position.”44 There is no doubt that humans have power over captive whales and dolphins. For Kapoor and Bhabha, however, “there are no relations of power without agency” and power is concerned with “making possible and making trouble, both at once.”45 There are innumerable examples of the creative agency of captive whales. With amusement, Warkentin recalls being at the beluga pool in Marineland, Canada where she witnessed a beluga demand the attention of the head trainer by blasting him in the face with a wellaimed mouthful of water.46 Just minutes prior, the trainer had been using a metal pole to prod the beluga away from where he was leaning over a wall into the pool, so he could work with a different beluga. Much more serious cases of agency can be found, however, in news headlines over the past several years about orcas at Sea World “attacking” their trainers. For instance, on November 29, 2006, Kasatka, a thirty-year-old female orca, grabbed her male trainer, Ken Peters, by the foot and held him underwater at the bottom of the pool for several minutes during the new “Believe” show at Sea World, San Diego, in California.47 Although the trainers believe they are in control of the whales, these examples demonstrate that power can quickly be subverted in unexpected ways. The beluga and orca whales in these examples quite clearly asserted their agency, their ability to make things happen, even under the material conditions of captivity that restrict the range of opportunities for action. It is therefore imperative to examine how agency, oppression, and the circulation

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of power in complicated contexts like aquariums are related to the material structures, not just the social relationships and routine practices. In a subtle critique of Bhabha, Kapoor draws upon Benita Parry, to reveal that “what is missing is an analysis of the relationship between materiality and agency and the limits material inequality impose on subaltern “negotiation.”48 This particular insight resonates well with the previous example of the beluga at Marineland, Canada. In the context of Arctic Cove, that whale, like the other belugas incarcerated there, is dependent upon the trainers for food. Relationships between trainers and captive whales are very complicated. They can develop over long periods of time through intimate interactions. There can be very strong emotional bonds, at times likely involving aversion, apathy, as well as affection. In any case, there remains a constant imbalance of power. The trainers control who gets to eat, what they eat, how much and when they eat. There is virtually no way for a beluga to obtain food for themselves. Moreover, at the end of the day, the trainers can leave, while the belugas are always confined to the pool. These material realities matter, as do the material structures of the place. In Arctic Cove at Marineland, the pool is surrounded by a “half wall,”49 which acts as a physical barrier between the beluga whales and humans. At the same time, because it is a half wall, it enables limited access for anybody. The human trainers can lean over the wall and reach down into the pool, as can strangers. Trainers can also extend their reach with technologies like the pole. The interactive horizon for the belugas is considerably more restricted since the depth of the water keeps them situated well below and encircled by the wall. It would take considerable effort to propel themselves up and out of the water to make contact with humans. The main avenue for physical contact, which could range from gentle touching to forceful biting, is when humans reach their hands and arms down as they lean over the wall. However, as one of the belugas demonstrated, their reach may be extended by their ability to spit mouthfuls of water over the wall, a creative technique. Here again, though, the humans hold more power in controlling the interactions. To avoid interactions, the belugas’ only real option is to swim away from the wall altogether, in which case, they forfeit eating the fish offered by the trainers. Another material reality of the pool is the total lack of places to hide. The belugas are always visible through the clear blue water, from the surface and from the viewing windows below, and there are no nooks or crannies to duck into. Already vulnerable due to the enclosure of the pool, the belugas are also constantly exposed, with no opportunities for partial refuge. We want to go beyond what Edward Said called “counternarratives” to narratives that disrupt and transform the official natural histories, and ques-

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tion some of the reigning truths in aquarium environments. Wild living, wide-ranging whales accustomed to travelling freely through the oceans are imprisoned. They suffer. They suffer the loss of family members, the sounds of their home, the touch of ocean waves. In aquaria, whales are touched by strangers and trainers in exchange for their sustenance. How would captive environments change if whales were seen as subjects with histories, families, cultures, and habitat needs not entirely discontinuous with human beings? If we greeted whales as mysterious Others with whom we are interdependent, would we incarcerate them? Could we envision novel modes of encounter that might cultivate and grow deeper knowledge-making across species, without abusing or degrading other animals?

Meetings that Matter: Transformative Whale-Human Encounters Few writers could successfully present a half-blind, sentient cat in heat as a narrative center. The author [Timothy Findley] carefully studied his own cats, but he also spent time crawling around isolated locations, one eye closed, to get the animal’s perspective. On one occasion, a surprised couple taking an early-morning walk mistook him for a drug addict.50

In order to address what is the matter with many of our captive meetings with whales we will outline some examples of transformative, decolonizing encounters. As Barad exclaims: “All real living is meeting. And each meeting matters.”51 We will exercise questions about response(ability), reciprocity, vulnerabilities, kinds of touch and shared risk in the contact zones. We will exercise our imaginations to recognize whale perspectives in these meetings, and be open to the possibility that our capacity to envision novel modes of encounter may be enhanced by crawling around on the ground with one eye closed. As one example of a novel encounter, the underwater viewing area where humans meet captive whales at an aquarium could be transformed by reversing the lighting scheme to illuminate the area where humans stand, while dimming the lights inside the tank. Such a simple modification could enable the whales to look out at humans without being completely visible themselves, which may provide a more interesting and less vulnerable space for them. Furthermore, the human visitors would feel more visible and would be able to discern that the whales are looking at them. Humans would then be encouraged to recognize that they are not the only ones looking through the glass, that the whales can and do look back.

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Indeed, Warkentin witnessed an inspiring encounter in which not only did a young female orca whale look back, she actively engaged with the children on the other side of the glass.52 It occurred at the underwater viewing window of the orca pool at Marineland, Canada. A few young children, probably between the ages of six and eight, had slid under the restraining bar and were pressed up against the glass of one of the large rectangular windows. They were very animated, calling the baby orca by her name, “Athena,” and moving their arms and hands around on the glass. To their delight, Athena broke away from her mother and their repetitive circling of the pool, and made a beeline over to the children. She floated down so that they were at eye level, and engaged them with eye contact, vocalizations, and interactive gestures. At one point, the children and Athena began to imitate each other’s movements: Athena nodded her head up and down, then the children nodded their heads up and down; the children shook their heads from side to side, then Athena shook her head from side to side. These interactions continued for approximately twenty minutes. Throughout, the children were attentive to Athena’s body and her gestures, just as she was to theirs, and they used their bodies to express themselves and communicate with each other. It is significant that this interaction arose between young children and a young orca. It raises primary questions about potential differences between youth and adults in whale-human interactions in captive places. The children were not content to stand behind the barrier or to accept the restrictive layout of the space. They were very expressive in their movements, and more open in their bearing than any of the adult humans who were present. The human children did not appear self-conscious in their actions and spoke directly to Athena as though she could hear and understand them. They addressed her by name, as a subject and unique individual, enacting an intersubjective space of interaction. By contrast, their parents and the other adults all appeared to obey the rules, standing back behind the railing, in the dark, and quietly observing from that distance. Also, there was a noticeable difference between the young orca, Athena, and her mother, Kiska, an adult orca. Athena did not behave in the same way as Kiska, who repeatedly swam by the window with her eyes closed, rarely, if ever, stopping to look out or make eye contact with the humans on the other side of the glass. Several times, Athena broke out of the routine circling of the pool and swam directly over to where the children were. She obviously took notice of the children, and sought to engage with them, despite the hindrances of the lighting and other barriers to interaction built into the space. Imagine the kinds of interactions that might happen if the spaces and practices of encounter actually

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encouraged recognition of whale subjectivity, and enabled reciprocity and choice. Such spaces and practices do already exist outside of captivity, and exemplify the kinds of transformative encounters the authors celebrate and hope to promote. In the Rockingham Dolphin Swim, for example, humans meet freeliving dolphins in Rockingham Bay, near Perth in Western Australia.53 Once the boat is out in the Bay, human participants are organized into groups and instructed to form a chain behind their guide. They are explicitly instructed not to swim, and not to reach out to touch the dolphins. The guide has a small motor for jet propulsion and pulls the human chain around on the ocean surface so that dolphins may swim freely around, and beneath the human chains. Dolphins living in the Bay are then encouraged to approach and interact with the humans through play. A staff member equipped with a motor performs all kinds of acrobatics underwater, swimming around and playing with the dolphins who come near. There is an explicit respect for dolphin autonomy and the prioritization of their welfare by the staff of the Rockingham Dolphin Swim. They have a strict policy not to use fish to attract the dolphins, and instead tried to engage them with play. They also limited the time spent with each group of dolphins, so as not to take advantage of their willingness to connect, nor to risk pestering them with too much attention. These practices demonstrated a serious respect for the dolphins’ autonomy and a keen awareness of their agency, by controlling human bodies and ensuring they were as unobtrusive as possible. At any time, the dolphins living in Rockingham Bay could have lost interest or, for any reason, chosen not to come near the humans, so the company’s practices were also extremely pragmatic. In another transformative example, the authors were privileged to witness human interactions with free-living dolphins at Monkey Mia in Western Australia. In this unique setting, Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops aduncus)54 routinely visit a stretch of beach to interact and to participate in a feeding program run by the local conservation authority: the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) for Western Australia. It was the job of CALM Rangers to both educate and police the public, as there were strict visitor rules governing the “dolphin interaction zone,” and visitors were informed of them over and over again, verbally, and through signs, pamphlets, and various other forms of media. These rules were largely prescriptive of how visitors should and should not move their bodies in relation to the dolphins: “do not touch the dolphins,” “do not stand further than ankle-deep in the water,” “do not approach the dolphins.” The space which the human visitors shared with the dolphins was infused with the presence

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and purpose of the CALM Rangers and volunteers, who were noticeably monitoring everyone’s movements. Human visitors were only allowed to enter the water and approach a dolphin when they were specifically chosen and instructed by a Ranger or volunteer to give a particular dolphin a fish. Only a chosen few were given privilege during each feeding session. Of all the rule violations, the most contentious and recurrent problem involved touch: the desire to touch, or be touched by the dolphins. Touching was not allowed at Monkey Mia, (although it was in the past), and the beach interactions were primarily organized by a ‘no touch’ protocol, enforced bodily and verbally by the CALM Rangers. At issue was the risk of disease transfer, as stated in the Ranger’s commentary to the public. Another reason, more implied than verbalized, was that there were too many people, and if everyone tried to closely approach the dolphins and touch them, the dolphins might feel harassed and leave. It seemed generally known that Monkey Mia was a sleepy fishing village before it became a famous tourist destination for the dolphin interactions. In the past, activities were unregulated and people had opportunities to interact spontaneously with the dolphins, and apparently the dolphins often played with humans and allowed humans to touch them.55 Now that there are hundreds of people flocking to this remote place every day, CALM policy is that unregulated interactions are simply not safe for the dolphins. Warkentin spoke with several of the Rangers56 about their rule enforcement and found that they were sympathetic to the wishes of the tourists to get closer to the dolphins and to interact spontaneously; however, they also believed that it simply would not be feasible or safe anymore. Their concerns for the protection of the dolphins were both personal and pragmatic. The Rangers said that they wanted to protect their unique relationships with the individual dolphins who come to the beach and participate in the feeding program, and that they also feared that if the dolphins were overwhelmed by the public, they might choose to go away and possibly never come back to the beach. Their fears spoke to a cherishing of, and responsibility for, the special relationship that has developed over time between the Monkey Mia dolphins and the CALM Rangers and volunteers, and to a careful commitment not to transgress the bounds of appropriate behavior, or established etiquette between them. It was apparent that the Rangers and volunteers genuinely cared about, and respected the dolphins, and their “rights” not to be touched or harassed. It appeared that their dedication to protecting the autonomy and safety of the dolphins of Monkey Mia was very affectively effective, in that their embodied presence was often enough to keep tourists in line, and

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in a line quite literally. There were no walls or other barriers to separate the throngs of humans from the dolphins, only the few Rangers and volunteers maintaining a respectful distance. The willingness of the dolphins to come in so close seemed to indicate a certain trust they place in the Rangers to keep things safe and under control. Indeed, Monkey Mia was all the more extraordinary for its dolphinhuman interactions because they were not coerced, or artificially encouraged. The dolphins actually had a choice whether or not to interact with humans, or to participate in the feeding program, and they typically chose to participate. At any moment they could have swam away into the massive bay and not returned to the beach, but with remarkable regularity, they did return, even at times outside the fixed schedule of feedings when there was no likelihood of being offered fish. Meeting free-living dolphins at Monkey Mia provides an ideal contrast to typical whale-human encounters in captivity. At Monkey Mia, the dolphins are self-sustaining; they are not dependent upon humans for their food.57 As with the Rockingham Dolphin Swim, humans must enter the dolphins’ oceanic environment, and risk exposing themselves to cold temperature, ocean currents, and the unpredictable actions of the dolphins and other marine animals. Humans and dolphins are vulnerable to each other in these unique Australian sites. To a limited degree, risks and choices still exist in captivity, which Athena demonstrated when she chose to interact with the human children at the underwater window at Marineland, Canada. She could have stayed far from the window that day. As these examples suggest, transformative encounters are where curiosity, agency, and performativity are not exclusively human, and where vulnerability and openness are shared across species. Transformative encounters reveal the inadequacy of the ZooArk model of conservation with its corresponding assumptions of decontextualized and discrete entities. Isolated genes do not a whale make. As Barad reminds us, there is a “fundamental inseparability of epistemological, ontological, and ethical considerations.”58 A whale comes to be through myriad intra-actions of micro and macro scales, of social and environmental relata, and it is the whole whale that we may come to know and meet, it is the whole whale that matters. Through Barad’s work we further recognize “the role of human and nonhuman, material and discursive, and natural and cultural factors”59 in zoos and aquaria, two common forms of sociomaterial practice in our world. If whales are there to entertain us we can marvel at their trainability, but what do we lose in those encounters? We lose our curiosity about who they are and who they could be; we become deskilled in wondering and thinking about what might happen between us and them. We are fed an impoverished relational diet. We strengthen the

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walls between us and them, add homogenizing agents, and diminish the possibilities for relating across species. As Haraway points out “the categorical separation of nature and culture is already a kind of violence, an inherited violence.”60 And, we would add, it is a colonizing violence. In our whale encounters there must be possibilities for reciprocity to occur, with the least amount of harm or coercion to anyone, because “we participate in bringing forth the world in its specificity, including ourselves”61 and every encounter ethically matters. As this paper has argued, the capacity for shared vulnerability is important in human encounters with other animals, and we need to imagine and create more environmentally just meeting spaces where each animal has the power to choose the level of risk and intimacy in their encounters, and whether they want to resist or show up at all. Although our lives are entangled in world-making, decolonizing transformations will begin when we respect the autonomy of others, abandon the Ark, and accept the risk that, given the choice, some will not come to meet us.

Notes 1. Timothy Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2006), 188. 2. Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage, 188. 3. Catherine Brinkley, “Designing the Ark,” About the Project, www.zooark.com (August 6, 2008). 4. John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” in About Looking (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980). As influential and persuasive as Berger’s argument has been the conversation has been substantially critiqued and extended in two 2005 essays: Nigel Rothfels, “Why Look at Elephants?,” and Jonathan Burt, “John Berger’s ‘Why Look at Animals?’: A Close Reading,” both in Worldviews 9, no. 2 (2005). 5. Fiona Sunquist, “End of the Ark?—Zoos,” International Wildlife Magazine, findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1170/is_n6_v25/ai_17632858 (August 6, 2008). 6. Andrew Dickson, The Zoo Inquiry, World Society for the Protection of Animals Report, September 5, 1994. For further reading, Dickson cites the following article: S. N. Stuart, “Re-introductions: To What Extent are They Needed?” Symp. Zool. Soc. Lond. 62 (1991). 7. Noel Snyder, Scott Derrickson, Steven Beissenger, James Wiley, Thomas Smith, William Toone, and Brian Miller, “Limitations of Captive Breeding in Endangered Species Recovery,” Conservation Biology 10 (1996): 338–348. 8. Sky Alibhai and Zoe Jewell, “Saving the Last Rhino: In Situ Conservation or Captive Breeding?” Rhinowatch, 1993. We gratefully acknowledge Rob Laidlaw for pointing us to this reference and consulting with us on captive breeding programs in zoos. 9. Alibhai and Jewell, “Saving the Last Rhino.”

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10. Sunquist, “End of the Ark?—Zoos.” 11. Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 146–147. 12. Haraway, When Species Meet, 146. 13. See Greg Miller, “Today’s Zoos—The Last Menageries,” New Scientist 173 (2002): 41–43, for a concise argument. 14. See, for example, Haraway, When Species Meet, 146–147. 15. Karen Davis finds this ethics of valuing wholes over the individuals who comprise them a serious flaw within deep ecology, one of the dominant fields in environmental philosophy. Her critique of deep ecology’s utilitarian approach to issues of ecological conservation further highlights a moral superiority given to masculinized ideals of “natural, wild, and free” over and above those beings perceived as “domestic, tame, and confined.” See Karen Davis, “Thinking like a Chicken: Farm Animals and the Feminine Connection,” in Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations, ed. Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). 16. Species is a slippery concept. The definition of “species” that has been established and applied in Western natural sciences is arguably arbitrary, dependent upon who provides the definition and for what purpose. It assumes a very rigid ontology of extreme individual isolation while at the same time denying individual uniqueness to the extent that any member of a species can be representative of the whole species by virtue of carrying a set of genes for the general, yet distinguishing characteristics of the species. For persuasive discussions, see Lynda Birke, Feminism, Animals and Science: The Naming of the Shrew (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994), and Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouseTM. (New York: Routledge, 1997). 17. Haraway points out that “an SSP is a trademarked complex, cooperative management program of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA), itself a controversial organization from the point of view of people committed to the well-being of the individual tigers in captivity who are enlisted in an SSP”: Haraway, When Species Meet, 147. 18. Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism and Environment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 17–18. Moreover, Lewontin further states: “There exists, and has existed for a long time, a large body of evidence that demonstrates that the ontogeny of an organism is the consequence of a unique interaction between the genes it carries, the temporal sequence of external environments through which it passes during its life, and random events of molecular interaction within individual cells.” 19. Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage, 188–189. 20. For more on patriarchy and dualisms, see Val Plumwood’s comprehensive discussion in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993). Plumwood also presents a cogent critique of rationalism in her more recent book, Environmental Culture and the Ecological Crisis of Reason (London: Routledge, 2002). 21. Plumwood, Environmental Culture, 101.

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22. Plumwood, Mastery of Nature, chapter 2. 23. Joe Roman, Whale (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 173. 24. Traci Warkentin, Captive Imaginations: Affordances for Ethics, Agency and Knowledge-making in Whale-Human Encounters” (PhD diss., York University, 2007), 316. 25. Plumwood, Mastery of Nature, 54. 26. Coauthor Fawcett is grateful to Timea Szell of Barnard College who presented and shared her fascinating and critical paper, “Caged: Pedagogical and Theoretical Implications of Ota Benga’s 1906 Exhibition in the Bronx Zoo of New York City” at the Annual Conference of the International Society for Anthrozoology, Human Animal Bond: Theory, Research and Practice held August 13–15, 2008, at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. 27. Szell, “Caged,” 1. 28. Wikipedia, “Man and Monkey Show Disapproved by Clergy,” New York Times, September 10, 1906, 1. 29. Szell, “Caged,” 7. 30. Szell, “Caged,” 7. 31. Szell, “Caged,” 9. 32. In the D. R. Congo, Kinshasa and the U.S., there is a group called the Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity, which is committed to social justice projects. 33. Szell, “Caged,” 6. 34. Hari Jagannathan Balasubramanian, comment on “The Ota Benga Story,” Thirty Letters in My Name Blog, comment posted December 19, 2007, thirtyletters inmyname.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html (September 21, 2008). 35. Lewontin, The Triple Helix, 18. 36. “John Livingston: The Making of a Naturalist,” The Nature of Things TV Program (Toronto, CBC, 1999). 37. Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (2003): 823. 38. Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage, 225–226. 39. See his most recent work: Ilan Kapoor, The Postcolonial Politics of Development (London and New York: Routledge, 2008). 40. Spivak, 1997:85 in Ilan Kapoor, “Capitalism, Culture, Agency: Dependency versus Postcolonial Theory,” Third World Quarterly 23 (2002): 652. 41. Ilan Kapoor, “Acting in a Tight Spot: Homi Bhabha’s Postcolonial Politics,” New Political Science 25 (2003): 563. 42. Kapoor, “Acting in a Tight Spot,” 563. 43. Kapoor, “Acting in a Tight Spot,” 563. 44. Kapoor, “Acting in a Tight Spot,” 563–564. 45. Kapoor, “Acting in a Tight Spot,” 566 and 567. 46. Warkentin, “Captive Imaginations,” 277. 47. See the CNN online news article “Orca attacks trainer at Sea World, San Diego” at www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/29/killer.whale/index.html.

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48. Kapoor, “Acting in a Tight Spot,” 570. 49. Warkentin, “Captive Imaginations,” 265–297. Traci’s discussion of the “half wall” in her doctoral dissertation is a key part of her theoretical development of the concept of ethical affordances in human-whale interactions, which she elaborates in “Whale Agency: Affordances and Acts of Resistance in Captive Environments,” in Animals and Agency: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, ed. Sarah McFarland and Ryan Hediger (Leiden: Brill, 2009) 23–43. 50. Timeshredder, review of Not Wanted on the Voyage, Everything2 Blog, comment posted March 24, 2007, everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1873793 (September 20, 2008). 51. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 353. 52. Warkentin, “Captive Imaginations,” 244–252 and 286–289. 53. Warkentin, “Captive Imaginations,” 223–228. 54. What with taxonomy being such a problematic science, there is still some uncertainty regarding the classification of the Monkey Mia dolphins. Research by the Dolphins of Monkey Mia Research Foundation suggests that they are a hybrid of the more common Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops aduncus). 55. For instance, see Rachel Smolker’s account of the history of Monkey Mia in her book, To Touch a Wild Dolphin (New York: Doubleday, 2001). 56. Warkentin, “Captive Imaginations,” 167–170. 57. According to CALM: Only the adult females are given fish in the feeding program. They are given a maximum of 2 kilograms of fish per day, which is meant to not affect their feeding habits as they require about 20 kilograms per day. Juveniles are brought into the feeding program only after they have demonstrated that they can forage successfully for themselves offshore, which is confirmed by the researchers of the Monkey Mia Dolphin Research Foundation. The beach dolphins follow a matrilineal ancestry, as the daughters of the original beach dolphins have been included in the feeding program and their daughters will join in eventually. All calves stay with their mothers and suckle until they are four years old, after which the females continue to stay with their mothers while the males spend increasingly less time with the family group and begin to form “alliances” with other males. 58. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 26. 59. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 26. We are particularly inspired by Barad’s notion of agential realism, which is described by this quotation and the one that appears just before it. 60. Donna Haraway, How Like a Leaf. An Interview with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve (New York: Routledge, 2000), 106. 61. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 353.

CHAPTER SEVEN



Boring a Wormhole in the Zoological Ark David Lulka

Zoological institutions contain vast collections of biological diversity within a compact setting, and consequently, in managing this array of animals, zookeepers must regulate, indeed control, the actions of animals. For this reason, zoos are commonly criticized for stripping animals of their autonomy. Although these critiques have merit, I do believe they overstate the point and inadvertently augment the power of humans. I say this not to defend zoos, but to provide an opening for reconstituting and improving these institutions. As such, I’ll counter this general critique by stating that zoos cannot contain the animacy of zoo animals. By animacy, I am referring to the motile capacities of animals, capacities that can eventually manifest themselves in agency—the ability to produce change. At a very fundamental level, zoo managers are unable to contain (that is, control) the animacy of animals in any absolute sense, for at the scale of the body (and the various subregions within) zoo animals retain a capacity for agency and action despite their enclosure. More precisely, the process of organismal development, which is the essence of life, is not wholly dictated or regulated by human caretakers. Indeed, as I will show, some of the problematic behaviors exhibited by zoo animals reflect the inability of humans to fully grasp the nonhumans in their command. These assertions are not intended to suggest that resident animals are autonomous or that zoo animals determine the trajectory of their own development. Far from it, for the human-nonhuman relationship in zoos is certainly a relationship defined by 123

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asymmetrical power. Yet, I do contend that this animacy harbors a power that is frequently unacknowledged in many critiques of zoos, despite the fact that this power can be utilized to reconfigure zoos for the better. In this chapter, I want to highlight this distinction between biodiversity (as it relates to different morphologies) and animacy, in order to rethink the character of zoos and the place these institutions hold within the wider conservation movement at the beginning of the twenty-first century. With regard to morphologies, it is critical to acknowledge their deeply visual character. The emphasis on morphology has deep origins, one that may be connected at least as far back as Linnaeus’ work on private collections, his nomenclature (which is still the predominant means of biological classification), and its subsequent influence upon the organization of the first European zoos.1 This static image of animals was contested early on by the likes of Buffon and Geoffroy Saint-Hillaire, who perceived change in animals over time, but their perspectives remained largely uninfluential.2 We, of course, know now, given the insights of Darwin, that the character of animals is fluid. By virtue of this ephemeral condition, we can infer that the anatomy of an animal is subtended by a motile propensity, one that may be termed animacy (if not necessarily agency). Figured as such, we get at the root of the schism between morphological/biological diversity and animacy. By contrasting animacy with morphology in this way, I do not seek to detach animacy from materiality; rather, I seek to give animacy a more fleshy and flexible character than the rigid perspective of comparative anatomy can do. Corporeality, with all of its indeterminance, is an adequate descriptor of animacy’s presence. In making this distinction between biodiversity and animacy, I hope not only to offer a new means of critiquing zoos, but to suggest new variables that can help us reorganize our relationship with nonhuman animals. Initially, this entails a problematization of zoos, but moves on to provide potential openings for society to explore, as society seeks to work its way out of its present conundrum. In the following, I sequentially develop a means for rethinking zoos; first diminishing the importance of the visual, then addressing the animacy of animals through the register of vibration and movement, and finally linking such mobile dynamics to zoo (re)configurations by utilizing the notion of a wormhole. In presenting these options, it must be remembered that zoos are institutions that must address a large number of problems, many of their own doing. The options presented here are not an attempt to legitimize zoos, for ultimately I believe some of these problems cannot be resolved. Nonetheless, captive animals, as valid in their existence as their wild counterparts, are

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there for the time being, and it seems advisable to construct a better home for them, one that prioritizes animacy.

The Constraints of the Visual The approach outlined here involves a diminution of vision as a point of critique, and as such this is no small point of departure. From the date of their origin, menageries and zoological institutions have been spectacular places, whether viewed from the point of design or the point of consumption. Then as now, curators have primarily stocked these venues with exotic animals from distant lands, and in turn classified and divided these animals according to the nomenclature of the time. Now as then, animals are purposefully displayed to convey meaning and knowledge, the sterile, frequently cramped cages that signified the superiority of humanity gradually being replaced by moats and more naturalistic settings that implicitly express a sense of commonality among species.3 Meanwhile, in the past and present, the paying customer has had the expectation of a glimpse, if not a more probing visual examination, of zoo residents.4 Throughout, then, the visual attributes of modern zoos have retained a privileged position. Such is known, however— there is no new news here. Perhaps more troubling, though, is that critiques of zoos have tended to rely overwhelmingly upon the same visual logic that substantiated the proliferation of these zoological attractions. Although such critiques have generated valuable insights, I fear they are ultimately incapable of dislodging human-nonhuman relations from their current asymmetrical state, and incapable of shifting relations into an alternate trajectory that is more productive—with all the senses that word implies.5 This may be best illustrated by Berger’s postulation of an abyss between zoo animals and humans, which he bases upon their respective observance of one another.6 For all their benefits, these visual modes of analysis have often prioritized the social, disregarded the material, and remained locked within antinomies of power that suggest few mechanisms for change. As such, they frequently reaffirm the status quo, despite their efforts to upend prevailing power relations through textual means. To clarify the nature of the present approach and specify the degree to which it diverges from representational analyses, a brief discussion of the visual and how it regulates our thinking about zoos is necessary. Ever since the metal bars and sparse concrete enclosures of menageries and early zoos became unpalatable and unacceptable, the evaluation of exhibits has been based upon the degree to which exhibits approximate the look of a species’

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native habitat.7 Consequently, conceptions of nature and its physical appearance have molded assessments of zoo enclosures. Enclosures bearing the mark of artifice are generally deemed bad and unsuitable. For instance, in her examination of the penguin exhibit at Sea World (admittedly a marginal zoo), Davis suggested that the naturalistic elements of the environs were more soothing to park visitors than to the penguins housed.8 As a result, substantial amounts of money are spent on enclosures in order to meet prevailing aesthetic requirements. Some of this attitude may have been (and still may be) the result of romantic imaginings, but this assertion trivializes public opinion and obscures the depth of its mindset. To the contrary, ecological thinking has permeated much of the public consciousness, and the notion of habitat (and its value) rings true with many individuals, whether they be zoo visitors or not.9 The schooling of the citizenry (by various institutions, including zoos themselves) has created an ethic of inhabitation that draws on contemporary strands of science that are vastly different from romantic notions of sublime nature. In this sense, the public is knowledgeable, not naïve, for it sees a connection between animals, their surroundings, and their survivability. At the same time, however, these enclosures, these habitats, no matter how small they may be, are vistas with all the trappings of a landscape perspective. Ultimately, as I will indicate further below, it matters little whether boulders, a tree, or a nook satisfy either the ecological perspective or the aesthetic demands of the day, for in either case a sense of permanence is grafted onto animal enclosures. The ecologically-minded good will of the observer, far removed from the sense of superiority previously emboldened by the acquisitiveness of former empires, does not alter this condition, and consequently the distance between romanticism and an ecological agenda within a zoo is not as great as we would like it to be. In both cases, the accoutrements that comprise the naturalistic setting are objectified in the process, and, by association with these settings, the same status adheres to the resident animals. Objectification may sound too sterile and theoretical in this context, but it is really just another means of conveying the process of sedentarization, a process that has become common in the modern world, whether by dint of international borders or zoo enclosures. Presumably for such reasons, Spotte refers to these zoo environments as “static Edens.”10 Perhaps more insidiously, the provision of resources (food, water, a mate), which is an explicit act of giving and goodwill, only deepens this feeling of human satisfaction and nonhuman sedation. We are doing good by allowing this animal to be. It knows no deprivation, since its habitat is reasonably (if not fully) stocked and all of its basic requirements are met. Yet, animal welfare and animal agency are not one and the same.

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All in all, this perspective is saturated, by which I mean there is a real attempt by zoo managers to fill a void, all within the limited space of a zoo enclosure. To the extent that habitat designers seek to arrive at a point of equivalence, wherein the inner world of the zoo approximates the outer world of nature, it is moving toward a condition of stability. This, in itself, represents a form of closure, wherein the narrowing of the gap between nature and the zoo habitat is a whittling down into an isomorphism. Although such developments clearly generate benefits for the animals involved, the criteria they establish for satisfaction provide little impetus for the opening up of new possibilities for living.

Shifting the Register of Being Let me commence on an alternate trajectory by saying that I believe there is more to life than a full belly, or some such equivalent. And so I want to veer this discussion in another direction, not simply as another mode of critique, but as a reconceptualization of animals that can potentially bring about new possibilities. This requires taking temporality seriously in a way that grants more importance to the future, converting the future into something that is not simply a reflection of the past (or even the present). Without a doubt, zoo managers do take account of the future—one of their primary objectives is to retain a high percentage of the genetic diversity currently present in the extant population of particular species.11 Unfortunately, this perspective is based upon a theory of loss, wherein the totality of genetic diversity represents the outer limit of possible existences, change being produced only by genetic mutations which are few and far between. This representation is reductionist not only because it over-accentuates the role of genes, but also because it conceives of genes (and their animals) as embedded within an inevitable state of quantitative decline. This image of the zoo as a savior of nature’s bounty seems to differ little from the iconic vision of Noah and his ark, a specific analogy that many in the zoo community have indeed proudly taken on.12 That other variables, such as environmental and cultural inheritance, may be relevant to the future constitution of nonhuman species is generally unacknowledged.13 Yet, if such epigenetic factors are granted importance, the characteristics of the future acquire a whole different quality. We move from a mode of conservation to a mode of enlivenment. We move from a mitigation of loss to the accommodation of excess. Here, I want to develop ways of thinking this conversion in a way that is tangible and guided by the importance of movement for animals. A schematization is helpful here. Keulartz noted that environmental thinking has

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accentuated two planes, each running perpendicular to the other.14 On one plane, typically envisioned as the horizontal axis, there is ecological thought. In this schema, the ecological axis may be figured as a zone of simultaneity, or coincidence, in which dynamism exists but is generally shrouded by constancy. This sedentary type of thought matches well with the aforementioned visions of nature and habitat. Located on the other axis, the plane of verticality, are evolutionary processes. In a certain sense, this vertical plane may also be characterized by constancy, for evolutionary forces are persistent over time. Yet, the character of evolution as we know it, whether defined solely in genetic terms or more roundly, inherently involves change, a change that may be quite turbulent over time. Altogether, animals reside on both of these planes in an elliptical manner. What is critical to note here is that the relationship between these two planes is typified by tension in which the animal plays an active role. The role of niche construction in biological development and evolution illustrates this point most clearly, for niche construction occurs when animals alter their environment through various physical movements (of their limbs or other bodily processes, such as excretions) or when animals move to another site.15 In combination with other factors (e.g., genetic mutations or “cultural inheritance”), animals pull themselves along the vertical axis by means of niche construction and away from the pre-established dictates of the ecological plane by partially establishing a new selective regime. This dynamic facilitates the emergence of new biological capacities, yet organisms must remain in contact with—that is, return to—the horizontal/ecological plane. As such, this is not an autopoietic process (as per Maturana and Varela), wherein the organism creates and regulates itself, but rather one which is deeply embedded in assemblages that are only minimally controlled by the organisms themselves.16 Consequently, out of this necessary interplay, not only do animals change, but so does the ecological foundation, which is transformed by the novel biological functions and behaviors of organisms. That is, organisms return gifted anew, enabled to partly refashion the ecological plane. As a result, neither the organism nor the landscape remain the same, and the circular relation between species and habitat (in which no change occurs) is transformed into an elliptical pattern which has a motile propensity of its own, a history in other words, since neither land nor animal can return to form. This insight is relevant not only to processes within natural environs, but also to artificial surrounds, including those found in zoos. From this elliptical pattern, many lessons can be extrapolated, but the most relevant pertains to the unyielding arc of divergence and reconstitution that stands in stark contrast to idealized visions of animals, nature, and the relationship between them.

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This schema provides an initial means of thinking animals anew, one that is, above all, less reliant upon the visual attributes of animals and their habitats. This schema stands in agreement with the recent movement toward “nonrepresentational theory.”17 Unlike representational critiques, which frequently cannibalize everything but the language they rely upon, nonrepresentational theory commonly focuses upon the role of affect. The notion of affect has been understood in different ways, one approach being to conflate it with the conception of emotion. Yet, as the debate between Thien and McCormack illustrates, emotional geographies and affective geographies are not the same, and real consequences emerge from their conflation.18 Most importantly for the present discussion, McCormack has pointed out the deficiencies of Thien’s emphasis on emotions, for “it foregoes the possibility of cultivating ethical sensibilities attuned to nonhuman affective energies and agencies, including, for instance, those involving animals.”19 This is significant, for the uncertain and inexact sensations denoted by “affect” legitimize the presence and constitutive impact of material bodies in ways that are compatible with the notion of corporeality. Thus, Clough notes that “affect points instead to a dynamism immanent to bodily matter and matter generally.”20 This approach does not discount the possibility of animal emotions (which has been frequently criticized by “legitimate” science), but does assert that there is more of importance than cognition. Although affect can generate emotional responses, it is critical not to conflate affect with mental capacities. In part for this reason, Lorimer designates this approach as “more-than-representational.”21 Indeed, even in discussion of human matters, the role of the body and movement is a pronounced feature of this perspective. For instance, in her analysis of Susan Stinson’s writings, Colls notes, “Here, the fat body has its own bodily topographies and is governed by its own force and momentums; it has motion, waves, ripples; ‘it’s a bodily element with its own purpose and beauty.’”22 Others have emphasized the mobile or kinesthetic aspects of human life.23 To be more specific, affect emerges from contacts with other living and nonliving entities, contacts that give rise to sensations experienced throughout the body. Grosz, for one, notes: Sensation fills the living body with the resonance of (part of) the universe itself, a vibratory wave that opens up the body to these unrepresented and unknowable forces, the forces of becoming-other. The body does not contain these forces but rather is touched by them and opened up to some of the possibilities of being otherwise, which the universe contains through them.24

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The focus on relations therefore points to the underlying importance of movement and thus aligns with the elliptical pattern noted above. As Deleuze and Guattari have suggested in varied ways, it is this quality of movement and transformation that may be considered the fundamental property of entities, as opposed to any particular physical attribute.25 Evolution, not as a stepladder or as the “chain of being,” but rather as a contingent series of bifurcations that dramatically alters the physical constitution of beings, seems to support this contention. Given these parameters of movement and affect, we can now redefine the nature of animals by stating justifiably that animals are first and foremost vibrations. Again, Grosz notes that, “Vibration is the common thread or rhythm running through the universe from its chaotic inorganic interminability to its most intimate forces of inscription on living bodies of all kinds and back again.”26 This conception of the animal (and other entities) as vibrations is highly significant, for it changes the register of analysis, moving us away from visual criteria and toward other qualities. Nancy contrasts these registers in stating: There is, at least potentially, more isomorphism between the visual and the conceptual, even if only by virtue of the fact that the morph, the “form” implied in the idea of “isomorphism,” is immediately thought or grasped on the visual plane. The sonorous, on the other hand, outweighs form. It does not dissolve it, but rather enlarges it; it gives it an amplitude, a density, and a vibration or an undulation whose outline never does anything but approach. The visual persists until its disappearance; the sonorous appears and fades away into its permanence.27

We begin, then, to get a feel (not exactly a grasp) of the animacy not contained by zoos, the animacy unable to be contained by zoos, and yet which is a fundamental aspect of the biodiversity contained by zoos. This register of sound, noise, or more generally vibration, certainly offers an alternate method by which we might critique current zoo practices. This vibratory conception certainly differs greatly from Spotte’s static Edens, wherein, “A zoo exhibit consists of a single, immutable event—its presence. It travels nowhere and seeks no change of venue.”28 More importantly, these various insights suggest new ways for thinking about animals, for thinking about zoos, and for thinking about future engagements between humans and other animals. Above all, they allow us to think of animals in ways that are not visual, morphological, or rigidly categorical. Indeed, we can say that the visual attributes of the animal, and the objects surrounding it, are secondary to these other qualities. This means thinking of animals primarily in terms of

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process, an attitude of speculation that should be far from revolutionary, for it is actually deeply rooted in biological thought.

Movement as an Architecture of (not for) Being The question then becomes how we can conceive the animal as a process rather than a taken-for-granted being? How can we learn, in a certain respect, from (zoo) animals in order that we may redevelop and engage in new ways? What do their spatial patterns and active behavior tell us? These questions are not to be wholly separated from humanity’s presence, since we too are active influences, in the field or in the zoo, upon the movement(s), and hence the constitutional development, of nonhuman animals. Whether these human impacts are intentional, accidental, beneficial, or harmful matters little in the sense that they are all real and consequential, part of the composite nonhuman, whether we like it or not.29 This reality should not be viewed as a defeat, as the inability to preserve nature, but rather as the removal of a theoretical encumbrance, a removal that opens up real possibilities. These human-nonhuman relations are all part of the totality of movement, an aspect of the larger aggregate of nonhuman vibration that is never a totality in the sense that it never reaches completion, except perhaps by virtue of death (in the case of the individual) or extinction (with regard to species). This shift in perspective toward vibration, which is inclusive of human influence, also opens up the scale of analysis and reconceptualization, for conservation techniques take place not only on the local scale, where they very often engage with interior aspects of the nonhuman body, but also on a global scale. Altogether, these global and local movements create an architecture of (not for) being through becoming. That these movements through hybrid spaces cannot be separated from the substance of animals, but rather become part of their architecture, is critical, for it discredits the notion that nature “in itself” is being preserved in zoos or elsewhere. On the global scale, of course, conservation efforts take place in situ and ex situ. We generally assume that in situ vibratory movements are sufficient to sustain populations if habitat destruction and poaching are curtailed. What is most relevant here, however, is the manner in which segments of the conservation movement have conceptualized and propagated the idea of zoos as a (if not the) fundamental component of conservation, in ways that parallel Callon’s notion of an “obligatory passage point.”30 The “obligatory” obviously compels movement, but for the moment, I want to put aside the question of whether zoos are obligatory, and focus rather on the other two elements of Callon’s term. I want to think, in other words, of the way in which zoos are

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passages within larger conservation networks, the way in which a zoo (as a point) can perhaps function as a passage in itself, and the manner in which this structural organization fits within the entire vibrational imperative set forth above. I am curious as to what types of vibrations the conservation network of zoos sets into play, how these institutions manifest a flow (or don’t), and, above all, how zoo animals respond to, exhibit, and generate these flows within their very own bodies. Although the obligatory movement of animals into zoos is regularly justified on the negative state of in situ conditions, it is fair to say that ex situ facilities must also satisfy requirements (ones I would term vibratory) for zoos to be justly called obligatory. In broad terms, the movement of zoo animals can be subdivided into three phases: (1) capture, (2) maintenance and breeding, (3) and reintroduction. Theoretically, this corpus of conservation forms a circular pattern, one that is largely geared toward preservation and a return to nature rather than the agency and excess illustrated by the elliptical pattern outlined above. Although these three phases of conservation are not entirely separate in time, the predominance of particular phases has shifted. By necessity, the capture of wild animals was initially predominant, but its importance has diminished as breeding populations within zoos have been established. A glance at studbooks for various species gives an indication of this trend.31 For instance, the studbook for the pygmy hippopotamus as well as the Andean, Sloth, and Sun bears show the predominance of wild-born bears up through the 1960s in the United States.32 Until the mid-1980s, the vast majority of short beaked echidnas also came from the wild.33 The era of wild-born zoo animals is not over, however. According to the International Species Information System (ISIS), the primary keeper of records on zoo animals, 80 percent of mammals and 60 percent of birds in zoos are captive-born, meaning a significant number are still procured from the wild. 34 As the studbooks for the Kori Bustard, Asian elephant, and cheetah indicate, wild-born animals are still brought into the zoological fold.35 Indeed, the studbook for the cheetah indicates that the number of wild-born cheetah in captivity rose in 2006.36 So there is turbulence with regard to the interchange of wild and captive, one that makes the reconsideration of zoos and conservation practices more imperative, not simply with regard to zoological environs but also with respect to species in their traditional range. In contrast, the bulk of zoological efforts now revolve around activities designed to maintain and breed animals that were themselves born in zoos. ISIS states that their database contains information on 2 million animals, comprising 10,000 species.37 Many, if not most, of these animals are not threatened or endangered.38 While there are a plethora of activities that comprise

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this phase (e.g., habitat construction, feeding of animals, monitoring of animals health, artificial insemination, transfer of animals), the momentum of conservation efforts seems to have stalled in this second phase, for it does not typically generate enough impetus to complete the circular network of conservation. The hum of activity within zoos stands in stark contrast to the relative paucity of action moving away from zoos. There is decay in the level of action as one moves outward. Few zoo animals are (re)introduced back into their species’ natural habitat. Undoubtedly, there have been prominent, successful reintroductions—notably the black-footed ferret, the California condor, and the Arabian oryx—but the number of species and animals involved in reintroductions are small in comparison to the number of rare species/animals in zoos, let alone the additional horde of common species housed in these facilities, for which there appears no interest, need, or hope for reintroduction. A review of the documents produced by the IUCN’s Reintroduction Specialist Group indicates that many (seemingly most) reintroduction projects utilize animals from other wild habitats/populations or specialized facilities (such as the Gerald Durrell Endemic Wildlife Sanctuary in Mauritius), not zoos.39 Supporting this claim, Beck and colleagues assert that state and federal wildlife managers are the primary forces behind reintroductions.40 Similarly, in noting the small number of zoo animals that were used in reintroduction programs, Price and Fa state that, “Overall, while zoos have been responsible for some major successes in reintroductions, they appear neither to have been the sources of animals nor even to have the animal collections to meet the reintroduction priorities of the future.”41 Accordingly, it may be concluded that the circular pattern of conservation activities involving zoos does not reconnect with the habitat that initially enabled the circuit to begin. Importantly, this situation suggests that zoos do not usually function as passage points, at least as far as individual animals are concerned. Rather, the objective of species conservation finds its passage through the bodies of zoo animals, but most of these animals do not find passage to their native lands through acts of conservation. These conservation networks are lineaments that potentially provide for the passage of some material (e.g., genes) to a distant future and place, but not typically other materials (namely, the animals that propagate those genes).42 This is the rupture that divides the so-called scientific concerns of the conservation community from the ethical concerns of social scientists and many members of the general public.43 It thus becomes even more imperative that zoos become passages in themselves—if that is even possible—to warrant their continuation.

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That few exits exist for animals in zoos seems to contradict the concept of animals as vibrations, for the zoological cul-de-sac, or dead end, is antithetical to the property of motion. Indeed, although lifespans vary among species, many zoo animals spend a long time within specific zoo enclosures. The studbooks compiled for individual species provide numerous examples. For instance, at the age of one, a chimpanzee named “Hank” (stud# 1107) was caught somewhere in Africa in June of 1976, transferred to the Chattanooga Zoo in Tennessee on October 15, 1976, and has remained there to the present.44 A female Asian elephant named “Geeta” (stud# 176) was caught in India in June of 1958, transferred to the Los Angeles Zoo on December 8, 1959, and remained there until she died in 2006.45 A female cheetah named “Zena” (stud# 1412) was born at Whipsnade Zoo on March 27, 1983, transferred to Doha Zoo in Qatar on December 4, 1983, and stayed there until she died in 2002.46 These are considerable lengths of time that speak positively to the ability of zoo managers to sustain animals. And yet, while it is inadvisable to assess these durations in terms of years, because these perceptions cannot help but be influenced by our relative notions of time, these lengths are important. This is so not because of the years involved, but because they represent a lifespan, that is a totality, each of which is equivalent to the others despite their difference in years. From a being’s perspective, a totality is one and the same, for it is all that one ever knows. Thus it matters little whether we are referring to animals of a comparatively long-lived species, such as those listed above, or a male southern three-banded armadillo named “Lincoln” (stud# 270) who was only captive from September 3, 1992 to February 5, 2003, or an unnamed female rhinoceros hornbill (stud# 90) who was born on May 11, 1993 and died on October 28, 1996.47 Given these durations, we must ask how the vibrational aspects of animals persist amid this condition of stasis. That they do persist is required by the notion that animals are vibrations at their core. The enclosure of animals seems to negate this notion, but, by definition, it cannot be otherwise. Long ago, Aristotle noted that movement is an inherent feature of life, but modern science has likewise illustrated this penchant, for example noting “dynamic instability” at the cellular level.48 The apparent negation of vibration in zoos is a scalar effect predicated upon the limitations of our vision, and so while animal life, controlled and dictated by humans in zoo environs, may lack the overt quality of vibration, it nonetheless embodies it. In actuality, there is no such thing as a living body that lacks movement. Though humans are quite proficient at stifling movement at the organismal level, they are quite incapable of achieving stasis at the cellular or molecular level. As noted at the outset, humans cannot contain the animacy of animals. Helpfully, this

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human incapacity leaves a door open through which nonhuman potentialities may emerge. Although the animacy of zoo animals is certainly obscured and dampened within the global networks of animal exchange, it persists throughout the duration of a lifespan. Nonetheless, this assertion does not ensure that the vibrational qualities that persist are productive. That is, at the level of the body, there is no guarantee that the architecture of movement an animal manifests in its daily being amounts to an ability to generate change. There is no guarantee that a being is also a becoming in any substantial sense. The persisting animacy of zoo animals, and the extent to which it cannot be entirely controlled by zookeepers, can be seen in the daily movements of animals within their enclosures. Here, specifically, I want to refer in some detail to movements categorized as stereotypic behavior. According to Carlstead, stereotypies are defined by movements that are repeatedly performed, invariant in form, and have no apparent function or goal.49 Stereotypic behavior is manifest in many ways, including head rolling, pacing, obsessive licking and other oral behaviors, and patterned swimming.50 As Elzanowski and Sergiel indicated in their study of elephants, these behaviors are linked to appendages of the body, such as trunk-swinging, but can also be associated with a more general swaying of the entire body.51 Stereotypic behavior in zoos is pervasive in different ways. It is not restricted to a particular species, genera, or family, but rather extends widely throughout the animal kingdom. Stereotypies can take up a considerable amount of time. Hogan and Tribe found that stereotypies took up 20 percent to 50 percent of wombats’ timebudget.52 Vickery and Mason found that the frequency and invariance of stereotypies are correlated with one another.53 Studies have also found that stereotypies increase with age, a fact suggesting that our inability to reintroduce animals into their historic habitat (and thereby limit the length of captivity) is problematic for yet other reasons.54 The exact number of animals exhibiting stereotypies is uncertain, but Mason and colleagues conservatively estimate that at least 10,000 zoo animals exhibit “abnormal repetitive behavior.”55 What are we to make of these movements in a theoretical sense? Firstly, these stereotypic movements are clearly vibrational in nature, though they may not appear to be natural at all. Again, then, we experience a disconnect between the appearance of nature and fundamental (vibrational) properties of nature. In these cases, however, clinical evaluations of nature are based more upon movements than its material form. But to state this as such does set up a false bifurcation. Rather, in line with the principles established above, it is better to think of these movements as creating an architecture of

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being, a form of its own, albeit one that is recognizable to professionals and the public by virtue of its idiosyncratic movements. Ironically, this aberrant patterning is helpful, because the realization that movement is a part of an animal’s constitution only becomes apparent to many observers when patterns of movement are abnormal. In most other cases, this implicit understanding of the animal, which is truly widespread, never becomes explicit in the minds of most observers. The public may view these repetitive actions as odd, as a point of laughter even, while zoo managers generally view these same actions as problems in need of resolution. Although I do not want to suggest that these actions are unproblematic, for they can actually be quite disturbing, I do want to utilize the positive aspects of these phenomena. On the one hand, stereotypic behavior is clearly a form of intensity, one that exhibits the persistence of animacy and the propensity of animals to channel their energy in some direction. Because stereotypic behavior has been associated with age (and by corollary, the length of enclosure) of animals, these behaviors may be seen as an increasingly likely means of enacting and distributing intensity when other options are unavailable. Thus, this channeling of intensity through the pores of the body or the perambulation of the limbs is not unrelated to the as yet incomplete conservation circuit of capture, breeding, and reintroduction outlined by zoological institutions. In many ways, such repetitive behavior is analogous to a hiccup. When a bear paces in its enclosure, it repeatedly turns back upon itself. Once complete, each turn presents yet another opportunity to turn again. Similarly, a hiccup interrupts the normal pattern of inhaling and exhaling, the diaphragm contracting, forcing the glottis to close and causing the body to lurch. In the same way, the pacing animal can appear to lurch by virtue of turns that lend it a halting character. These stereotypies are notable precisely because there appears to be a glitch, whereby the typical and unremarkable flow of the animal (and of time itself) is arrested. Head rolling too acts in a similar way, creating an arc that is not very distinct from the travels of a pendulum. Licking, as well, is dominated by movements to and fro, the strokes possessing an endpoint but the activity as a whole seems to have no end in mind. Though unintended, the local, embodied stereotypic actions of these animals thus mimic the global conservation measures that have been short-circuited in between the transition from breeding to reintroduction, and whereby a conclusion is incessantly deferred. Despite the apparent futility of stereotypic behaviors, they undoubtedly possess some utility for the animal (whether it be a soothing influence or a source of distraction), and thus there is something to be valued here. In

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addition to the debilitating problems noted by others, what this behavior further suggests is that desirousness subtends and precedes both an animal’s interest in any particular object and the particular motions this desire instigates toward these objects. That is, the tendency to engage exists prior to the placement of any specific object. I am not saying that the animal acts in an objectless void, but rather that because it is used to being in the midst, in an assemblage, it is first driven to interact prior to any recognition of an object’s identity or utility.56 This tendency will find its way even when presented with objects, such as metal bars, that are fundamentally foreign to the animal.57 As some of these stereotypic actions suggest, this propensity may even turn an animal’s own self into an object of sorts. Such engagement should not be understood as solely cognitive, but more as a tactile, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and indeed visual means of drawing connections with one’s surroundings. It is sensual and corporeal. Tacitly, at least, zoo managers have recognized this quality. The science of environmental enrichment, in its comprehensive mode, is, in essence, an actualization of this recognition. Although environmental enrichment does frequently involve the placement of “natural” objects within zoo enclosures (e.g., trees, pools of water, various scents, and sounds), it also frequently utilizes objects that have no historical association with the particular species involved. This includes blocks of ice or other contraptions that encase food, plastic toys, burlap sacks, and mirrors among others. The substrate employed within enclosures, with its tactile qualities, may also be relevant to alleviating stereotypies.58 Very often, attempts to eliminate stereotypic behaviors involve techniques designed to occupy the time of an animal.59 Altering the method and timing of feeding, for example, is one avenue of approach for altering the texture of a day. Strikingly, one of the objectives of environmental enrichment is to instigate the natural behavior of animals, yet it appears to matter little whether these behaviors are motivated by natural or artificial objects. Therefore, in some respects at least, there is an implicit acknowledgement among zookeepers that the fundamentals of nature run deeper than its exact material configuration or its similarity to “nature.” By instigating natural behavior, enrichment potentially enables zoo managers to achieve another goal, which is to diminish or eliminate stereotypic behavior. By engaging animals, enrichment permits the intensity that typifies life to be more widely distributed, thereby regenerating the flow that had been previously arrested. Enrichment, then, may be viewed as an attempt to transform the zoo enclosure from a point to a passage in itself. In facilitating the emergence of nonhuman ramblings within the confines of an exhibit, enrichment seeks to

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perpetuate a flow (where it persists) and unhinge animals from their moorings when stereotypes prevail. Nonetheless, it may be argued that efforts to transform points into passages have failed. Although Shepherdson sees the origins of zoo enrichment at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Maple notes the prevalence of the topic since the early 1980s, the zoo studies noted above indicate that stereotypes are still very prevalent.60 Even though enrichment has certainly reduced occurrences of stereotypic behavior, many problems remain. Ultimately, this simultaneously suggests our limited capacity to transform a point into a passage and our inability to fully control the vibrational quality of animals. Environmental enrichment can provide many things; indeed it can saturate space. As yet, however, it has not been able to transform Newtonian space (space as a container) into a more dynamic affair that is compatible with animal vibrations. And there is no guarantee that zoo enrichment will ever be able to achieve this feat except in theory. In turn, this may suggest that there is an element of life that environmental enrichment, as we conceive it, is missing. What these forms of enrichment can’t address is another aspect of life. Traditionally, conceptions of sense have been geared around objects of attraction and have been centered around the process of cognition. Another way to conceive animal nature, however, is through the kinesthetic sense. The kinesthetic sense is generally defined as “the sense of limb position and movement.”61 This sense is not wholly disconnected from the neural apparatus of the brain, but it is nevertheless more overtly distributed throughout the body. And while this sense relates to the internal workings of the body (the relations between muscles and joints, for example), it necessarily carries with it a relation to the outside world, for the positionality and movement of limbs requires an exteriority that supports and yields in some manner. In some regard, zoo professionals are certainly aware of this aspect, but for some reason, perspectival or pragmatic, they have not given it the same status as other senses. Below, a means of incorporating that sense into zoological institutions is outlined.

Searching for a Wormhole Animal bodies, while constituted out of relations, have their own Newtonian demands. Presently, what the project of environmental enrichment has not, and cannot, manifest is space, at least in a substantial manner. Space is the inherent deficit of zoo enclosures, one from which they cannot recover. In their study of large carnivores, Clubb and Mason concluded that the primary factor harming the ability of animals to adjust to captivity is not their in-

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ability to hunt, but rather their inability to range widely.62 In addition to noting captivity’s negative impact on infant mortality, their analysis further notes that the frequency of pacing is directly correlated with the size of a species’ home-range in the wild. A similar analysis based upon minimum daily distances traveled—which may give a more accurate depiction of life’s cadence—produced similar results. Clubb and Mason also drew similar conclusions with regard to elephants.63 They note that the median herd home range for Asian elephants is 113 km2, while the median herd home range for African elephants is 1975.7 km2. Interestingly, Poole and Granli note that because elephants have the lowest energetic cost of walking for any land animal, “Proponents of the modern zoo have used this fundamental energetic truth to argue that since elephants in captivity are provided with food and water they don’t require large spaces.”64 The logic of saturation seems to come into play again here, this time not in reference to the enrichment of surroundings but rather within the interior of the body. Variously, they note that typical polar bear enclosures are one-millionth the species’ minimum home range, and that the EAZA and AZA recommendations for outdoor elephant enclosures are 60 to 100 times smaller than the minimum wild home range of the species.65 Undoubtedly, these are extreme examples. Yet, while such factors are presumably more apparent with regard to large, wide-ranging species, animals of a less expansive character are likely to experience these constraints in a similar yet distinct fashion. 66 What I will suggest here, then, is that space (Newtonian or relative) is the ultimate “object” of concern for animals. This is so simply because space is the encounter in all of its heterogeneity. This perspective is not ancillary to the notion of animal as vibration, but instead commensurate with it. Space as an “object” of interest, and the approach of an animal toward that space (which is simply a reverberation), is just the realization of the animal’s architecture of being, which in itself is always, in a more preliminary sense, its penchant of becoming. This reality has consequences. If we are to accept both the importance of space and the limitations on space currently imposed by zoological institutions, how can we use the insights of our new register, of sound, movement, and vibration, to reconstruct our relations with other species—whether or not that involves the preservation of zoos or their eventual demise? In order to break out of this conundrum, I want to draw here upon the notion of a wormhole. The concept of a wormhole is helpful in this context because of the multiple meanings it possesses. On the one hand, in the most literal of ways, it refers to a biological organism and its passage through a material substrate. The zoological connections are obvious in this aspect of

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the term. Interestingly, the term not only applies to the actions of different species (e.g., worms or termites), but also to species’ impacts on different material substrates (e.g., fruit or wood). The species and the space of the hole are temporarily coextensive. On the other hand, there is a more speculative aspect to this term, one which emanates from the science of physics and refers to a hypothetical passage through time-space. This usage of the term was developed by John Wheeler and refers to a tunnel or bridge that connects different time-spaces, potentially enlarging the scope of travel by means of a shortcut that augments expediency.67 Although the validity of such speculations is debatable, that this usage comes from physics is in itself helpful to the present discussion, for physics is the science of matter and its motion. Thus once again, we arrive at the notion of vibration. Combined with the different organic and inorganic materialities specified by the traditional use of the term, we can begin to see the potential utility of the concept. What then does this mean for our conception of zoos, conservation practices more generally, and their potential reconfiguration? More precisely, what alterations to zoos does this suggest? Let me say forthrightly that I am looking to bore a wormhole into the hull of the zoological ark. On a global scale, as we have seen, this has become extremely difficult, as there is diminishing habitat available that is suitable for reintroductions. While I do not want to foreclose those possibilities, here I want to focus on smaller-scale activities, the act of transforming the zoo from a point into a passage. Above all, then, I am proposing a zoo that is defined by mobilities. Given the largely sedentary nature of zoos, a radical restructuring of these institutions would be required to achieve this end, one which would be inclusive of various caveats, niches, and, yes, enclosures that would indeed lend the new zoo its character.68 At any given point in time, this zoo would be in a variable state of assembly and disassembly. With the exception of animals that exhibit a clear penchant for sedentary behavior (although this is never absolute), animals within the zoo will be upon the move, periodically moving from one enclosure to another. The exact timing, speed, and method of facilitating these movements will be developed over time through experience with the animals at hand. Zoo personnel will also be engaged in the process of preparing and reorganizing the space of the zoo, itself beginning to function like an organism. In this way, the total amount of space within the zoo that is available to each species and each animal is augmented. Ideally, this increase would resonate positively with zoo animals by triggering reminiscences (in their muscle memory or consciousness) yet eliminating perceptions of redundancy.

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To permit this, of course, the internal attributes of enclosures must be reconceptualized. Though some enclosures could temporarily reflect the historic habitat of a given species, they should not be “dedicated,” as it were, to a species’ nature, for that would simply entail stringing animals along to more of the same. To do so would not diverge considerably from the present policy of enrichment, even though multiply located. Rather, this unending labyrinth of enclosures would contain varied “habitats,” varied geometries, and perhaps a varied composition of animal types designed to engage each other. In such assemblages, different “affordances” (as per Reed) between the animal and its surroundings would emerge that enliven the condition of dwelling and inhabitation.69 In some cases, the landscape might beneficially possess an austere quality, one frequently rejected by the aesthetic sensibilities brought to nature by humans, but which actually offers tactile, olfactory, gustatory, auditory, and visual stimuli that bemuse, enthrall, and excite animals. In this sense, like a Rubik’s cube, each enclosure possesses innumerable possibilities. The potential sequence of habitats, from austere to naturalistic and otherwise, likewise contains numerous pathways. Further, to a greater or lesser degree, zookeepers may elect to retain the landscape changes effected by the animals themselves, whether those changes entail the formation of divots, the relocation of boulders, or even damage to institutional resources, for those alterations would undoubtedly add to the complexity of sites and blend with the personal proclivities of particular animals (if not necessarily the species). These self-induced changes may or may not resonate with some form of consciousness when an animal revisits a particular enclosure during the course of its residency, but benefits of a tacit, corporeal character are likely to accrue for the site has become imprinted with an aspect of that animal’s lively body. Although limited, this allowance has affinities with the process of niche construction in more natural settings. The vibrational quality of animals and their animacy is thus affirmed by this reformation. Overall, the objective in developing these contortions is to develop a series of habitats that does not fall into a condition of redundancy and thereby outpaces an animal’s ability to sense its own entrapment. Viewed in this way, we see that zoo designers made a critical error long ago. At the turn of the twentieth century, Carl Hagenbach created a naturalistic zoo, a transition in form and function that has been widely applauded and subsequently replicated. These creations certainly diffused the rigidity of the cage, but in creating these natural exhibits, zoos became rigid in yet another way. This is our paradox. Now, in response to the limitations imposed by this format, we must begin to think differently about materialities and the potentialities they possess. We should allow ourselves, and the animals

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in our keep, more freedom of play. In creating the Penguin Pool at the London Zoo, Lubetkin was not inhibited by nature. His novel use of shapes and angles should be of benefit. But he too was entrapped, this time by modernism and its edicts of efficiency.70 What the preceding discussion of vibrations indicates is that animals are modes, modulations, ones that the modules of zoos must be reconfigured to accommodate, but not in a modern way. A less structured format is necessary, one that is continually amenable to reconstitution as different species move in and out of particular enclosures. The approach outlined here is equivalent to a mode of empowerment, one which is compatible with the fundamentals of evolution and emboldens the agency of animals, though not necessarily (or even primarily) in a natural fashion. As Grosz points out, the term “evolution” is derived from Latin, the etymological origins being “to unroll.”71 This sense of unrolling certainly suggests motion, as has been highlighted here throughout, but it is much too linear. Instead, I would argue that it is preferable to think of biological development and evolution as a folding and unfolding process, one which thereby contains a nonlinear and indeterminate aspect.72 Although compatible with evolutionary thinking, the approach suggested here does not conform to the conservationist ethic of the environmental movement, for it allows animals to find their own nature. A labyrinthine zoo of the type I have described moves in this direction. Typically, we think of labyrinths as spaces of confinement which overdetermine the lives of its inhabitants. Yet, this truly misunderstands our relations with the world (and the type of labyrinth I am describing). Development and evolution do not occur as a result of our detachment from the world, with all of its rigidities, but rather as a result of our engagement with the world. This acknowledgement agrees with Grosz’s notion of an “enabling obstacle,” something I would say that provides feedback (and indeed constrains) but does not determine actions to the point of objectifying its inhabitants.73 Such a labyrinth permits the process of folding and unfolding to take place incessantly. It is open-ended to the extent that it is perpetually reconstructed and reorganized, and not entirely subject to the dictates of “nature.” This restructuring of zoos would undoubtedly present challenges, but it also suggests opportunities. Some excess space would be needed to allow for the reorganization of enclosures before the arrival of their next set of inhabitants. Though labor intensive, this reorganization of modules would not be as demanding as it appears at first glance, for the enclosures are temporary for any inhabitant. Thus, while significant enrichment may be offered in some cases, this may be compensated for by less intricate environs in other enclosures.

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Transience permits some laxity, since animals are not dedicated to a single space and do not require it to satisfy all of their needs in perpetuity. Given the vast collections of species in many zoos, it would indeed be difficult to construct pathways for all of the diverse organisms within each institution’s control. More than likely, our inability to orchestrate all of these trajectories would force individual zoos to reduce the number of species (if not animals) they hold within their walls. For some zoo personnel and visitors, this may be a hard pill to swallow. Yet, it seems that such a consequence of reorganization actually falls in line with other trends in society. Over the last few decades, a concerted effort has emerged to differentiate mainstream consumer venues, such as shopping malls and baseball stadiums, which had become homogenized and indistinguishable during late modernity.74 Thus there is an unforeseen opportunity here. In being “forced” by practical constraints to reduce the number of species within their control, each zoo could seek to individualize itself, thereby highlighting its unique value. The zoo, as such, is no longer global, but rather becomes postmodern in a sense. Although the livelihood of zoo animals should never be compromised for human benefit, these changes alter the dynamic of tourism and visitation in a beneficial way, for each zoo is no longer simply a zoo, but instead retains an identity of its own, becoming to some extent a class in and of itself. Altogether, this reorganization would not only impact the response of tourists from outside a given region (who may have already visited a zoo in their own community), but it would also influence local residents. The transient character of zoo enclosures and their relation to particular species ensures that a zoo will always be “different” even when it retains the same collection of species. Thus, human fatigue and boredom could be minimized and interest continually reinvigorated. Nevertheless, while these dynamics generate economic and visual benefits, they are to be grounded in the primacy of animal agency. The denaturing of zoos, initially sensed as problematic, appears otherwise once it is acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of zoo animals will never be transferred back to nature and that those who are returned will inevitably encounter natures that have been already substantially transformed. By virtue of the incomplete global circuits of conservation and the unlikely prospect of their completion in the not-so-near future, ethical priorities should shift from the ecological emphasis of conservation toward a humanitarian emphasis on welfare and agency. To do otherwise is disingenuous. This project does link up with environmental enrichment, but in a vastly different manner from that currently envisioned by zoo managers. It allows zoo animals to utilize their natural ability to engage, explore, and (more simply)

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make contact with surfaces, yet does not determine a priori what those surfaces will be or what those animals will be(come). It is an open-ended form of environmental enrichment and environmental inheritance that can never be saturated.

Notes 1. Paul Lawrence Farber, Finding Order in Nature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 2. Toby A. Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 3. R. J. Hoage and William A. Deiss, eds., New Worlds, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); David Hancocks, “The Design and Use of Moats and Barriers,” in Wild Mammals in Captivity, ed. Devra G. Kleiman, Mary E. Ellen, Katerina V. Thompson, and Susan Lumpkin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 191–203. 4. Stephen Bitgood, Donald Patterson, and Arlene Benefield, “Exhibit Design and Visitor Behavior: Empirical Relationships,” Environment and Behavior 20 (1988): 474–491. 5. Kay Anderson, “Animals, Science, and Spectacle in the City,” in Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands, ed. Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (London: Verso, 1998), 27–50; Stephen Spotte, Zoos in Postmodernism: Signs and Simulation (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006). 6. John Berger, About Looking (New York: Pantheon, 1980). 7. By this, I do not mean to suggest that the era of metal bars and sparse concrete enclosures has ended, for many animal exhibits around the world still possess these qualities. 8. Susan G. Davis, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 9. C. L. Puan, and M. Zakaria, “Perception of Visitors towards the Role of Zoos: a Malaysian Perspective,” International Zoo Yearbook 41 (2007): 226–232. 10. Spotte, Zoos in Postmodernism, 17. 11. M. Soulé, M. Gilpin, W. Conway, and T. J. Foose, “The Millennium Ark: How Long a Voyage, How Many Staterooms, How Many Passengers?” Zoo Biology 5 (1986): 101–113. 12. Ibid; Ethics on the Ark: Zoos, Animal Welfare, and Wildlife Conservation, ed. Bryan G. Norton et al. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995). 13. Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005).

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14. Jozef Keulartz, The Struggle for Nature (London: Routledge, 1998). 15. F. J. Odling-Smee, K. N. Laland, and M. W. Feldman, Niche Construction: the Neglected Process in Evolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 16. Humberto R. Maturana and Francicso J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing, 1980). 17. Nigel Thrift, Nonrepresentational Theory (New York: Routledge, 2008). 18. Deborah Thien, “After or beyond feeling? A consideration of Affect and Emotion in Geography,” Area 37 (2005): 450–454; Derek McCormack, “For the Love of Pipes and Cables: A Response to Deborah Thien,” Area 38 (2006): 330–332. 19. McCormack, “For the Love of Pipes and Cables,” 331. 20. Patricia T. Clough, “The Affective Turn: Political Economy, Biomedia, and Bodies,” Theory, Culture, and Society 25 (2008): 1. 21. Hayden Lorimer, “Cultural Geography: The Busyness of Being ‘More-thanRepresentational,’” Progress in Human Geography 29 (2005): 83–94. 22. Rachel Colls, “Materialising Bodily Matter: Intra-Action and the Embodiment of ‘Fat,’” Geoforum 38 (2007): 360. 23. Eric Laurier and Chris Philo, “Possible Geographies: A Passing Encounter in a Café,” Area 38 (2006): 353–363; Justin Spinney, “A Place of Sense: A Kinaesthetic Ethnography of Cyclists on Mont Ventoux,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24 (2006): 709–732. 24. Elizabeth Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 80. 25. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 26. Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art, 54. 27. Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 2 (original italics). 28. Spotte, Zoos in Postmodernism, 66. 29. Sarah Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces (London: Sage Publications, 2002). 30. Michel Callon, “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay,” in Power, Action, Belief, ed. John Law (London: Routledge, 1986), 196–230. 31. Studbooks contain information about the parentage, date of birth, location of birth, current location and date of death of particular animals. An excellent source for studbooks and studbook data is the San Diego Zoo’s Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES) center. Copies of studbooks are available at http:// library.sandiegozoo.org/studbook.htm. 32. Steven D. Thompson. North American Regional Studbook for the Pygmy Hippopotamus (Hexaprotodon liberiensis) (Chicago: Lincoln Park Zoo, 2002); Mike Connolly, Andean Bear Studbook Tremarctos ornatos: North American Regional Studbook (Tulsa: Tulsa Zoo and Living Museum, 2007); Helen Shewman and Cheryl Frederick, Sun Bear Studbook Helarctos malayanus: North American Regional

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Studbook (Seattle: Woodland Park Zoo, 2007); Travis Vineyard, Sloth Bear Studbook Melursus ursinus: North American Regional Studbook (Cleveland: Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, 2007). 33. Alice Seyfried, Tachyglossus aculeatus: Short Beaked Echidna (St. Louis: St. Louis Zoo, 2003). 34. See www.isis.org/CmsHome/content/isisimpact. 35. Sara Hallager, International Studbook for the Kori Bustard (Ardeotis kori) (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian National Zoological Park, 2002); Mike Keele and Karen Lewis, Asian Elephant (Elaphus maximus): North American Regional Studbook Update (Portland: Oregon Zoo, 2003). 36. The end of the “capture” phase cannot be synchronized as a whole for a few basic reasons. In the first instance, the initial date of interest in, and acquisition of, different species varies considerably. Thus, some species have transitioned into the breeding and maintenance phase before other species have been acquired at all. Secondly, the ability of zoological institutions to successfully breed particular species has varied. The inability to breed a species necessarily lengthens the reliance upon wild populations. Thirdly, concerns about genetic diversity may extend the length of reliance on wild populations. 37. See www.isis.org/CMSHOME/. 38. Fifteen percent of mammalian space in zoos is devoted to threatened taxa. C. D. Magin, T. H. Johnson, B. Groombridge, M. Jenkins, and H. Smith, “Species Extinctions, Endangerment and Captive Breeding,” in Creative Conservation: Interactive Management of Wild and Captive Animals, ed. P. J. S. Olney, G. M. Mace, and A. T. C. Feistner (London: Chapman and Hall, 1994), 3–31. 39. Many of the reports of the Re-introduction Specialist Group of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission can be viewed at www.iucnsscrsg.org/STORAGE/ RSG%20CD/CITES_START.htm. 40. B. B. Beck, L. G. Rapaport, M. R. Stanley Price, and A. C. Wilson, “Reintroduction of Captive-born Animals,” in Creative Conservation, ed. P. J. S. Olney et al., 265–286. 41. Mark R. Stanley Price and John E. Fa, “Reintroductions from Zoos: A Conservation Guiding Light or a Shooting Star?” in Zoos in the 21st Century: Catalysts for Conservation?, ed. Alexandra Zimmerman, Matthew Hatchwell, Lesley Dickie, and Chris West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 167. 42. The dominant genetic perspective in conservation does not wholly discount what I have characterized as vibrations. Indeed, at the foundation of genetics is the process of mutation, which is generally considered to be stochastic. Nonetheless, the body of animals is often treated as a vessel in the process, and perceived to be fundamentally more stable than the genetic attributes that comprise a population. 43. This condition suggests that the only legitimate rationale for the perpetuation of zoos is the caring feelings for wildlife they generate among the public, feelings which may actually extend beyond the boundaries of zoos. This benefit is moderated, however, by the proliferation of wildlife documentaries which bring the image

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of wild animals into many homes and potentially function in the same manner. Gail Davies, “Exploiting the Archive: And the Animals Came in Two by Two, 16 mm, CD-ROM, and BetaSp,” Area 31 (1999): 49–58. Altogether, I would argue this situation strongly warrants against the further capture of wild animals unless it is shown that the animals captured will directly benefit from such action. 44. Steve Ross, North American Regional Studbook for the Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) (Chicago: Lincoln Park Zoo, 2003). 45. Keele and Lewis, 2003; Jason Jacobs, pers. com., Los Angeles Zoo. 46. Laurie Marker, International Cheetah Studbook, 2000–2001 (Otjiwarongo, Namibia: Cheetah Conservation Fund, 2008). 47. Dave Bernier, North American Regional Studbook for the Southern Threebanded Armadillo (Tolypeutus matacus) (Chicago: Lincoln Park Zoo, 2004); Lee Schoen, North American Regional Rhinoceros Hornbill Studbook, Buceros rhinoceros (Houston: Houston Zoo, 2004). For the most part, birds and reptiles are unnamed in official studbooks, while many mammals are given names. One exception to this pattern is the African penguin, a species that is perhaps perceived to possess more individuality than other avian species in contemporary culture. 48. Aristotle, Aristotle’s On the Soul; and On Memory and Recollection (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2001); Tim Mitchison and Marc Kirschner, “Dynamic Instability of Microtubule Growth,” Nature 312 (1984): 237–242. 49. Kathy Carlstead, “Effects of Captivity on the Behavior of Wild Mammals,” in Wild Mammals in Captivity, ed. Devra G. Kleiman, Mary E. Ellen, Katerina V. Thompson, and Susan Lumpkin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 317–333. 50. S. Montaudouin and G. Le Pape, “Comparison between 28 Zoological Parks: Stereotypic and Social Behaviours of Captive Brown Bears (Ursus arctos),” Applied Animal Behavior Science 92 (2005): 129–141; David J. Shepherdson, Kathy Carlstead, Jill D. Mellen, and John Seidensticker, “The Influence of Food Presentation on the Behavior of Small Cats in Confined Environments,” Zoo Biology 12 (1993): 203–216; Loraine Rybiski Tarou, Mollie A. Bloomsmith, and Terry L. Maple, “Survey of Stereotypic Behavior in Prosimians,” American Journal of Primatology 65 (2005): 181–196; C. L. Meehan, J. P. Garner, and J. A. Mench, “Environmental Enrichment and Development of Cage Stereotypy in Orange-winged Amazon Parrots (Amazona amazonica),” Developmental Psychobiology 44 (2004): 209–218; Loraine Tarou Fernandez, Meredith J. Bashaw, Richard L. Sartor, Nichole R. Bouwens, and Todd S. Maki, “Tongue Twisters: Feeding Enrichment to Reduce Oral Stereotypy in Giraffes,” Zoo Biology 27 (2008): 200–212; Sue A. Hunter, Monika S. Bay, Michele L. Martin, and Jeff S. Hatfield, “Behavioral Effects of Environmental Enrichment on Harbor Seals (Phoca vitulina concolor) and Gray Seals (Halichoerus grypus),” Zoo Biology 21 (2002): 375–387; Corie L. Therrien, Lauren Gaster, Petra Cunnigham-Smith, and Charles A. Manire, “Experimental Evaluation of Environmental Enrichment of Sea Turtles” Zoo Biology 26 (2007): 407–416. 51. Andrzej Elzanowski and Agnieszka Sergiel, “Stereotypic Behavior of a Female Asiatic Elephant (Elephas maximus) in a Zoo,” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 9 (2006): 223–232.

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52. Lindsay A. Hogan and Andrew Tribe, “Prevalence and Cause of Stereotypic Behavior in Common Wombats (Vombatus ursinus) Residing in Australian Zoos,” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 105 (2007): 180–191. 53. Sophie Vickery and Georgia Mason, “Stereotypic Behavior in Asiatic Black and Malayan Sun Bears,” Zoo Biology 23 (2004): 409–430. 54. Ibid; Montaudouin and Le Pape, “Comparison between 28 Zoological Parks: Stereotypic and Social Behaviours of Captive Brown Bears (Ursus arctos).” 55. G. Mason, R. Clubb, N. Latham, and S. Vickery, “Why and How Should We Use Environmental Enrichment to Tackle Stereotypic Behaviour?” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 102 (2007): 163–188. Most studies on stereotypic behavior are limited in scope, involving a small number of animals or locations. Additionally, most of these studies examine mammals. It is unclear, moreover, how much this phenomenon affects other segments of the animal world and the extent to which we are able to recognize these abnormalities in species vastly different from ourselves. 56. Ralph Acampora, Corporal Compassion (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006). 57. In saying this, I am disagreeing with von Uexküll and Heidegger, who contend that each type of animal is only aware of a select group of objects in its surroundings. Their perspective, again, seems to prioritize the categorical aspects of animals over the more basic property of becoming. 58. Camie L. Meller, Candace C. Croney, and David Shepherdson, “Effects of Rubberized Flooring on Asian Elephant Behavior in Captivity,” Zoo Biology 26 (2007): 51–61. 59. Ronald A. Kastelein, Nancy Jennings, and Jacobus Postma, “Feeding Enrichment Methods for Pacific Walrus Calves,” Zoo Biology 26 (2007): 175–186. 60. D. J. Shepherdson, “Environmental Enrichment: Past, Present and Future,” International Zoo Yearbook 38 (2003): 118–124; Terry L. Maple, “Toward a Science of welfare for Animals in the Zoo,” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 10 (2007): 63–70. 61. Uwe Proske, “Kinesthesia: The Role of Muscle Receptors,” Muscle Nerve 34 (2006): 545. 62. Ros Clubb and Georgia Mason, “Captivity Effects on Wide-Ranging Carnivores,” Science 425 (2003): 473–474; see also Ros Clubb and Georgia Mason, A Review of the Welfare of Zoo Elephants in Europe: A Report Commissioned by the RSPCA (Oxford: Animal Behavior Research Group, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, 2002). 63. Clubb and Mason, A Review of the Welfare of Zoo Elephants in Europe. 64. Joyce Poole and Petter Granli, “Mind and Movement: Meeting the Interests of Elephants,” in An Elephant in the Room: The Science and Well-Being of Elephants in Captivity, ed. D. L. Forthman, L. F. Kane, and P. Waldau (North Grafton: Tufts University, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Animals and Public Policy, 2008), 6.

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65. Clubb and Mason, A Review of the Welfare of Zoo Elephants in Europe; Clubb and Mason, “Captivity Effects on Wide-Ranging Carnivores.” 66. See, for example, Hogan and Tribe, “Prevalence and Cause of Stereotypic Behavior in Common Wombats (Vombatus ursinus) Residing in Australian Zoos.” 67. Wormhole is a colloquial metaphor for the technical term, Einstein-Rosen bridge. That a hole can function as a bridge accentuates the potential duplicity of these material relations; see J. A. Wheeler, “On the Nature of Quantum Geometrodynamics,” Annals of Physics 2 (1957): 604–614. 68. The patterns created by such movements would have to incorporate epidemiological concerns, relations between differently sexed bodies, and the viable proximity of different species. This would undoubtedly result in a fewer number of species at each institution (see below). 69. Edward S. Reed, “The Affordances of the Animate Environment: Social Science from the Ecological Point of View,” in What is an Animal?, ed. Tim Ingold (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 110–126. 70. Pyrs Gruffudd, “Biological Cultivation: Lubetkin’s Modernisn at London Zoo in the 1930s,” in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, ed. Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert (London: Routledge, 2000), 222–242. 71. Elizabeth Grosz, The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). 72. David Lulka, “The Ethics of Extension: Philosophical Speculation on Nonhuman Animals,” Ethics, Place and Environment 11 (2008): 157–180. 73. Grosz, The Nick of Time, 19. 74. Jon Goss, “The ‘Magic of the Mall’: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83 (1993): 18–47; George Ritzer and Todd Stillman, “The Postmodern Ballpark as a Leisure Setting: Enchantment and Simulated De-McDonaldization,” Leisure Sciences 23 (2001): 99–113.

CHAPTER EIGHT



Open Door Policy: Humanity’s Relinquishment of “Right to Sight” and the Emergence of Feral Culture G. A. Bradshaw, Barbara Smuts, and Debra L. Durham

Gazed upon, they are denied the power of the gaze. —David Spurr I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares. —Igor Stravinsky

Introduction Unlike sticks and stones, words and glances hardly seem dangerous. But, as Stravinsky alludes, the rapacious eyes of ardent fans unsettle even the literati and glitterati, who, one might think, would be relatively immune to visual assault. It is not everywhere that the gaze is so demanding and so threatening. While visual rights may be taken for granted in today’s dominant society, sight is wielded more carefully elsewhere. Since post-contact occupation, Americans Indians have had to contend with the “insult of eye contact” that clashes with more parsimonious vision in traditional cultures such as the Navajo who prefer the fleeting glance and only stare when angry.1, 2 Intrinsic authority and intrusive quality of sight is recognized, much in the same way an unsheathed sword might be regarded, its use cautiously guided by strict rules of social etiquette.3 Neither does sight prevail amongst all species as 151

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the reigning sense. A survey of neuroanatomy across taxa shows how areas in the brain specialized for sensing have evolved differentially, rendering vision only part of the broader repertoire of communication and knowledgemaking in the animal kingdom. Bats, whales, elephants, insects, and snakes have ways of communicating that supersede the visual band. Nonetheless, today’s society has made sight and sensibilities nearly one and the same. Computers and their virtual progeny have supplanted physical communities of locale. The power to collapse space into a single dimension has hastened the atrophy of touch, smell, sound, and taste and relegated these other senses to restricted, furtive territories. Something else is involved in the use of the gaze. Helen Keller brings attention to the considerable presumption of sighted society and the political nature of vision: Now and then I have tested my seeing friends to discover what they see. Recently, I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. ‘Nothing in particular,’ she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.4

The “ideology of the gaze” characterizes visual entitlement of colonial cultures where control is exerted through the deliberate commanding gaze. Looking becomes: a mode of thinking . . . where the world is radically transformed into an object of possession . . . the gaze is never innocent or pure, never free of mediation by motives which may be judged noble or otherwise . . . [it] is always in some sense colonizing the landscape, mastering and proportioning, fixing zones and poles, arranging and deepening the scene as the object of desire.”5

Visual targeting and linguistic packaging render subjects into silent, disempowered objects robbed of agency and autonomy. Presuming the right to visual possession comprises the first step in the process of objectification and hence any fate that objectification permits, including physical possession and death. Denial of subjectivity is the denial of the right to life itself.6 Animals held captive epitomize this process. Historically, modern zoos evolved with agendas and mindsets alongside colonial occupation.7 In broad terms, colonialism is construed as a predatory attitude directed at the control or extinction of others through political and physical force. Similar to indigenous peoples captured and brought to European and American cities for exhibition, animals in zoos and aquaria are

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kept captive for visual consumption.8 Today, we might cringe at the thought of humans displayed in zoos, but one hundred years ago, Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy tribesman captured by slave traders, occupied the Bronx Zoo Monkey House exhibit. However, capture and captivity of other species have not ceased. Institutions who base their fortunes on forced incarceration of individuals with brains, minds, emotions, and cultures comparable to those of humans have been able to continue.9, 10 Attitudes have changed since the days of Ota Benga and zoos are predicted to be as endangered as the species they exhibit (this volume). Nonetheless, despite social sentiment and science that has brought human and other animal rights so close together as to make the distinguishing conceptual line between species all but vanish, the assumed privilege to see an animal when, where, and how one wishes persists. Animals are now visual prey wherever they live. Instead of using concrete enclosures, people employ photo-safaris, dolphin swims, and nature walks with the result that the ravages of captivity are recapitulated in the so-called wild.11, 12 It is also true that dramatic environmental change has made us keenly aware of life’s fragility and that wildlife species extinctions presage our own. Instead of searching for solutions in the warrens of the human mind, psychologists and scientists have turned to nature for solace and technological inspiration to cure society’s ills. Healing of the mind is linked with healing of the earth.13 But does this sudden about-face from shunning to embracing nature benefit other species? Will this invigorated hunger for intimacy with animals bring their salvation? We assert “no” unless modernity first relinquishes its mandate of right to sight. We discuss how the presumption of visual and psychological possession that underlies animal objectification and is intrinsic to zoos persists even in alternative “eco-friendly” activities. Today’s animals are held hostage to and show wounds from the same appetites that have attacked their societies since European colonization. Bringing wildlife back from the brink of psychological and physical extinction requires humanity to forsake its assumption of right of sight. Renunciation of human privilege eschews visual ownership and explicitly acknowledges animal agency and its attendant right of privacy. Conservation can only be achieved if the cultural terrain “beyond Noah” inspires a new perceptual and ethical paradigm where animals cease to be objects in service of science and curiosity; “close encounters” promised by ecotourism are possible, not certain, and occur only on terms dictated by other animals. In this shared, species-common world, an alternative narrative emerges. Using testimonial examples, we illustrate how transformation from animals as objects to subjects initiates a new trans-species identity14 and

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a move toward feral, the surrender of social control over other species where we become one animal among many in a world in which we used to live.15

From Close Confinement to Confinement of Close Encounters One of the main causes credited for the failure of zoos, and the captive industry in general, is that their “educative power and abilities to capitalize on novelty have been eclipsed by other media.”16 Ready access to electronic media and a social life structured around the television preempt family outings to local zoos. Instead, wildlife is handily brought into the living room with movies, streaming web media and television channels devoted to the display of animals. On the surface, animal shows may seem quite different from a zoo or circus but they share similar psycho-political agendas. In both, humans retain their role as architects of animal lives by conscribing how animals are depicted and what they do, want, feel, and think.17 As Janet Davis points out, animals in electronic media and in real life shows still serve human goals, be they education or amusement. Many argue that nature shows have increased concerns about animal welfare; however, if so, their impact is small relative to animal exploitation. A recent poll found that while 73 percent of the American public is concerned about the state of the environment, only 10 percent act on their concern.18 The gap between awareness and action helps explain why, despite conservation efforts, the burgeoning media coverage of wildlife crises, and increased awareness of animal suffering, human-caused species extinctions have steadily continued. Beyond electronic capture, there is a huge commercial market built on trade in “sentient commodities”—the capture and exportation of wildlife ranging from tigers, to wallabies, tigers, turtles, snakes, spiders, monkeys, fish, insects, and parrots. The impact of wildlife trade cannot be overestimated. Recently, in one case alone, over 27,000 animals were recovered from an illegal, international enterprise in Texas. All were slated for various uses in captivity, and tragically, by the time officials arrived, many had been beaten, starved, near death, or had already succumbed.19 With the establishment of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and other governing bodies, traffic in wildlife has become more regulated, but legal and illegal trade continue to devastate free-ranging communities. The bulk of these individuals are used as “pets,” while others are appropriated for research, biomedical testing, entertainment, food, and other commercial products. Legal exploitation of wildlife continues alongside the black market. Organized trophy hunting and canned hunts have gained popularity as access to wildlife has diminished with species

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declines. Subsequently, while their electronic representations flourish, animals remain possessions in body and mind as products to satisfy humanity. Many people who have turned from zoos and live shows embrace alternative opportunities to encounter animals provided by ecotourism (defined as “tourism involving travel to areas of natural or ecological interest, typically under the guidance of a naturalist, for the purpose of observing wildlife and learning about the environment”20). Instead of bringing animals to people, ecotourism brings people to animals and in so doing appears to reverse what zoos and circuses create. While the term “ecotourism” is newly minted, the idea behind it is not. Big game hunting and safaris of various types have been a mainstay of the west for more than a century, and they have provided the mythical fodder for novelists from Hemingway, to Forster, to Agatha Christie. These early ecotourists laid the ground for much of today’s trends and styles. Present-day destinations are often romanticized and engineered to provide aesthetic experiences to mirror the past. Graceful tents set near roaring lions under transcendent African skies of the twenty-first century look very similar to the digs of the likes of Isak Dineson, of Out of African fame, minus the requisite genealogical pedigree and wealth. Ecotourism’s democratization of luxury and access plays to increased numbers of people who are able to travel. Hunting parties aimed to kill now share the stage with camera parties in search of an equally dramatic shot. Ecotourism and wildlife photography have roots in trophy hunts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—where privileged members of society traveled to kill and then possess the dead corpse of an animal after photographing the process. Wildlife films and photographs are not infrequently staged, some to the point of deliberate harm to the animals in question.21 Yet despite the parallels, is it fair to regard ecotourism as an agent of damage comparable to that brought by colonial safaris and big game hunting? Ecotourism is arguably seen as a huge boon to many countries. In many areas, ecotourism offers one of the very few economic opportunities in the wake of cultural breakdown that has struck indigenous, subsistence communities with the advent of colonialism and urbanization. Various ecotourism ventures are designed to promote the preservation of wildlife in lieu of poaching for bush-meat and the pet trade. For example, in the Amazon and parts of Africa, indigenous hunters turned poachers are paid to protect, not capture or kill wildlife. Dr. Pilai Poonswad, Thailand’s “Great Mother of the Hornbills,” sternly confronted villagers who poached hornbills and successfully converted them to ecotourist guides, thereby securing a beachhead of protection for the vulnerable birds.22 However, while in many instances it is the only business

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sustaining people and wildlife alike, indeed the only barrier between complete extinction and survival of a species, ecotourism is far from benign.

Casualties of the Gaze On the surface, ecotourism presents a vast improvement over the global slaughter promulgated by colonists. The fate of African wildlife, as just one example, is enough to convince that any other form of human visitation to the continent is better than the hunting culture brought by colonials. By the turn of the last century, “great white hunters” had almost obliterated African wildlife. Wildlife was extinguished to the extent that when the Big Five—lions, leopards, elephants, rhinoceroses, and Cape Buffalos—became part of a significant reintroduction program to repopulate South African parks in the 1980s, many Africans encountered these animals for the first time. Wildlife had been erased from the collective memories of local cultures.23 The story of wildlife in South Africa illustrates the devastation that post-contact society, now globalized, causes by an insatiable desire for possession. After apartheid, international tourism to South Africa became politically and economically viable once more. Private reserves with posh lodgings sprang up like mushrooms to provide an eager public with opportunities to view the spectacular landscapes and their animals in style and ease. Massive translocation projects involving the transfer of elephants and other species, at times over hundreds of miles, were engineered to repopulate emptied landscapes. On paper, these moves and other wildlife management strategies might seem logical solutions to dilemmas created in the past, but in many cases they have merely exacerbated the situation sometimes often with fatal consequences. Pilanesberg National Park, located a short two hours from Johannesburg, was the recipient of many translocations, including lions and elephants. Soon after reintroduction to the park, a trio of male lions formed an alliance so formidable that territorial challenges from younger lions inevitably failed. Young males were therefore forced to the park perimeter where they frequently escaped to the surrounding landscapes in search of new territory. Outside they encountered angry and fearful villagers unaccustomed to non-human predators and unfamiliar with traditional strategies that protected people and stock. Locals complained and lions were shot. To preempt further conflict, park rangers decided to dismantle the trio so that park territory could be more equitably distributed among resident lions. Indeed, after one of the three was tracked and shot dead, the alliance crumbled and young lions were able to appropriate park territory. On the face of it, the plan seemed successful. Ample lions were available for ecotourist viewing without the threat of outside conflict. But ac-

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cording to a park ranger, the death of the lion devastated his remaining two comrades. In the words of the ranger, the two lions “would wail long into the night and began to waste away in grief. They were broken.”10, 24 Pilanesberg is also the home of the infamous rhino-killing elephants. Between two South African parks, young bull elephants killed over one hundred rhinoceroses as a result of a series of brain-altering traumas they experienced through the process of human manipulations to create wildlife for tourist viewing. The young transgressing bull elephants were moved to the park after being orphaned in culls (systematic killing) at Kruger National Park. South Africa park personnel routinely controlled elephant numbers with culls until 1994 in Kruger National Park. From 1966 to 1994, 16,201 elephants were killed or removed. The reason given for culling is that without them elephants would destroy the ecosystem within the closed confinement of the park. Most scientists agree that this hypothesis is spurious and that the real motive derives from politics and the press of the ivory market. Relevant here, elephant management is chiefly driven by economics that include optimizing tourist opportunities. To help guarantee viewing success, the park placed waterholes in strategic locales that later were considered to be a factor that increased environmental impacts by wildlife.10 Since culls were reinstituted in South Africa in 2008, nearly coincident with a huge sale of stockpiled ivory and the acceptance of China and Japan (the two biggest ivory buyers) to CITES and waterholes closed or moved, the captive elephant industry has grown stronger. Not content with passive wildlife viewing, ecotourists may now ride elephants, safari-style. These two personal stories of animals’ lives illustrate a microcosm of the vast, tragic consequences of objectivism and human privilege for we understand now that physical extinction is merely the tip of the iceberg. Right of sight and the assumption of human authority over the fate of wildlife strips animals of their self-determination and right of life. Lions, elephants, and other species are moved around like so many chess pieces, reassembled into scientifically correct demographies with no care for the profound and lifelong emotional bonding that defines wildlife society and psyche. Traces of psychological and cultural collapse are found among an increasing numbers of species: cougars, elk, orca, dolphins, wolves, apes, and the list goes on. While parks, protected areas, and reserves are becoming the only places where wildlife can survive complete annihilation due to escalating human encroachment and population, they have begun to resemble the close confinement defining zoo life. Because most parks and private reserves depend on ecotourism, animals must routinely encounter people, cars, and mountain bikes that crisscross their already fragmented landscapes. The

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stress of forced observation, increased vigilance, and disruption of cryptic habits are taking their toll. Stress effects in free-ranging animals are only just beginning to be acknowledged by conservation biologists even though theory and data have long established the link between environmental change and fitness. Environmental uncertainty, social turmoil, high predation, habitat reduction, human-induced mortality, and group fragmentation are found across species and generations. Chronic stress or developmental trauma causes dysregulation of core neurophysiological processes that influence reproductive behavior, rates, and fecundity. Elephants, such as the hyperaggressive rhino-killing young males, exhibit classic symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other profound psychological distress including intraspecific violence, infant neglect, and depression.10 Elsewhere, in another South African Park, Addo, a history of inadequate reserve size, irregular socialization and trauma resultant from culls and intensive hunting is thought to underlie the near 90 percent male-on-male elephant mortality that contrasts dramatically elephant behavior living in (semi-)protected habitats. Elephants also exhibit diverse indicators of intraspecific aggression and stress (broken tusks, puncture wounds, elevated corticosteroid metabolite concentrations) associated with intense socioecological pressures. Behavioral alterations track physiognomy and genetics: elephant tusklessness is associated with chronic and acute stress.25 Human stressor effects are not limited to the land alone. Among marine mammals, pleasure boating and commercial fishing interrupt social functions bringing loss of social cohesion, loss of socioecological knowledge, alterations to normal socialization, injury, and death. Social breakdown leads to relational dysfunction among individuals that translates, in the language of biologists, to depressed breeding and skewed sex-ratios. Diminished sociality affects the basics of life: foraging, finding mates, fending off predators, and rearing young: all of which reduce populations. The loss of older individuals who are targeted by hunters may explain why some traditionally important cetacean habitat remains deserted despite the cessation of commercial whaling. Cultural knowledge of traditional feeding grounds and migratory routes of the North Atlantic right whale, Eubalaena glacialis, may have been lost through extirpation of older members by whalers and a growing population of young solitary odonocetes has been created through human-caused orphaning. Backcountry recreation also disrupts animal societies. Attempts to avoid humans increase stress and energy expenditures and decreases group cohesion.26, 27 Diversion of energy from foraging, mating and parental care, im-

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paired communication capabilities, and increased stress levels cause infant abandonment and significant population-level declines in birthrates and impact survival and reproduction through increased stress, predation, and separation of mothers and calves.28–31 Animals are particularly susceptible to disturbance during calving, breeding, and in the winter when forage is difficult to find. Whale watching boats or kayaks in marine or lake settings create noise and distraction that interfere with mating displays and the ability of social groups to remain in contact with one another, and intense sounds are correlated with injury and death.32 Such indirect impacts help explain the apparent lack of recovery of offshore spotted (Stenella attenuata attenuata) and eastern spinner dolphins (S. longirostris orientalis) stocks, which were reduced to 40 percent and 20 percent of their original size, respectively, by purse seine nets used to catch tuna. Stress from human activity, including popular swim-with-dolphin expeditions, also interrupts key social functions, such as nursing, mating, swimming, sleeping, and play, which impedes recovery.33 Proximity to humans has other consequences. African apes are now known to be susceptible to and even dying from respiratory disease spread by tourists and other close encounters with people.34 In Gombe National Park, Tanzania, chimpanzees are infected and many die from polio and flu through contact with humans. Similarly, a study in China revealed that pregnancy, birth and infant survival outcomes were poor in macaque groups visited by ecotourists in comparison to social groups that lived in areas not visited by people.35 Lonely and displaced young orcas in search of company and love often end tragically as in the case of Luna who died in the propellers of a tugboat.36 Ecotourism has a downside even for the people who directly benefit. While it is promoted as a way that indigenous people can stay on their lands and revitalize cultural practices, ecotourism often stimulates further colonization by building western-based infrastructures into these communities. Employment that is aimed to preserve wildlife supplants traditional, subsistence ways of living and values. Similar to wildlife, community elders are left socially beached and isolated from their traditions and their grandchildren who pursue western education and jobs in order to survive. Ironically, economic success means greater numbers of visitors, which increases resource demands, increases noise, and accelerates local cultural change. As a result, ecotourism fulfills much of the same role that institutions built on animals in captivity have in the past: money in exchange for the right of visual possession. Promoters of ecotourism point to its educational benefits. Much like zoos, ecotourism is claimed to have a positive educational effect by creating empathy for wildlife among its participants. Indeed, personal testimonies

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do support this assertion in some cases. However, a review of the experiences and perceptions of short term “eco-volunteers” suggests that benefits to animals are overstated. For example, participants at an ape rehabilitation center in Indonesia reported that the orphaned orangutans were inferior to and less valuable than their wild counterparts. The analysis suggests that themes of racism, sexism, and (colonial) domination and human control of nature emerge in the eco-volunteer experience and that those same beliefs strongly influenced the social construction of the orangutans, that is, their objectification and reduction to units of human use.37 Critics underscore that most ecotourist wildlife sightings occur in parks and reserves. Almost everywhere, popular wildlife—big or predatory animals—live in severely confined, contrived, or significantly compromised conditions that contrast dramatically with those to which they have evolved. They exist in reservations, cut off and apart from the entirety of the environment of their heritage. As conservationist David Western observes: “The trouble is that species segregation, like racial segregation, gives the subordinate party, nature, a raw deal.”38 Thus, while biophilia may provide an ethos for environmental protection and requisite human cultural change, it also enables a habit that leads to nature’s undoing when it includes the insistence to consume animals visually. These realities compel the dismantling of right to sight. There is no need to look to the teetering stacks of statistics, scientific facts, and theories that document the effects of visual and physical captivity on other species. Human torture survivors and political prisoners describe corrosive effects from being visible to captors—feeling vulnerable, inspected, and even the sense of being grotesque—because one is objectified and reduced to a visual target.39 Even capture on film has its costs. By assigning animals to the colloid world, (mis)perceptions of animals and public cultural constructions of animals are shaped as “ideologies of post-colonial dependence, race, gender” and other forms of hegemony.40 Media-created conceptions of animals can perpetuate a hunger for greater access. Subsequently, if we seek to live in a world populated by species besides our own, humanity must relinquish its insistence on close encounters in body and sight. The question becomes: what is the nature of human culture without the right of objectivism to visually and physically confine?

Trans-species Living Objectification of animal kin has created a world of its own, civilization, where other creatures exist largely as furniture manipulated to suit human

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design. Modern human identity is defined by what animals have been assumed to lack—culture, intelligence, language, emotions, cognition, toolmaking, the ability to create art and music, and significantly, a sense of self. This conception of an unbounded abstract existence permits us to “move into the living rooms of other animals with little or no regard for what we are doing to them, their friends, and their families.”41 But recently, the illusion of separation is less and less viable. Attributes previously used to distinguish humans from dolphins, chimpanzees, snakes, fish, octopi, elephants, mice, cats, dogs, and invertebrates are found throughout the animal kingdom. Neuroscience tells us that cross-species intimacy penetrates to the tiny cells in the brain.42 Through science’s dark glass and the awesomeness of global change, human and animal identities blur. Suddenly, the dynamic of visual predation alters and modern humans are subjected to another’s gaze. It is now nature that stares back and possesses. We face other species in mirror image, each reflecting aspects of the other—one human, the other ape, turtle, fish, or bird. In efforts to evade nature’s eyes, we earthlings may try escape by moving to distant galaxies and by creating ingenious medical palliatives, but an essential question cannot be avoided: who are we without the authority of self-proclaimed privilege? It is at this juncture of knowledge and action, where the existential rubber meets the practical road, that a new identity is forged. Psychoanalyst Jerome Bernstein calls the place of trans-species existence “the Borderland.”43 In discussion of Navajo and Hopi peoples, Bernstein illustrates how trans-species connectedness is no stranger to other human cultures. The Borderland world reexamines the trademarks of Western human civilization—art, music, architecture, the quest for knowledge for knowledge’s sake and human betterment, even language—that have formed the counterpoise to animality. The exquisiteness of a Bottacelli, the soaring notes of Don Giovanni, and the ingenuity of blu-ray do not change, but their assumed significance does in a world informed by other species. Old meanings can no longer be assumed with the unmooring of human identity. Douglas Candland explores the line between what it means to be human and not human in his work on feral children, those reared outside human civilization by other species. He urges us to “deny the arrogance of thinking that we are objective and devote our attention to examining our own categories . . . how we create other minds and how we investigate our own.” 44 These categories are structures of control that shape everyday life, ethical lines drawn in choosing to spray pesticide on insects entering human houses and riding ATVs and mountain bikes with a careless arrogance that intrudes into the homes of cryptic bears and cougars.

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Candland’s psychological philosophy brings us to the same point as science—the space where the boundary between humans and members of other species is fluid, even nonexistent, or comparable to any other, within-species categorization (e.g., gender, age, geographic identity). We are asked not to understand what it is to be human, but rather what it is to shed control and live among other animals like animals, to become feral. “Feral” is defined here in general terms as a way of seeing and living that is not based in speciesism, and critically, one that renounces those aspects of civilization that privilege humans. While there are multiple examples of feral living in indigenous cultures, associating animality with humans today is politically sensitive—and for good reason. American Indians, Australian Aborigines, Africans, African Americans, and all manner of indigenous peoples have been described as animals by colonists as a way to express their inferiority to Europeans. The phrase “living like an animal” still represents an epithet of disdain hurled at those who, similar to feral children, do not conform to standards of civilized living. The consequences of such labeling are devastating. Along with the stripping of culture, indigenous languages have been destroyed, voices silenced, and with them the ability to communicate with other species. In the wake of cultural decimation, civilized life has become the only means of survival and hope for retaining agency, albeit within the suffocating confines of colonial reality. Subsequently, political and economic liberation of feral cultures are commonly tailored to symbols and language that distance “native from nature.”45 To reassociate animality with indigenous peoples, therefore, hints of throwbacks to institutionalized denigration. However, the reappropriation of “animal” for human life is critical. It is essential for disentangling the psychological and political ropes that prevent the embrace of animality and impede the dismantling of speciesism. Being animal acknowledges partnership in coexistence and meaning with those— indigene humans and other animals—who have been reduced to props on a colonials-only stage. Unlike objectification, animistic and totemic perception does not refer to the seer but to the phenomena of the natural world whose meaning derives from what connects two nouns. Knowledge in feral cultures is not acquired through the anonymity and separation of a book or third party, but through long hours of direct observation and “deep, empathetic states.” Aborigines “spend long hours witnessing and listening to animals . . . they imprint these animal characteristics in their own neuromuscular systems.” Feral knowledge is not only observational but also participatory and relational, characterized by an “an ability to identify with and enter into their environment.”46

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Likewise, longtime parrot caregiver and scholar Phoebe Greene Linden speaks of the nature of seeing in context of her relationships with over one hundred parrots she has known during three decades: The human entitlement called right to sight without mutual consent in relationship is exploitive and demeaning and entirely unrelated to mutual viewing. Mutual viewing happens when two or more interested and engaged beings share simultaneous experience. The opposite of objectification, mutual viewing deepens interconnectedness. Cella, (Eclectus roratus vosmaerie), is a master seer. She looks deeply and intently; I follow her gaze and when everything works right, we see what we each sees. She looks not at me, nor I at her, but we notice what holds our attention, and we attend to its sameness. When I see what she sees and it blazes in my mind, I am lifted even as the limits of limited human peripheral vision color vision constrict my experience. It’s an interesting study—especially with parrots whose eyes are on the sides of their heads, who enjoy stereoscopic vision and who see colors in the ultraviolet range.47

Greene Linden’s (in)sight is composed of multiple senses with the goal of being seen, felt, smelled, and heard as much as to see, feel, scent, and listen. The privilege of seeing and watching one and another is attainable only through mutual consent and sustained time together, getting to know each other for the purpose of living well together. Parrot and human well-being are contingent upon each other. Animal is someone other than the terminus of a stare. The dissolution of structures and customs segregating everyday human living and meaning making from other species also entails the dissolution of linguistic barriers. Choosing species-neutral language reworks the boundaries created by unequal power.48, 49 Instead of insisting on separate terminology for humans and other animals, communication shapes to its cross-species users. Animals cease to be objects that “exhibit fear behaviors”; instead, similar to humans, as agents of their own experience, they “feel afraid” or “are terrified.” Words without physical, relational context lose their meaning and utility eventually fated to drop from use. Language and custom are mutually negotiated in common living areas where there is cocreation of communication and culture. Ferity pervades within and extends outside the confines of house and home. Smith describes the human-house rabbit life where routine, behavior, and priorities are created with the rabbits with whom she lives. Frankly, I love this way of living, this version of “becoming animal.” It was the genius of HRS [House Rabbit Society] founder Harriman to naturalize this life, so that those of us who came after felt social permission to live as we had always wanted to.50

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Outside, we experience other creatures from inside a shared universe rather than watching from without, as if we were the audience and they entertainment with no existence beyond the spectacle. As feral beings, we retain awareness of those with whom we share the world, whether or not we can see or hear them at any given moment. The process often proceeds in measured steps, requiring an emotional and psychological recalibration and creation of trust, as illustrated in the case of field research with baboons. I wanted to understand the baboons’ personal lives, which meant I needed to follow them up close. Each day, I moved a little bit closer while trying to avoid stepping over the invisible line that triggered flight. With the passing of time, the line moved closer to them, and months into this process, I was able to get close enough to see their faces clearly, which meant I could begin to recognize them as individuals. Not long after that, when I moved too close particular individuals began shooting me what I can only describe as “dirty looks.” Other, bolder baboons raised their heads as I drew near, met my gaze briefly, and then resumed foraging once I averted my eyes and sat down. Through these simple exchanges, the baboons and I came to recognize each other as intentional beings capable of rudimentary inter-species communication. Once we had crossed that barrier, it became possible to explicitly negotiate the distance between us. Eventually I understood “baboon” well enough to convey one intention, over and over: I come in peace. The baboons must have understood my message because they eventually allowed me to move among them, evoking no more notice than a harmless antelope or warthog.51

Dropping the separating cloak of objectivism reveals that other animals already live in a multi-, trans-species community: When grazing antelope or warthogs moved through the troop, a few baboons glanced up briefly, but otherwise, they did not react. Clearly, this was a multispecies community with mutually understood conventions of tolerance and noninterference. To my amazement, being surrounded by baboons automatically made me a member of this community. Warthogs are notorious for their long flight-distance from humans, yet when I was with baboons, a mother warthog grazed nearby while her babies played in a mud puddle. Another time, a tiny bat-eared fox trotted right up to me, stood at my feet and looked up quizzically, as if to say, “Who on earth are you?” All of these animals took flight when they encountered me away from the baboons. These experiences hint at the cultural norms co-created in nature both within and between different species.

The body, senses, and mind become porous and the human comes to know her/ himself as animal, a product of evolution, just like the bodies of the baboons:

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With each step, I could feel how I was designed to flourish in the wild. My eyes. . . are made to scan for bright-colored fruit and for predators moving in the distance. My ears are made to notice a rustle in the grass or the faint cry of a baby. My feet are made to feel the texture of the ground. My hands are made to grasp and to caress, my arms to throw and embrace, my heart to beat fast or slow in response to the matrix of sounds, sights, and scents in which I am enveloped. And my whole being is made to stay open every moment to every sensory nuance.52, 53

The rhythms and structures of life shift: I recall waking in my tent some nights when working in Madagascar when it was still dark and deciding whether it was time to rouse myself for the day by listening to the animals outside: frog song meant that it was still night time and I could go back to sleep. The songs of birds or the territorial calls of the golden bamboo lemurs meant I had a bit more time, but needed to think about getting up soon. My life was in sync with light and dark, the weather, the cycles of the moon and the seasons because those factors affected how lemurs lived their daily lives in many of the same ways they affected mine.54

Dispelling the predatory attitude awakens senses long atrophied: While walking along a boulder-laden stream in the mountains of Northern California, I reflexively jumped sideways without knowing why. Simultaneously, an enormous vibration shook the perceived universe, including my own body. Just as the world ceased reverberating, a nearby boulder undulated, and for just a moment, it seemed I’d fallen down the rabbit hole. When ordinary perception resumed, I found myself standing in the stream, about a meter away from an enormous rock, upon which a giant rattlesnake had been sunning. My presence had evoked a uniquely powerful warning, followed by an escape as the snake slithered down the side of the rock into a dark crevice. Although my logical mind now understood what had happened, everything felt different. When the snake tail’s vibrations entered my body, I was transmuted into a new being, an aboriginal human who had never known separation from the world around her. Grandmother (or grandfather) rattlesnake, who had always been radically other, was now inside me, being me, or I was being her; I couldn’t tell the difference. Her desires, her experiences were now mine as well. I, too, yearned for a safe, dark place to hide and feel safe. I found myself in that place, resting comfortably, when I felt heavy steps approaching. I was terrified and I cried out, “go away!” as loud and clear as I could. The footsteps paused and then moved away, and I was blessedly safe again.

Here we witness a connectedness that nonetheless articulates limits.55 Animals have boundaries beyond which we should not go. Living feral means

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learning how to perceive the boundaries of other animals and then behaving accordingly, no matter what our personal desires might be. Personal desire submits to relational negotiation. We are compelled to learn to see, hear, and feel subtle boundaries with exquisite sensitivity—lest we ignore them and thus stumble senseless through this beautiful world, arousing fear with every step and state, like the owner of the steps that terrified the snake. It is not necessary to walk through the wilds of Africa or wake with the lemurs to be feral. Feral life in trans-species culture may look different in urban, Western settings than what is considered to be more “naturally” feral,56 but the essence of feral living is in attitude. It is a way of relating and being that imbues even the smallest acts in everyday life.6 Because we inhabit the same biological bodies as our aboriginal ancestors—bodies that are animal—we all possess a latent capacity to deepen awareness of our surroundings and the other animals who live here with us at home, in the trees, skies, and waters. It only takes the courage to accept the vulnerability that comes with dropping the shield of right to sight and then the willingness to listen, be watched, and adopt ways of animal kin.

Notes 1. L. M. Cleary and T. Peacock, Collected Wisdom: American Indian Education (Needham Heights: Allyn & Bacon, 1998): 28–29. 2. Hap Gilliland, Teaching the Indian, 4th edition (Dubuque, Iowa: Kent/Hunt Publishing, 1998): 32. 3. Keith H. Basso, Portraits of “The Whiteman”: Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols Among the Western Apache (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 4. Helen Keller, “Three Days to See,” Atlantic Monthly, January 1933. 5. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). 6. Brian Luke, “Taming Ourselves or Going Feral? Toward a Nonpatriarchical Metaethic of Animal Liberation,” in C. J. Adams and J. Donovan, Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations (Durham: Duke University, 1995). 7. Randy Malamud, Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (New York: New York University Press, 1998). 8. Kristin L. Stewart and Lori Marino, “Dolphin-Human Interaction Programs: Policies, Problems, and Alternatives” (Ann Arbor: Animals and Society Institute, 2009). 9. G. A. Bradshaw and R. M. Sapolsky, “Mirror, Mirror,” American Scientist. November/December, 2006: 487–489. 10. G. A. Bradshaw, Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Tell Us about Humanity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

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11. M. Orams, “Why Dolphins May Get Ulcers: Considering the Impacts of Cetacean-based Tourism in New Zealand,” Tourism in Marine Environments 1, no. 1 (2004): 17–28. 12. G. A. Bradshaw and Sarah L. Mesnick, “Conserving Socialite,” in prep. 13. Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist, Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 2009); The Biomimicry Institute, www.biomimicry institute.org. 14. G. A. Bradshaw, “Elephant Trauma and Recovery: from Human Violence to Trans-Species Psychology,” dissertation (Santa Barbara: Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2005). 15. Vine Deloria, Jr., The World We Used to Live in: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men. (Golden: Fulcrum, 2006). 16. Janet Davis, pers. comm., May 2006. 17. Eileen Crist, Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999). 18. C. Preston, “Americans Are Passionate About Social Causes, But Few Take Action Based on Their Beliefs, Study Finds,” Chronicle of Philosophy, February 6, 2009. philanthropy.com/news/updates/7054/americans-are-passionate-about-socialcauses-but-few-take-action-based-on-their-beliefs-study-finds. 19. S. Schrock, “Arlington Granted Custody of Seized Animals,” Star Telegram (January 6, 2010). www.star-telegram.com/crime/story/1869694.html. 20. Ecotourism. www.answers.com/topic/ecotourism?cat=technology. February 23, 2008. 21. C. Chris, Watching Wildlife. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). 22. R. Stone, “Pilai Poonswad Profile: Subduing Poachers, Ducking Insurgents to Save a Splendid Bird,” Science 317, no. 5838: 2006, 592–593. 23. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Old Way: A Story of the First People (New York: Macmillan, 2006). 24. G. A. Bradshaw and Allan N. Schore, “How Elephants are Opening Doors: Developmental Neuroethology, Attachment, and Social Context,” Ethology 113: 426–436. 25. Silvester Nyakaana, Eve L. Abe, Peter Arctander, and Hans R. Siegismund, “DNA Evidence for Elephant Social Behaviour Breakdown in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda,” Animal Conservation 4 (2001): 231–237. 26. J. A. Gill, W. J. Sutherland, and A. R. Watkinson, “A Method to Quantify the Effects of Human Disturbance on Animal Populations,” Journal of Applied Ecology 33 (1996): 786–792. 27. C. Nellmann, P. Jordhoy, O. Stoen, and O. Strand, “Cumulative Impacts of Tourist Resorts on Wild Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) during Winter,” Arctic 53 (2000): 9–17. 28. G. A. Fowler, “Behavioral and Hormonal Responses of Magellanic Penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) to Tourism and Nest Site Visitation,” Biological Conservation 90 (1999): 143–149.

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29. M. M. Krahn, J. J. Ford, W. F. Perrin, P. R. Wade, R. P. Angliss, M. B. Hanson, B. L. Taylor, G. M. Ylitalo, M. E. Dahlheim, J. E. Stein, and R. S. Waples, “2004 Status Review of Southern Resident Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) under the Endangered Species Act,” U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA Tech. Memo. NMFS-NWFSC-62 (2004): 73. 30. G. E. Phillips and A. W. Alldredge, “Reproductive Success of Elk following Disturbance by Humans during Calving Season,” Journal of Wildlife Management 64 (2000): 521–530. 31. A. Müllner, K. E. Linsenmair, and M. Wikelski, “Exposure to Ecotourism Reduces Survival and Affects Stress Response in Hoatzin Chicks (Opisthocomus hoazin),” Biological Conservation 18 (2004): 549–558. 32. R. P. Larkin, “Effects of Military Noise on Wildlife: A Literature Review,” in Illinois Natural History Survey (Center for Wildlife Ecology, 1993). 33. Toni G. Frohoff, “Stress in Dolphins,” in Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, ed. M. Bekoff (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004), 1274. 34. H. S. Kuehl, C. Elzner, Y. Moebius, C. Boesch, and P. D. Walsh, “The Price of Play: Self-organized Infant Mortality Cycles in Chimpanzees,” PLoS ONE 3 (2008). e2440.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002440. 35. Carol M. Berman CM, J-H Li, H. Ogawa, C. S. Ionica, and H. Yin, “Primate Tourism and Infant Risk among Macaca thibetana at Mt. Huangshan, China,” International Journal of Primatology 28 (2007): 1123–1141. 36. Saving Luna: A Whale’s Story (Mountainside Films, 2009). 37. C. L. Russell, “The Social Construction of Orangutans: An Ecotourist Experience,” Society and Animals 3 (1995): 151–70. 38. M. Rosenblum and D. Williamson, Squandering Eden: Africa at the Edge (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Janovich, 1987). 39. Judith Herman, Trauma Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992). 40. Donna J. Harraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1990). 41. Marc Bekoff, “Expanding Our Compassion Footprint: Minding Animals as We Redecorate Nature,” Psychology Today. www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ animal-emotions/200906/expanding-our-compassion-footprint-minding-animalswe-redecorate-nature. 42. G. A. Bradshaw, Theodora Capaldo, Gloria Grow, and Lorin Lindner, “Developmental Context Effects on Bicultural Post-Trauma Self Repair in Chimpanzees,” Developmental Psychology 45, no. 5 (2009): 1376–1388. 43. Jerome S. Bernstein, Living in the Borderland: the Evolution of Consciousness and the Challenge of Healing Trauma (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005). 44. Douglas K. Candland, Feral Children and Clever Animals: Reflections on Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 366. 45. Vine Deloria, Jr., God is Red: A Native View of Religion (Golden: Fulcrum, 2003).

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46. Calvin Luther Martin, The Way of Human Being (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Richard Lawlor, Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 1991). 47. P. G. Linden, pers. com. (2008). 48. Joan Dunayer, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation (Derwood: Ryce Publishing, 2001). 49. Lisa Kemmerer, “Verbal Activism: Anymal,” Society and Animals 14, no. 1 (2006): 9–14. 50. J. Smith, “Beyond Dominance and Affection: Living with Rabbits in the PostHumanist Household,” Society and Animals 11, no. 2 (2003): 188. 51. Barbara B. Smuts, pers. com. (March 2008). 52. Barbara B. Smuts, “Reflection,” in J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 107–120; Barbara B. Smuts, “Encounters with Animal Minds,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8, no. 5–7 (2001): 293–309. 53. Barbara B. Smuts, “Coming Home,” Natural History 110 (2001): 26–30. 54. Debra Durham, pers. com. (February 2008). 55. Smuts, “Coming Home.” 56. G. A. Bradshaw and Mary Watkins, “Trans-species Psychology: Theory and Praxis,” Spring 75 (2006): 69–94.

CHAPTER NINE



Earth Trusts: A Quality Vision for Animals? Helena Pedersen and Natalie Dian

Introduction Zoos are contradictory and in many ways problematic institutions. Western zoos share a common legacy with the old menageries (private collections of caged animals). They were made possible by the exotic animal trade that became established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries1 and by imperialist expeditions to geographical areas subjugated to colonial powers.2 Zoos have been analyzed and criticized as markers of power arrangements based on categories of gender, ethnicity, and class3 as well as producers of certain forms of human-animal power relations.4 Contemporary zoos have articulated an identity that focuses on their ambitions to benefit humans, animals, and society, to address and/or even alleviate global ecological problems (such as biodiversity loss) by conservation, education, and research. However, it has been argued that the zoo’s marketing strategy, relying on visual consumption and commodification of animals under an agenda largely structured by global capitalism, is inherently counterproductive of the zoo establishment’s self-declared aims and promise of harmonious human-animal coexistence and interaction.5 This critical theoretical interpretation of the contemporary zoo’s contradictions provides a conceptual framework for the present study. Zoos have, with the passage of time, changed their strategies both in terms of their purposes and motivations for existence and in terms of their physical 171

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setup and design, from captivity behind bars to “naturalistic architecture”6 and “immersion exhibits.”7 There are reasons to believe that the zoo concept, as such, will also become subject to challenge and change in the face of critique from societal actors such as animal and environmental advocates, the scientific community, and the public. Various forms of ecotourism initiatives are emerging that compete with zoos in the arena of sustainable and ethically acceptable human-animal encounter. This essay is an attempt to conceptualize organized future opportunities of such encounters that rely on elements of present forms of both zoos and ecotourism. It also moves beyond zoos and ecotourism to the creation of a new vision entitled “Earth Trusts.” Our approach is based on the methodological tools of the interdisciplinary research area of futures studies, which are applied in order to delineate the most viable aspects of the vision. We have located the Earth Trust vision twenty-five years into the future, to the year 2035. Using this time perspective provides for creative innovation while allowing for changes indicated by some current trends. Zoos located worldwide do not form a homogeneous category and may certainly differ depending on the geographical, social, and cultural contexts in which they are found. Different zoos may, accordingly, have different short-term and long-term futures. Some zoos may continue to flourish; some may be replaced by others; while some are likely not to have any future at all. While the Earth Trust vision relegates to the past the “typical” contemporary zoo (where animals are normally subjected to confinement, control, intervention and commodification by humans), the vision also has the flexibility to accommodate variations in zoo development. Accordingly, the Earth Trust vision will, to various degrees, reflect characteristics and dimensions of certain contemporary zoos more than others. With this chapter we face the challenge of combining critical theory, human-animal studies and futures studies. Furthermore, we have attempted to contribute to the methodological development of the visioning processes since the existing body of research on this issue is limited. These aspects add an experimental dimension to our work. After presenting our theoretical and methodological framework, we describe our Earth Trust vision. The vision is then analyzed by some of the values and trends influencing it, and its viability is discussed. Finally, the vision is discussed in relation to the contemporary zoo’s mission of education, research, conservation, and recreation, as well as in relation to the zoo’s problems and contradictions. Our main question is: can the Earth Trust vision be viewed as part of a paradigm shift?

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Theoretical Framework: The Study of Critical Animal Futures Herein is a brief account of the theoretical framework we have chosen to explore post-zoo developments, which merges critical theory and humananimal studies with futures studies. Our approach is critical theory oriented since we wish to explore new possibilities for altering current zoo concepts without symbolic and physical appropriation and commodification of animals, that is, without incorporating them into capitalist relations of production and consumption (neither as abstract representations nor as embodied beings). Human-animal studies (or animal studies) deals with how the diversity of animal presences in human society informs the humanities and social sciences.8 Human-animal studies also raises questions about the multiple layers of meanings that we ascribe to animals.9 The object of this study is the variety of cultural, philosophical, economic, and social means by which humans and animals interact.10 In the present essay, our primary concern is with the critical dimensions of human-animal studies. These critical dimensions mean that we focus on the physical existence of animals as sentient beings rather than as cultural symbols or representations. We are specifically concerned with how animals and their life conditions are harmed by human institutions, practices, and actions (in the context of the zoo).11 While human-animal studies is primarily grounded in the humanities and social sciences, futures studies utilizes results from a diversity of scientific fields to form integrated views of the future. Futures studies is sometimes viewed as impossible and contradictory as a field of knowledge since the future cannot be directly researched. The research object is therefore the present, and futures studies is less concerned with predictions and forecasts than with uncovering various means by which to handle uncertainties we face when thinking about the future. In futures studies, the future is never dealt with as a singular course of development but in a plural form, where alternative futures may be viewed as more or less possible, probable and preferable. Anita Rubin, sociologist and futures researcher at the Finland Futures Research Centre, explains that futures studies involves studying phenomena (and relationships between them) which may bear an influence on the future, such as incidents, trends, emerging issues, images of the future, value change, and actions. Futures studies also assumes that the future is possible to influence with actions and choices.12 While traditional futures studies has been criticized for modeling “good” futures on specific (Western-oriented) worldviews and oversimplified ideas of progress, critical futures studies aims at the problematization of general

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historical presumptions, attitudes, and ideas about the future and attempts to develop tools for understanding and influencing the processes of cultural formation, orientations, and traditions of enquiry.13 Influenced by literary criticism, critical theory and sociology of science, critical futures studies seeks to move away from narrowly defined and reductive visions of futures constrained by Western worldviews, logical positivism and technical instrumentality.14 Thus, critical futures studies seeks to raise awareness of the paradigm within which we are locked and lift the curtain to possible new paradigms. Sohail Inayatullah, in his capacity as a political scientist and Professor at Tamkang University, Taipei (Graduate Institute of Futures Studies) puts it this way: [Critical] futures studies aims neither at prediction nor at comparison but seeks to make the units of analysis problematic, to undefine the future, to seek a distance from current understandings and epistemological agreements. . . . The role of the state and other forms of power in creating authoritative discourses is central to understanding how a particular future has become hegemonic. Critical futures studies asserts that the present is fragile, merely the victory of one particular discourse, way of knowing, over another. The goal of critical research is to disturb present power relations through making problematic our categories and evoking other places, other scenarios of the future. Through this distance, the present becomes less rigid, indeed, remarkable.15

While critical theory has previously been applied in analyses of both humananimal relations and issues in futures research (as exemplified above), human-animal studies and futures studies have rarely been addressed within the same context.16 The melding of two innovative, interdisciplinary research areas offers an exciting framework that makes it possible for us not only to address the zoo phenomenon, but also think beyond its current delimitations. From the combination of critical animal studies and critical futures studies, we have created the synthesis critical animal futures, upon which this essay is based. We propose that studies in critical animal futures involve creative analytic exploration of social phenomena that define what relations are possible between humans and animals. These phenomena may include social structures, institutions, practices, and ideologies that reduce human-animal interaction to processes of production and consumption. More specifically, studies in critical animal futures could problematize power arrangements, in particular those manifested by unbridled globalized economic strategies, by which both humans and animals are subjected to domination and exploitaton. Studies in critical animal futures aim at mapping alternative futures using futures studies methodological tools such as trend analysis and scenario construction. They open the possibility of “going to the margins” of

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human-animal conditions by allowing the unfamiliar or counterhegemonic to unfold. Moreover, studies in critical animal futures are action-oriented as they indicate choices and actions that will be instrumental in influencing and actualizing alternative futures of human-animal relations. It is within this contextual framework we have located our post-zoo vision.

The Research Process The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being.17

Both futures studies and human-animal studies may apply a range of research methods normally used in the social sciences and the humanities, generating both quantitative and qualitative data. Futures studies has, however, developed a number of methodological tools specifically designed for futures research. The present study draws from a particular combination of futures methods used in the futures studies approach called “Framtidsbygget” (Futures Creation)18 that relies primarily on four tools: Values and paradigms clarification, environmental scanning, trend analysis, and scenario creation. Initially a values and paradigms clarification is usually performed, followed by an environmental scanning process (i.e., a gathering of relevant information on the subject of study). Thereafter trends are crystallized, on which a trend analysis is performed. These trends form the basis for scenarios. The experimental nature of our process involved a departure from this order. Contrary to what is often the case in futures studies praxis, we formulated a vision as a methodological point of departure. The vision was created on basis of an environmental scanning process.19 We then performed a values and trend analysis and examined the vision’s viability. For this purpose we used Masini’s20 theoretical proposal (outlined in the “Values” section). In the process, we extrapolated some trends over time and identified some emerging trends. Visioning A vision is usually separate from a futures study for the purpose of avoiding intellectual inhibitions that limit creativity. Furthermore, visions are “paradigm hoppers” as they provide a means for reaching beyond prevailing attitudes, ideas, and values and recombining existing concepts and constructions in new and exciting ways. They make space available for reconceptualizations of familiar phenomena and institutions and highlight different ways in which such reconceptualizations may be concretized and actualized. According to Eleonora Barbieri Masini, Professor emeriti,

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Faculty of Social Sciences, Futures Studies from a Social Perspective and Human Ecology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, a vision must, in short, be a basis for future change. A vision contrasts with a utopia which often builds the future as a contradiction to the present without the use of extrapolative past or present data.21 In futures studies, the visioning process is normally carried out by a group composed of representatives of all “stakeholders,” that is, those who have something to lose or gain by a new vision, ensuring that all related voices participate. Our readers are presented with a vision created by two individuals (Dian and Pedersen), which is unusual. The vision builds on data of present zoo-related developments resulting from an environmental scanning process carried out in dialogue with previous theoretical and empirical critical research on the zoo topic, but it also contains creative and innovative elements. In this manner we have substituted the availability of a stakeholder group for environmental scanning in and around the field of zoos, and attempted to compensate for validity shortcomings of the visioning process arising from the lack of stakeholder involvement. Environmental Scanning Environmental scanning is a systematic collection of current research, inventions, events, attitudes, and actions which have implications for the future and takes into consideration the context of the area or topic of futuresoriented analysis. By applying environmental scanning, important emerging issues that influence a given area or topic, either as obstacles or as opportunities, are identified.22 Environmental scanning is “the act of identifying and documenting an increase or decrease in frequency in activities, beliefs, and behaviors from newspapers, magazines, books, TV, radio, the Internet, and many other sources.”23 The method is very specific to futures studies. Other terms often confused with environmental scanning describe information and knowledge handling designed to increase business performance and these are known as knowledge management, competitive intelligence, business intelligence, or information management. While they share overlapping interests, they have different orientations. Another characteristic of environmental scanning is that its goal is to be as inclusive as possible in order to capture the major influences on the futures topic at hand. Values Values examinations came into two places in our research process. The first simply stated the values that could be identified in the vision. The second was an analysis of the types of values contained therein.

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Masini offers a theoretical proposal on the role of values in visioning. Values form an inherent part of the vision’s subject matter and data, but they also contain a critical element in the vision’s “relation to the real world.”24 Following Masini, a vision is at its best if it contains some values that are based on today’s facts (extrapolation), some values that are in opposition to those of the past (a utopian element), and some values that are critical of the present. A declaration of values indicates the vision’s quality.25 The vision has drawing power when its values unite a majority of stakeholders and “voices” in the community to fight for it. Trends In futures studies, a trend is defined as a new behavior or belief that gradually develops over time. A trend can cover a few years or many years. Certain trends affect development locally or within a special limited area, while other trends can have global consequences. They can, for instance, be social, technical/ scientific, economic, ecologic, political, or demographic. Trends are longrange, impact many societal groups, grow slowly, and reflect deep change. They differ from fads which are short-range and fashionable, impact only particular societal groups, grow quickly, and reflect surface changes. Trends in their earliest stages are called emerging, that is, prior to notice by mainstream press. Emerging trends are often found “in the margins” of society (among activists, subcultures, critics in related fields, etc.). Experts and research results are sources for the next level of scanning emerging trends, and the third source is made up of the general public and the press.26 By the time many articles on a subject can be found in the press it is usually a sign that the trend is so strong that it cannot be stopped. It is then said to have reached critical mass at about 10–15 percent of mass media.27

Vision of “Earth Trusts” 2035 What follows is the Earth Trusts vision. It utilizes a narrative format. In order to allow the reader to move through the vision fluidly, we have placed our identification of values affecting the vision, our outline of external and internal trends affecting the Earth Trust future, and our analysis of the viability of the vision, at the end. Each paragraph in the vision is numbered. The numbers are simply an aid to the “Identification of values” section. I Going to the “zoo” is considered old fashioned. Adults remember going to the zoo, most young people do not. Today a family interested in an educational

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adventure instead find themselves on the edge of an “Earth Trust.” Earth Trusts are located on a tract of land having particular qualities which scientists and the general public find contribute to the greater environmental system such as water shed, mountain forest, jungle, or desert landscapes. There are also Marine Trusts planned. Borders of Earth Trusts are not in line with country borders but with the geography related to ecosystems or animal habitats. They are charged with the stewardship of the geological formations, the flora and fauna, water and air; in other words the total ecosphere. Seen from a satellite, Earth Trusts appear to be green areas (except in the case of deserts) of irregular shape with a tail or umbilical cord connecting them to another green area. At the center of this organic green shape lives a great diversity of animals, plants, and insects that are native to the area. The center is bounded by a green outer ring. II Following ideas from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, animal observation and life in zoos began to be seen as barbaric, and as a gross invasion of animals’ rights to live autonomous lives. Nowadays, some animals are being transported into the Earth Trusts; some of these animals are descendents of animals bred in captivity. Some are descendents of animals from old zoos, sometimes quite far away from the current Earth Trust. A few are descendents of “wild” surviving herd remnants, yet others are rescued from the previous trade in wild animal species, research laboratories, or other animal enterprises. All animals are native to a specific Earth Trust topography. Often there is an existing national park28 or national forest that is turned to this use. Even now animal species are shipped from former zoos and parks to become acclimated to the Earth Trust climate, terrain, and social structure from which they originated, although most of this shifting was done earlier. New Earth Trusts are still being developed, in spite of increasing land use pressure. III In the twenty-first century, resilience thinking and the increasing need to understand the world in systematic terms opened the idea that plants, animals, humans, and their environments were parts of an interdependent whole. Clear examples of this came about when jungles or forests were destroyed for growing profitable crops and increasing animal agriculture. Exploitation of developing countries by multinational corporations and globalized agribusiness industries was already suspect by many people, and the effects on entire ecosystems added to the devastation. Wild animal species died out, despite

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the old zoos’ conservation efforts. The merging of national parks, national forests, botanical gardens, and zoos contributed to the Earth Trust concept and was an important step in forming the change that we experience today, in 2035. IV Scientists and “naturalists”29 are at odds about Earth Trust. Scientists argue that leaving an area entirely to its own fate is not responsible stewardship and that careful observation is necessary. “Naturalists,” a type of activist group consisting of animal and environmental advocates, put their trust in nature insisting that all interference by humankind inhibits the natural flow of system development. The negotiations between these two groups differ in the various Earth Trusts and account for variations in form. This description is of “general” Earth Trust conditions. V A little closer zoom in from the satellites and one can often see glimpses of the larger animals through the trees or in natural clearings. This is the only view of the animals and birds in the central area of the Earth Trust with a couple of exceptions; the umbilical cord (wildlife corridors) connecting the areas, and individuals dressed in “Smell Suits.” A Smell Suit was developed in France where a great deal of research had been conducted on the olfactory cells of both humans and animals. This, in conjunction with an insatiable interest in technology, brought about the innovation which allows humans wearing the suits to be “smell-neutral” to the animals in the area. This means that scientists working very slowly and quietly may go into the edge of the center of the Earth Trust and approach the animals without disturbing them. In some Trusts, Smell Suits are also rented out to visitors who can wear them on the border between the inner and outer rings, thereby increasing their possibilities of animal encounters. They take a short course in animal behavior tailored to the specific animals in the area and are instructed in behavioral methods in order to eliminate any disturbance to the animals. VI If no one but scientists can go into the Earth Trust central core, where did our family go on their outing or vacation? They traveled to the perimeter of the Earth Trust, to the edge of the ring around the protected area, where they have the opportunity to see animals that wander to the edge of the Trust. The animals are filmed by peripheral cameras and projected on a large screen in comfortable viewing rooms. There are never any guarantees that

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any animals will show themselves. Naturally, the animals most seen are the larger herd animals, which because of their numbers feel safe enough to come out to the perimeter of the center ring. In viewing rooms visitors also receive information about the ecosystem, how it works, what each part of the system is and how changes in the system come about; for example, how climate change affects the system. In addition, visitors learn about the very different life conditions of wild animals in Earth Trusts and those used and controlled by humans in animal trade, tourism industries, research laboratories, and fur farms. In more established Trusts the living conditions of domestic animals, for instance, in agribusiness are reassessed once again, as well as the influence of the animal agricultural sector on climate change. The latest research on human learning and appropriate critical pedagogies are used to impart this knowledge. The newest trusts, Marine Trusts, to begin with, will be of a more private nature, accommodating only scientific visitors. Submarine viewing is planned for the future with “Smell Suits” being replaced by sonar sensitive submarine vehicles. The major goal at this time is to try to save what is left of marine life. VII If a species dies out in an Earth Trust, it is considered a natural phenomenon and if a species survives it is due to the fact that the system is working. This concept replaced the conservation mandate of zoos. While Earth Trusts require large tracts of land, leaving the plants and animals, birds and fish to their own resources does not cost anything. The only responsibility humans take is to protect the inner perimeter from intrusion of any kind and to assure the quality of air over and water coming into the Trust are as pure as possible. Natural fires are left to burn and only stopped in the outer ring. Animals escaping to the outer ring are cared for in the least obtrusive manner possible and are turned back to the center when the danger of fire has dissipated. VIII Climate change continues to plague us all and the environment, even though much has changed. It was determined to let the animals adapt to climate change in their own way. The concept of wildlife corridors became important first in Sri Lanka, where they were discussed in the 1950s as a way of connecting fragmented parks where elephants lived. Similar corridors became an essential feature of Earth Trusts. They allow for larger land mass usage, higher chances of survival, and a larger gene pool.

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IX Those Earth Trusts that grew out of large urban zoos are located near areas where people live in high density environments. It is here that the greatest diversity of commerce tends to gather; places one can go to purchase food, participate in entertainment, spend the night, etc. These areas are located at the edge of the outer ring of the Earth Trust so that noise, odors, and other irritations to the animals are dissipated by the vegetation of the outer ring. X More people than ever before understand the importance of local economies and the small towns and villages around Earth Trusts make efforts to keep such activities local. They have consciously kept out large international corporations, giving preference to locally owned small businesses. Citizens survive economically, partially due to visitors and scientists who come to learn more about the system of that particular Earth Trust. Since Earth Trusts are unique geographic systems, foreign visitors are particularly interested in visiting Trusts in other countries. Children are known to nag their parents to visit all the different geological Earth Trusts so they can collect badges from each new Trust. XI Ecolodges, totally sustainable living environments, began on a small scale in the 2000s and now are the only type of accommodations found around the Earth Trusts. They were on the cutting edge of sustainability when they were first developed and many have chosen to remain at the forefront. Ecolodges are dedicated to offering their visitors an experience in sustainable living. For example, construction uses biodegradable and recycled materials, the food is locally grown and organic, solar cells, wind-power, and other alternative energy sources are used, and waste water is recycled. XII Globally, all Earth Trusts have contact with all others. Animal environments are still being damaged or destroyed in war torn areas. When peace is again established, it is the international community who provides funding for the creation of new Earth Trusts. Trusts that border one or more countries are under the protection of the international community. Local citizens receive additional training and assistance from the global community and then take over managing their own local Earth Trust. Historically, some local communities have learned how to protect animals and guard against poaching,

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and this knowledge provides the basic experience and expertise for the newer concept of Earth Trusts.

Identification of Values Affecting the Vision The Earth Trusts’ first paragraph (I) values education over adventure travel. This combination is related to an experience-based travel trend which began to be recognized in the 1990s. Both of these are also values found in the current zoo concept. The vision places the learning initiative with families “wanting an educational adventure.” While the vision does not define “family,” it is introduced as the largest target group for zoos of the future. School visits, traditionally a large part of zoo visitations are not mentioned in the vision, although a single example from Woodland Park Zoological Society30 indicated that school trips are a large part of zoo activity. This is echoed in the 1,160,000 hits in a simple Google search in five languages during June, 2007.31 A reason why zoo school visits are not mentioned in the vision could be that Earth Trusts are often located “on a tract of land having particular qualities which . . . contribute to the greater environmental system” and are, therefore, outside traditional urban areas. Another factor is that this human/animal experience has a higher emphasis on ecosphere well-being than traditional zoos’ goals of entertainment or education. The mandate of conservation from an earlier period has morphed into stewardship (a concept of responsible caretaking) and is valued somewhat higher than education. Stewardship is linked to the idea of a commons; land shared by us all, together with future generations. It requires the Earth Trust to keep areas free of any chemical, biological, or other type of pollutants not natural to the geographical location’s ecosystem. In the second paragraph (II), the vision partly assigns motivation for its current existence to an increasing sensibility of valuing animals’ rights, a consolidation of the animal liberation movement, together with environmental insight. The concept of “bred in captivity” is old fashioned in this vision of 2035 and evidence of human ignorance for many young people. There is also a value expressed that opposes the past menagerie or exotic animal collections and, furthermore, considers animals best preserved in the climates and geographical surroundings to which they are historically adapted. This idea also represents a shift of focus from biological diversity to endemic species.32 In the third paragraph (III), the value of systems thinking is expressed in the total concept of Earth Trust’s choice of topographically cohesive areas,

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or ecospheres. It is driven by a growing awareness of the human effect upon nature and new knowledge about how social-ecological systems work. The following three paragraphs (IV, V, and VI) have to do with two different extremes, subjugation to nature and mastery over nature.33 Here we are looking at the amount of human interference or noninterference in the particular geographical location of the Earth Trust. The value, “mastery over nature” is voiced in the vision in a modified form as “careful observation [of animals] is necessary” (paragraph IV), and is a remnant in the vision of the current prevailing idea of interference. Noninterference is illustrated in the insistence “that all interference by humankind inhibits the natural flow of system development.” Paragraph V illustrates another example of how mastery maintains its hold in the vision. Smell Suits34 allow the scientists to “approach the animals without disturbing them.” This is a modified form of mastery which puts researchers on guard while the animals go about their daily activity. In paragraph VI, the use of Smell Suits by visitors is a related activity that is a remnant of a similar value; observation as a primary way of stimulating curiosity and gaining knowledge about animals. The use of Smell Suits offers a way to maintain monitoring animal activity while minimizing its disturbing effects. Paragraphs VII and VIII are illustrations of a move toward noninterference with nature. The only human intervention taken is in the case of fire, where animals are treated “in the least obtrusive manner possible” before being returned to the center of the Trust. Wildlife corridors are a way of making environments more viable for animals that roam large areas in search of food, but can also be viewed as a way to control animal populations and their movements. Economic values are hinted at in paragraphs IX, X, XI, and XII within a local/global theme by “giving preference to locally owned small businesses.” Local economies are placed around Earth Trusts in smaller towns for whom the Trust is a substantial source of income. The commercial value of the Trust is less focused on the animals themselves (as in many of today’s zoos) than in the services and education opportunities provided to visitors. The goal of the towns is to keep their income local and make life outside the large cities viable. Ecolodges have their roots in sustainable income with a self-sufficiency that does not damage the earth. The global aspect lies in the contact Earth Trusts have with each other and in the global responsibility the international community has taken upon itself to “provide funding for the creation of new Earth Trusts [in war torn and destroyed areas].”

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External and Internal Trends Affecting the Earth Trust Future External Trends A maturing animal rights movement is one of the trends driving the Earth Trust vision. It has a logical connection to the larger and more established trends of environmental awareness and human rights. The animal rights movement is strengthened by a larger activist movement, growing crossdisciplinary research and emerging applications of legal systems to animals’ rights.35 Also the environmental awareness trend is becoming increasingly mainstream and is maturing rapidly. Biodiversity and wild habitat conservation trends are driven by the growth of public recognition of the depletion and extinction of wildlife. The biodiversity discussion, a perceived urgent need to save the natural environments that are left, and a demand for remaining zoos to respond to these concerns, will be a driver for many zoos. Reports on new or expanding zoos, national parks, and forests from several countries hint at some increase in number and acreage.36 However, it needs to be noted that climate change, with expected effects of flooding, destructive winds, transportation logjams, and the current shift from petroleum to renewable energies can slow the growth of the entire tourism industry of which zoos and Earth Trusts are a part. Another threat against all kinds of zoos and parks is a need for raw materials such as oil, timber, and precious metals for the economic growth of developed and developing countries.37 A growing global population may incite competition (precipitated by exponential growth, agricultural land shortages and/or climate change migration) for large tracts of land needed for Earth Trusts.38 Internal Trends Zoos, botanical gardens, theme parks, national parks, aquariums, and natural history museums have all gotten the attention of a small group of landscape and building architects in many parts of the world. Their approach of combining landscape design with biological insights is being applied to all types of flora and fauna establishments, facilitating the merger of these sites.39 The merger of zoos with national parks and forests can also be driven by other factors, such as the need to provide space for a larger genetic base in order to fulfill conservation goals.40 Within the zoo system itself, behavioral enrichment, more realistic or “natural” environments and encouragement of natural breeding away from the public41 are trends that mirror zoos’ legitimizing strategies but can also be said to relate to a growing interest in wild animals and their environments.

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Another trend in the zoo world is the increasing withdrawal of public monies and the dependence on private funds for zoo support. This results in trends designed to increase zoo income such as expanded commercialization and “infotainment” in animal parks; animal shows and performances; cultural resonance (the live presentation and/or performances of indigenous culture groups in a construction of the specific natural and cultural environment from which they originate),42 and the use of storylines and geographic themes adapted from theme park concepts.43 Commercialization trends in the zoo can also result in the zoo providing new forms of educational activities to attract public interest. Innovations in learning methods are being tested by encouraging children to “become” the animal in a play situation, providing kinesthetic and emotional learning as well as factual learning from words and pictures.44

How Viable Is the Earth Trust Vision? Returning to Masini’s45 theoretical proposal, a vision is at its best if it contains some values based on today’s facts, some values that are in opposition to those of the past, and some values that are critical of the present. The vision must also be a basis for future change. While not a comprehensive estimation of the vision’s viability, these criteria indicate the vision’s double capacities of being anchored in the present while representing a contradiction or deviation from past or prevailing conditions. The vision thus searches in the present for what can realize the desired future.46 Applying Masini’s proposal to the Earth Trust vision, we can identify a number of ideas articulated in the vision that represent an extrapolation of what is commonly accepted as “facts” today. These are primarily ideas related to education and research (such as education-related adventure travel, observation as a way of gaining knowledge about animals, developments in education research, and technological developments) and ecology (such as environmental awareness, more authentic architecture in many of today’s zoos, wildlife corridors, human interference in ecosystems and animal life, and climate change). The Earth Trust vision also contains oppositional, counterhegemonic or “utopian” elements. Ideas opposed by the vision that have a hegemonic past, but are increasingly rejected today, are human domination over and exploitation of nature, as well as Western domination over non-Western cultures and societies. Furthermore, the vision takes a critical position toward a number of prevailing dominant beliefs. Critical elements concern primarily views on human-nature relations, such as prioritization of stewardship (as opposed to ownership); prioritization of endemic species rather than biological

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diversity; valuing animal rescues and rehabilitation over captive breeding; prioritization of undisturbed ecosystems over education; opposition to the menagerie or exotic animal collections; rejection of commercialization and commodification of animals and native peoples in zoos; human noninterference with ecosystems and animal life; and a focus on animal rights and systemic insight. The vision also puts an emphasis on locally owned small businesses and local economies, a merge of animal rights, animal and environmental protection movements, new forms of financing and ownership of zoos, and shared global responsibility for natural resources. Is the Earth Trust Vision a Basis for Future Change? At this juncture in time, it is difficult to say which trends will gain momentum. We can only watch the possible drivers and inhibitors. Assuming continued growth of a trend for zoos moving to larger tracts of land, a strong driver for Earth Trusts could emerge. An inhibitor could be the investment in both time and money which a number of zoo managements will be hardpressed to leave. Given the questioned stability of the market economic paradigm, fueled in part by the financial crisis of the early twenty-first century, it is difficult to formulate how the futures of zoos and Earth Trusts may play out in different economic environments. As mentioned in the introductory section of this essay, some zoos may continue to flourish, while some may be forced to close down. One possibility is that failing zoos with government or private ownership may be thrilled to leave their underfunded facilities to the relatively inexpensive open spaces of the Trust. The quality of the Earth Trust vision as a basis for future change will ultimately depend on its ability to unite a “critical mass” of stakeholders, the public, and other voices related to environmental, scientific, economic, and political interests to drive the post-zoo development forward. Does the Earth Trust Vision Represent a Paradigm Shift? Paradigm shifts—here defined not in a strict Kuhnian sense, but as major changes in thought-patterns, worldviews, and ways of organizing society—can occur as a response to new problems that arise; problems that the old paradigm is unable to solve.47 There are at least three major paradigm shifts related to the Earth Trust vision. These are the scientific paradigm shift (represented by a transition from a Cartesian mechanistic or deterministic view of nature, to systems and resilience thinking focusing on relationships between interrelated parts of increasingly complex systems), the economic paradigm shift (represented by a transition from a structure of market economy to more local and community-based economies)48 and the environmental

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paradigm shift (represented by a transition from exploitative human nature relations to a widespread environmental awareness and stewardship). Each paradigm is in a different phase of transition which complicates an analysis. The Earth Trust vision lies squarely in a scientific paradigm shift with a storm of research and new understanding taking place about relationships in social-ecological systems. It is on the edge of a new economic paradigm with its local businesses. An environmental paradigm shift is quickly becoming integrated in everyday behavior and thinking, and is likely to have first chance in effecting the Earth Trust future. We maintain that the Earth Trust vision does represent a profound transition of worldviews and structures, although to varying degrees. On the other hand, the possible shifts occurring on several levels can also inhibit the Earth Trust future. If the shift to new economic forms, the shift to systems thinking, the shift to sustainability and the energy shift become too threatening, the development could be redirected toward the protection of major capitalist interests.

Concluding Discussion While the Earth Trust vision escapes many of the old zoo concept’s contradictions and conflicts, it also generates others. One the one hand, the vision builds largely on an idea of shared global responsibility for natural resources while, on the other hand, the global competition for such resources is likely to increase, threatening the lives of animals and their habitat. Although relying to a large extent on a consolidation of animal and environmental activist movements, there is nothing in the vision that guarantees species survival or increased biodiversity; rather, it places less emphasis on these objectives than traditional zoos. The significance of educational activities in Earth Trusts is downplayed in order to decrease interference in animals’ life and ecosystems, yet still Earth Trusts have a function as pedagogical resource centers for critical animal studies and reconceptualization of human-animal relations.49 The reliance on high-tech approaches (such as Smell Suits), ethological research and education may seem to be at odds with the strengthened ecological awareness, human-nature connectedness and locally adapted, sustainable management forms suggested by the vision. A vision without dichotomies is utopic perfection, impossible to realize. Further, the trend of adventure travel which is part of the vision may be far from viable in a future where the threat of pollution and climate change is still a pressing reality. Will the Earth Trust be a recreational and educational opportunity primarily for the affluent (or even a profitable destination for trophy hunting trips!) in the vision year of 2035? Despite its efforts to reconceptualize human-animal power relations,

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increase animal autonomy, and reject commodification and exoticism,50 is the Earth Trust vision in the end just another form of Western colonization? In this chapter, we have applied futures studies methodology to the zoo concept. The creation of a vision as a departure point is in itself a form of futures studies method development, since the vision is normally the “end product,” not the start, of the visioning process. This approach gives rise to a number of epistemological questions that deserve reflection. Is it possible— and fruitful—to analyze a vision? Is it at all possible to move beyond current paradigms? What are the limitations to studies in critical animal futures? The visioning process, as carried out in this study, has a double purpose. It is a way of pointing out possibilities for alternative, counterhegemonic human-animal futures in general, and post-zoo futures in particular. It is also a learning process in which we have applied a combination of innovative theoretical and methodological strategies to see where it may take us. In doing so, we do not claim to have envisioned an entirely new paradigm of human-nature relations (which may not even be possible). Rather, we see the main contribution of our essay as suggesting how the questions available for critical inquiry in human-animal futures can be interrelated, synthesized, and opened up for new questions.

Acknowledgements The authors thank Cindy Frewen Wuellner, FAIA for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay, and Dr Gina Riddle, for editing. Thanks also to the Toposophia series editors for invaluable feedback.

Notes 1. Elizabeth Hanson, Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002). 2. John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?,” in About Looking (London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1980), 1–26; Gail Davies, “Virtual Animals in Electronic Zoos: The Changing Geographies of Animal Capture and Display,” in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, ed. Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 243–267; Hanson, Animal Attractions. 3. e.g., Kay Anderson, “Animals, Science, and Spectacle in the City,” in Animal Geographies. Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands, ed. Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (London and New York: Verso, 1998), 27–50; Jane C. Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999); Hanson, Animal Attractions; Nigel

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Rothfels, Savages and Beasts. The Birth of the Modern Zoo (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Helena Pedersen, Animals in Schools: Processes and Strategies in Human-Animal Education (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2010). 4. e.g., Ralph Acampora, “Zoos and Eyes: Contesting Captivity and Seeking Successor Practices,” Society & Animals 13, no. 1 (2005): 69–88; Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia. Reflections from Damaged Life (London: NLB, 1974); Jane C. Desmond, “Performing ‘Nature’: Shamu at Sea World,” in Cruising the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality and Sexuality, ed. SueEllen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 217–236; Desmond, Staging Tourism; Susan Willis, “Looking at the Zoo,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 98, no. 4 (Fall 1999): 670–687. 5. Randy Malamud, Reading Zoos. Representations of Animals and Captivity (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Pedersen, Animals in Schools. 6. Acampora, “Zoos and Eyes,” 75. 7. Nigel Rothfels, “Immersed with Animals,” in Representing Animals, ed. Nigel Rothfels (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), 199–223. 8. Kenneth J. Shapiro, “Editor’s Introduction to Society and Animals,” Society & Animals 1, no.1 (1993), www.psyeta.org/sa/sa1.1/shapiro.html (November 4, 2009). 9. Kenneth J. Shapiro, “Editor’s Introduction,” Society & Animals 10, no. 4 (2002): 331–337. 10. Cf. Philip Armstrong and Laurence Simmons, “Bestiary: An Introduction,” in Knowing Animals, ed. Laurence Simmons and Philip Armstrong (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 1–24. 11. Cf. ICAS, “Institute for Critical Animal Studies,” www.criticalanimalstudies .org/ABOUT_more.htm (November 4, 2009). 12. Anita Rubin, Futures Studies as a Field of Knowledge and as Scientific Work (unpublished teaching materials for the course “How Can We Explore the Future?” at Finland Futures Academy, Fall 2002). 13. Rubin, Futures Studies. 14. José M. Ramos, From Critique to Cultural Recovery: Critical Futures Studies and Causal Layered Analysis (Melbourne: Australian Foresight Institute, Swinburne University, 2003). 15. Sohail Inayatullah, “Pedagogy, Culture and Futures Studies,” Metafuture 1998. www .metafuture.org/Articles/PEDAGOGY,%20CULTURE%20AND%20FUTURES %20STUDIES.htm (November 4, 2009). 16. For three exceptions, see Bruce Lloyd and Susan Clayton, “Doctor Dolittle for Real? Raising Questions About Interspecies Communications,” The Futurist March–April 2004: 40–43; Helena Pedersen, “Schools, Speciesism, and Hidden Curricula: The Role of Critical Pedagogy for Humane Education Futures,” Journal of Futures Studies 8, no. 4 (2004): 1–13; Helena Pedersen and Natalie Dian, “History of the Future,” in Utopia Today—Reality Tomorrow: A Vegetarian World, The European Vegetarian Union (Neukirch: Vegi-Verlag, 2006), 71–74.

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17. Danella Meadows, “Dancing with Systems,” Systems Thinker 13, no. 2 (March 2002), www.pegasuscom.com/PDFs/dancing-with-systems.pdf (November 23, 2009). 18. Natalie Dian, “Consulting Services,” Visionscentret Framtidsbygget, 2007. www .framtidsbygget.se/E/consult/index.htm (November 4, 2009). 19. Our environmental scanning process has included primarily Internet-based sources from various stakeholders such as academics, branch organizations, and grass roots groups. 20. Eleonora Barbieri Masini, Why Futures Studies? (London: Grey Seal, 1993). 21. Masini, Why Futures Studies? 22. Masini, Why Futures Studies? 23. Natalie Dian, “Environmental Scanning,” Visionscentret Framtidsbygget, 1994. www.framtidsbygget.se/E/infoinsamling/index.htm (November 4, 2009). 24. Masini, Why Futures Studies?, 46. 25. Masini, Why Futures Studies? 26. Elina Hiltunen, Where Do Future-oriented People Find Weak Signals? (Turku: Finland Futures Research Centre Publications, 2007). 27. Gerald Marwell and Pamela Oliver, The Critical Mass in Collective Action: a Micro-social Theory (Cambridge, NY and Victoria, Australia: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1993). 28. We use the term national park to also mean: national wildlife refuge, protective zone, indigenous park, faunal reserve, international marine park, biosphere reserve, marine reserve, coral reef ecosystem reserve, for examples. 29. We use the term “naturalist” in a way that deviates from original definitions of the term, for example natural history or natural science scholars. In our Earth Trusts vision, “naturalists” is the name we have given to a new constellation of activists. 30. Woodland Park Zoological Society, “2008 Annual Report to the Board of Parks Commissioners,” May 1, 2009. www.zoo.org/document.Doc?id=126 (November 20, 2009). 31. Search keywords: school+visits+to+zoos. 32. Criticism of the media’s black and white picture of the biodiversity threat comes from biology research, suggesting that we should be prioritizing those areas where the percentage of endemic species is highest in order to direct resources and funds to where they are most needed (see Sjöberg as interviewed in Daniella Bergman, “Varje nytt reservat är ett nederlag,” Miljömagasinet 21, May 25, 2007, 14–15.) 33. Florence Kluckhohn and Fred Strodtbeck, Variations in Value Orientations (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1961). 34. While visiting Chitwan National Park in Nepal a number of years ago, Natalie took an elephant ride to see the rhinoceroses. It was said to be perfectly safe, because the rhinos were not threatened by the elephants in any way as the elephants’ odor overrode that of the human smell which would cause the rhinos to feel a need to defend themselves. This experience and scanning new research on the sense of smell were the impetus for the concept of Smell Suits.

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35. e.g., Stephanie Hoops, “Animal Rights a Growing Concern: Regulations Surface in California Cities,” Ventura County Star, July 10, 2007. www.vcstar.com/ news/2007/jul/10/animal-rights-a-growing-concern-regulations-in/ (November 23, 2009); Peter Monaghan, “The Growing Field of Animal Law is Attracting Activists and Pragmatists Alike,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 29, 2007, http:// chronicle.com/article/The-Growing-Field-of-Animal/23437 (November 18, 2009); Partij voor de Dieren, “History of the Party for the Animals,” www.partijvoordedieren.nl/content/view/129 (November 18, 2009); Kim Severson, “Bringing Moos and Oinks into the Food Debate,” International Herald Tribune, July 25, 2007, www.iht. com/articles/2007/07/25/style/25sanctuary.php?page=1 (November 18, 2009). 36. Colchester Zoo, “Future Developments. Colchester Zoo’s Nature Area,” www .colchester-zoo.com/index.cfm?fa=about.developments (November 18, 2009); Paul F. J. Eagles, “International Trends in Park Tourism” (paper prepared for Europarc 2001, Matrei, Austria, Oct. 2001), www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/rec/pdf/inttrends.pdf (November 18, 2009); P. O. Lindström, “Naturvårdsverket vill ha 13 nya nationalparker,” Miljömagasinet 18, May 4, 2007, 3; TT-Reuters, “Australien får jättereservat,” Svenska Dagbladet, July 10, 2007, 15. 37. Eagles, International Trends; Tom Gjelten, ”Congo and China Forge Economic Partnership,” National Public Radio, 26 June 2007. www.npr.org/templates/story/story .php?storyId=11428653 (November 18, 2009). 38. Jessica Bown, “A Growing Investment in Agricultural Land,” Sunday Times, May 4, 2008. www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/investment/article3866772.ece (November 23, 2009). 39. Jon C. Coe, “Towards a Co-Evolution of Zoos, Aquariums and Natural History Museums,” in AAZPA 1986 Annual Conference Proceedings (Wheeling, WV: American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, 1986), 366–76, www .joncoedesign.com/pub/PDFs/TowardsCo-evolution1986.pdf (November 18, 2009); Jon C. Coe, “Clients and Projects,” www.joncoedesign.com/zoo/clients.htm (November 18, 2009); Monika Ebenhöh, “Improvements in Zoo Design by Internetbased Exchange of Expertise” (M.S. thesis, University of Georgia, 2000), www .zoolex.org/thesis/thesisA4.pdf (November 18, 2009). 40. Jon Clarke (ed.), “Conservation,” The Good Zoo Guide Online, www.goodzoos.com/conserva.htm (November 18, 2009); Urban Ecology Australia, “Wildlife Corridors,” February 18, 2006. www.urbanecology.org.au/topics/wildlifecorridors .html. 41. Jon C. Coe, “Zoo Trends.” www.joncoedesign.com/trends/home_trends.htm (November 18, 2009). 42. See Jones as referred to in Jon C. Coe, “The Evolution of Zoo Animal Exhibits,” in The Ark Evolving: Zoos and Aquariums in Transition, ed. Christen M. Wemmer (Front Royal, Virginia: Smithsonian Institution Conservation and Research Center, 1995), 95–128. 43. e.g., Alan Beardsworth and Alan Bryman, “The Wild Animal in Late Modernity: The Case of the Disneyization of Zoos,” Tourist Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 83–104;

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Alan Bryman, “The Disneyization of Society,” The Sociological Review 47, no. 1 (1999): 5–47; Desmond, Staging Tourism; Pedersen, Animals in Schools. 44. Coe, Zoo Trends. 45. Masini, Why Futures Studies? 46. Masini, Why Futures Studies? 47. Joel A. Barker, Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). 48. That is not to suggest that small, local economies are going to take over in place of market economy. Rather, they should be seen as initial attempts to solve problems of the reigning economic system, the beginning of a new paradigm, which eventually may be made up of many layers and configurations suited to specific needs and geographies. 49. Cf. Nicole Mazur, After the Ark? Environmental Policy-making and the Zoo (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2001). 50. Cf. Acampora, Zoos and Eyes.

CHAPTER TEN



From Zoo to Zoöpolis: Effectively Enacting Eden Matthew Chrulew

In the final chapter of his seminal zookeeping manual, Wild Animals in Captivity, Heini Hediger emphasized “the prime importance of the zoological garden for the basic questions of human life.” Indeed for Hediger, “keeping wild animals in zoological gardens (and their forerunners) affords . . . the oldest example on the most grandiose scale of man’s activity in experimental biology.”1 “Man,” it seems, has a lot at stake in these collections of animals. When read in light of some recent, animal-themed Continental philosophy, Hediger’s comments take on even greater significance. For Jacques Derrida, the human subject has been produced, throughout Western thought, by way of the sacrifice of the “heterogeneous multiplicity of the living” that is so ineptly called “animal.”2 Giorgio Agamben similarly traces the origins of the sovereign exception of the “bare life” that can be killed to the attempt to set humanity apart from animality.3 Zoological gardens, those old and grand biological experiments, would thus be crucial cogs in the “anthropological machine” that inclusively excludes animals in order to produce the unique and dominant human. But can this be cast in another light? According to the celebrated “biophilia hypothesis” of E. O. Wilson, evolution has disposed homo sapiens to seek contact with the animal world.4 Paul Shepard similarly argues that proximity to animals has been formative of human nature.5 These sociobiological suppositions find an unlikely counterpart in Jean Baudrillard’s theory of seduction, which casts the enduring attraction to animals as a central 193

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occasion for the unravelling of human meaning.6 Such crossbred thoughts, entirely at home in the hybrid reflections on nature-culture at which science studies has become so adept, provide a different slant to the Heideggerinfluenced deconstructions of the exceptional human produced at the expense of the animal. They suggest, on the contrary, a vital, identity-forming and world-producing activity of human-animal coconstitution, of being-with those Donna Haraway refers to as “companion species” in their “significant otherness.”7 Might zoological gardens be or become sites that cultivate such significant interspecies encounters? Is it possible to imagine and build zoos, or post-zoo sites of human-animal contact, in which what it is to be human is shaped not at the expense of the animal in a violent metaphysico-historical operation, but in a mutually-enlivening relation of coproduction and indeed seduction? Are there ways of viewing, touching, or otherwise engaging zoo animals that elicit not anthropocentric dominance but response and regard for the other? Can we create sites, practices, and techniques of enclosure that provide animals with the space and means for full, flourishing lives? If we are to approach the zoo as a grand, old biological experiment, let it be in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari’s ethological ethics, which proposes the experimental conjunction of affecting and affected bodies in the open-ended composition of new assemblages and worlds.8 Still, likely none of these thinkers would find much to support in what have often been seen as exemplars of the humanization of nature. Critics have long appealed for the boycott, or indeed abolishment, of zoos. These institutions of order seem tainted to the core by the chauvinism of Western colonialism and species-humanism; indeed, for many, they are the ultimate fulfilment of capitalist domination and artificial control of the natural world. As John Berger famously put it, “Everywhere animals disappear. In zoos they constitute the living monument to their own disappearance.”9 Similar views are common throughout the Marxian tradition, from the Frankfurt School to postmodernism. In his dialectical anti-zoo homily, Theodor Adorno remarks: “The more purely nature is preserved and transplanted by civilization, the more implacably it is dominated.”10 For Baudrillard, the diabolical dualism that supposes an abyss between humans and animals “permits the liquidation of species even as they are archived as specimens in the African reserves or in the hell of zoos.”11 It would be easy to follow these thinkers and condemn once more the fabrications of zoo displays, the violent, invasive, and stifling practices of animal collection, breeding, and exhibition. Indeed, such critiques remain necessary. But we inherit these institutions, their inhabitants, and all the

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mess that comes with them, including the responsibility of negotiating their place in the future. Some form of relating to animals is required; we cannot avoid making hard decisions about how to exercise our power over these captives, and the wild populations they so problematically represent, even as the latter are themselves increasingly subjected to human technologies and regimes of governance. With this in mind, calls for the abolishment of zoos seem utopian wishes to be free of all power relations with animals, to keep the wild untainted by humanity’s fallen touch. At the same time, however, self-promoted reform is the natural camouflage of the zoo. The biblical Noah, who is the favorite model for zoo directors convinced of their institution’s role as a salvific ark, was after all considered “blameless” and set apart from the environmental destruction occurring all around him (Gen. 6:9). As Dale Jamieson reminds us, zoos continually claim to have outgrown their dim past, seeking to free their new naturalistic displays and conservationist aspirations from the taint of the disgraceful conditions of an earlier time.12 The accreditation of zoos and professionalization of their personnel since the 1960s is an attempt to stay one step ahead of the criticisms of animal rights and welfare groups, to define themselves as the (only) authorities with the know-how to take on the task of caring for “wild” animals.13 As Randy Malamud argues, this “public relations deluge . . . —aggressively coopting green rhetoric—serves to anticipate and defuse potential resistance to zoos.”14 Staging comes naturally: their central task is, after all, to convincingly portray captive animals as if they were wild. Thus if we are to properly assess the prospects for Noah’s departure, we must be both open to the possibilities of mutually enhancing human-animal contact zones, as well as suspicious of the reformist rhetoric and scientific power of a long-standing institution. We cannot deny how widespread and intolerable is “the inauthentic, tawdry banality of observing animals in zoos.”15 But is that the only state of affairs we can establish between us? Must we agree with Berger that the loss of the “look between animal and man . . . to which zoos are a monument, is now irredeemable?”16 Or is there a pathway from enclosure to disclosure? Surely there is a sense in which, as Jonathan Burt argues, “Berger’s thesis also remains captive to this figure of the zoo.”17 Is there truly no alternative to these apocalyptic visions of “absolute marginalization” and “implacable domination?” What if the potentiality, productivity, or extravagance of nature exceeds or otherwise escapes our attempts at control? What if we can discover ways to foster mutual looking between species? Doing so will require attention to zoos’ histories and geographies, to the material power relations so integral to their everyday operation—that is, to the pragmatic implication of human and animal lives

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within zoological gardens and without. It will demand that we abandon the purity of our divisions between wilderness and civilization, that we take seriously the obligations of knowledge-practices seeking to understand more about different species for whom we care, that we not cease to question, improve, and overturn the facilities and practices of zookeeping. Indeed, it might just oblige us to insist that zoos live up to the radical utopian desire at their core.

Wildlife Heterotopias Zoos purport to offer “wildlife” to the gaze of human visitors. When, as it often is, wildness is valorized as an unspoiled foil to urban civilization, this goal dissolves into an infamous contradiction. Keekok Lee is one of the latest and most insistent in a long string of critics to make this point: zoo animals “are not wild” but rather “what may be called biotic artifacts.”18 But if we are not to reduce living animals to constructions or simulations tainted by their contact with humans, then understanding that zoo animals are ontologically altered by captivity should be the beginning, not the endpoint, of analysis. In her important Hybrid Geographies, Sarah Whatmore works with a performative notion of wildlife: “a relational achievement spun between people and animals, plants and soils, documents and devices in heterogeneous social networks which are performed in and through multiple places and fluid ecologies.”19 This allows her to analyze “particular spatial formations of wildlife exchange” in which animals are caught up as “symbolic and material units in some human currency,” such as blood or genes, at the same time as they are active subjects in fashioning and contesting these roles. 20 With such a conception, Whatmore moves past “the familiar utopian spaces of pristine nature as wilderness” without for all that undermining all attempts to conceive of wildness.21 As she recognizes, national parks and other preserved spaces are intensely managed by networks of locals, rangers, scientists and others; animals become “the objects of intensive surveillance and regulation in the name of conservation,” and nature itself the product of a regime of governmentality.22 For many, this spells the “end of nature” and the final humanization of the planet, or at least “the incarceration of wildness.”23 But for others, this “open secret” of the designed nature of wilderness as site of the Other does not in itself undermine its worth: “Visited as heterotopia, wilderness is political, often a trickster’s space . . . at tension with modernity but also at tension with any romantic conception of the ‘natural.’”24 The notion of “heterotopias” is taken from Michel Foucault, who defined them as “counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the

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real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted.”25 Zoos are heterotopias in which the biblical utopias of human-animal contact, Eden and the ark, and their scientific descendants, are materially “enacted” in urban sites. As such they stand in relation to other sites of “nature” such as forests, parks, gardens, farms, abattoirs and laboratories, but also, beyond such habitual categories, to emergent zones from sanctuaries and ranches used for the reintroduction of natives or the “retirement” of exotics, to the controversial restoration biology plans to “rewild” zones from the Great Plains to Siberia’s Pleistocene Park. When, in line with recent work in animal geography that has challenged the established categories of environmental ethics, such sites are seen also to include the “borderlands” of urban/rural/wild areas—conceived as the shared and contested living areas and habitats of both humans and animals, whether pets, pests, stock, feral, urban wildlife, or otherwise—we perceive a more complex picture of interpenetrating forms of species life in a network of ecoheterotopias.26 As Ralph Acampora shows, charting “a continuum of human presence in environment” is an essential step in our quest to “find cues for an engagement-without-exploitation model in our relationships with other forms of life.”27 This refusal of the dualism of wilderness and the urban, of freedom and captivity, should not be understood to erase all difference in modes of interspecies relation but, on the contrary, to make such differences—in opportunity, liberty, visibility, value—more evident. We must reject the self-interested contention that, because even wildlife are territorially limited or culturally encumbered, zoo captivity effects no great restriction to animal liberty. Grizzlies in Yellowstone may not have unlimited autonomy, but for all that they are radiotracked and, if misbehaving, potentially relocated or worse, they certainly possess greater freedom of movement and range of expression than tigers in the Bronx. Thus zoological gardens might in fact be consistently judged, on these relative grounds, to severely inhibit the livelihood of their charges. But such a judgment arises not from simply witnessing the distortion of a pure wildness through human contact, but rather through precise understanding of the ways in which zoo animals are tamed, habituated, immured, or otherwise altered—and the ways in which, perhaps, differently modified conditions might not deprive or harm but in fact legitimately benefit them. Certainly, zoos deploy intensive forms of power over animals. But for all their similarities, they are not laboratories or factory farms; indeed, since the wars they have taken upon themselves the explicit goal of biologically appropriate care for animals. Though they still reluctantly deal in death, it

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is not their goal but an unpleasant (if perhaps inevitable) byproduct of their biopolitical investment in the health, happiness, and reproductive success of their charges. This biopower might be flawed, invasive, deficient, and self-serving—in fact it has been all of these—but if we want to hold zoos to their word, we will need the appropriate tools to analyze their actual mode of operation in the historical specificity of its rationality. Perhaps via an understanding of wildness as the emergent product of various degrees and kinds of human-animal-environment power relations—including some with the explicit goal of reducing, erasing, or reversing different types of impact of humans on nonhuman nature—zoos may become essential sites for experimenting with techniques and practices that can be put to use in contesting or inverting (rather than exemplifying or memorializing) the destruction, incarceration, and marginalization of wildlife and their habitats.

Zoos and Power The performative networks of wildlife in which animals are situated are structured by productive relations of power. For Foucault, power is “a set of actions on possible actions; it incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more difficult; it releases or contrives, makes more probable or less; in the extreme, it constrains or forbids absolutely.”28 Importantly, it does not extinguish but rather assumes and acts upon the freedom of its objects: it requires “that ‘the other’ . . . is recognized and maintained to the very end as a subject who acts.”29 Resistance is what constitutes both the necessity and ultimate fragility of power. While this understanding of power has almost uniformly been figured in solely human terms, we must recognize that animals, too, are enmeshed in this web.30 Critiques of zoos have rarely deployed such a notion of power. While they regularly denounce the power dimension of zoos, indeed often being drawn to an explicit comparison with Foucault’s work on prisons, this analysis is typically focussed not on the effects of power on animal bodies but rather on the type of human subject that zoos engender: “The zoo’s forte is its construction of zoogoers as paramount, masters of all they survey, and zoo animals as subalterns.”31 Jonathan Burt argues that Berger’s seminal essay becomes “focussed on shifts in the psychology of man’s self-confirmation as a being in the world,”32 and the same might be said of much social sciences and humanities work on zoos, particularly insofar as it seeks to demonstrate their “construction” of nature. In Zoo Culture anthropologists Mullan and Marvin take up Foucault and liken zoos to prisons and asylums due to their similar roles as “institutions of human containment.”33 But they go on to

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argue that “power relations arise in zoos because in them human beings enforce the containment and display of animals in ways which unconsciously express attitudes of superiority and distance towards the natural world.”34 In locating power relations in human attitudes rather than on subjected bodies, the presence of animals is once more effaced. Malamud’s critique of zoos through literary texts is (as Burt again recognizes) similarly and often disconcertingly focussed on the human subject. Rather than attending to “the pain zoo animals suffer,” he writes, “my focus, is on the cultural consumer, the spectator of pain.”35 Thus he argues that “[i]n the zoo, Foucault’s analysis implies, people watch animals as a means of symbolically celebrating (or supplanting, or satisfying vicariously) a desire to exert power over them more explicitly.”36 But this conception of power as the violent infliction of pain, and its continual diversion to the constitution of the viewing human subject, occludes the very real though often more subtle forms of productive power that are in fact exerted on animal bodies in zoos. The prevalence of this approach is understandable insofar as the central function of zoos is the subjectification of spectators through modes of exhibition. Tony Bennett argues that museums and similar nineteenthcentury public institutions formed what he calls the “exhibitionary complex”: a distinct power/knowledge regime in which “an ensemble of disciplines and techniques of display” come together.37 The exhibitionary complex deployed “a power made manifest not in its ability to inflict pain but by its ability to organize and coordinate an order of things and to produce a place for the people in relation to the order.”38 The viewers of arranged objects were thereby constituted as self-regulating citizens in this act of viewing, at the same time as they were brought to identify with the displayed national and imperial power over the things represented: whether the past, colonial subjects, or indeed the natural world. Zoological gardens, I would contend, were a significant element of this exhibitionary complex. The nineteenth century saw the transfer of private menageries to public institutions, and the establishment of large numbers of European and settler colony zoological gardens with the “education” of the masses as a principal objective. These institutions displayed ordered knowledge of the natural world to visiting subjects, who now occupied the place of the sovereign gazing over his realm. They played an important role in bourgeois culture, developing with capitalism into democratic and consumerist sites of popular entertainment. Through various technologies of display, zoological exhibits demonstrated the capacities of a power that subdues, classifies, and arranges the nonhuman realm, a power with which the zoo visitor was brought to identify, irrespective of the effectiveness of

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any explicit educational program. It is the story of these changing exhibitionary technologies that histories of zoos have so often told: the progression from colonial cages, via the Hagenbeck revolution, to today’s naturalistic immersion exhibits. Insofar as zoos constitute observers as subjects in relation to animals and the natural world, it is not surprising that they are so often analyzed in terms that privilege the question of the formation of the human subject. But to remain only on this level is to ignore the material context of operations of power on animal bodies (and their effects of subjection). Such approaches remain within the anthropocentric orbit of Foucault’s own work, only asking “How are we constituted as subjects who exercise or submit to power relations?”39 without applying this question also to nonhuman subjects. Uniquely, zoos collect living beings, which they can only display (that is, constitute as objects of knowledge, in order thereby to constitute human viewers as subjects of this knowledge) through the exercise of power, that is, acting upon the animals’ actions. The zoo must discipline to exhibit. To ignore this disciplinary dimension is to compound the reduction of animals to objects for display that the zoo’s exhibitionary apparatus performs. What is needed, then, is a zoöcritical genealogy of zoological gardens, that is, an “analysis of descent . . . situated within the articulation of the body and history” in which we recognize not only human but also animal bodies as “the inscribed surface[s] of events.”40 Such an approach would examine the technologies of power through which exotic animals have been captured and kept, ordered and displayed, bred and tested, archived and conserved, saved and revealed—that is, the various ways they have been acted upon and indeed “made to speak.”

Biopower, Zoopower The element of visibility by enclosure provides a guiding thread: essentially, zoos require the physical presence of animals within an ordered space suitable for exhibition. The spatial arrangement of the eighteenth-century menagerie corresponded to the classificatory organization of the “table” which structured the Classical episteme.41 As Foucault writes, “the table was both a technique of power and a procedure of knowledge. It was a question of organizing the multiple, of providing oneself with an instrument to cover it and to master it; it was a question of imposing upon it an ‘order.’”42 Through this regime of power/knowledge, natural history’s classification of animals according to external form (the “nomination of the visible”43) was “effectively enacted”

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in a partitioned space, and animals met, as Foucault might put it, the forced residence of their truth. The Classical menagerie was thus integral to the formation of a disciplinary diagram of power over animals (and subsequently humans), the basic tenets of which are still recognizable as essential zoo techniques: “the distribution of individuals in space” through “enclosure, the specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself” and “elementary location or partitioning.”44 But while the disciplinary regime that Foucault famously described fashioned productive but docile human bodies to be inserted into the political economy of capitalism, the bodies of animals in zoos—unlike laboring and food animals—were subjected to discipline to render them not productive but rather simply visible to a scientific or democratic gaze. The collection of these animals occurred through violent colonial networks of hunting, capture and trade with severe impacts on distant habitats and lands.45 Their isolation in cages and other enclosures orders of magnitude smaller than their native territories also profoundly altered their behavioral and psychological capacities. This 1883 critique asserts the dubious scientific value of observing animals in zoos, a result of the power-effects that strip them of their form of life: I have passed days and weeks by many a lion’s cage in European and American gardens, intent upon study and observation; but with the exception of having, by numerous sketches, impressed upon my mind the anatomical peculiarities of these interesting animals, I cannot say that in other respects my perseverance has been rewarded to any great extent. I have simply found that an animal, as closely confined as most of them are in zoölogical gardens, retains none of its natural habits; it only exists—a mere automaton; and even this existence is seemingly under protest.46

This can be clearly read in terms of Agamben’s conception of biopolitics, in which the separation of bios and zo¯e creates a space for “bare life” that may be killed but not sacrificed.47 As he argues in The Open, animals are the originary targets of this perilous political decision; and the nineteenth-century zoological garden can be seen as a site, analogous to the camp, that produced barely living animals reduced to “automatons” in their stereotyped pacing and environmental captivation.48 They survived, without truly living. That this is an ontological change, the effect of power, is worth reiterating: despite some ambivalence on Agamben’s part, it is important to assert that animals do not naturally fit this model of world poverty that philosophy and science circumscribed for them; rather, they are made to be poor-in-world precisely

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through the poverty of the worlds provided for them in captivity, closely confined as they are. Such conditions were not in the best interests of zoos, either economically (in terms of animal longevity, disease, and death) or when it came to the niceties of public display. The development, in response to this problem, of a biological basis for animal keeping produced a form of biopower more in line with not Agamben’s but Foucault’s original, somewhat different conception: that is, a productive power devoted to the nurture of life. The genealogy of zoological gardens should turn not only, as is customary, on the Hagenbeck revolution in architectural design (thus privileging human spectatorship) but much more on this Hediger revolution in practical zookeeping which painstakingly elaborated procedures of “biologically appropriate” care. Certainly, zoos went from pits and fences to hills and moats; but they also thoroughly transformed their feeding regimens, breeding practices and behavioral interventions. They went from rather crude confinement and subsistence to a detailed, precise, scientific apparatus that took as its goal to “make live,” devoting itself to the health and hygiene, growth, and flourishing of living beings, grasped through the “population” as object of both knowledge and power.49 As Gruffudd puts it, “[t]o the mind of modernist reformers and applied scientists, [animals] were organisms to be understood, nurtured and housed efficiently, as, indeed, were humans.”50 This biopower complemented the disciplinary strategies of separation, seeking to adapt animals to the conditions of captivity. Scientific discourses of zoo biology and animal psychology began to accumulate statistics and reports that reflected, and in turn modified, the zoo’s circumstances of corporeal influence. Biologically-based care took upon itself the negative task of reducing the effects of captivity, “to neutralize as far as possible all modifying (nonhereditary, externally conditioned) and mutative (hereditary) changes and degeneration phenomena,”51 and ultimately the positive task of producing normal, natural “species-typical” behavior through “behavioral enrichment.” In this regime of truth, the effects of human contact were defined as “abnormal,” and wild nature was the norm to be produced (if also, in its security and comfort, “improved”) by a thorough, self-concealing apparatus of power. Zoo critics also accepted this unassailable biopolitics as the terms of their opposition: they “monitored living conditions . . . but without questioning the principle of captivity,” pointing out “insufficient care, dirty enclosures, confined animals, brutal keepers and tiny cages,” as well as “overpopulation, unsuitable conditions, groupings of antipathetic animals, mutilation and illness.”52 With the moral criteria thus delimited, the priesthood of wildlife stewards could expand their meticulous pastoral power, caring (in species-

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specific terms) for every need of the animal—dietary, territorial, social, and behavioral—exercising total management of their lives, from birth and prior to death and beyond. The latter third of the twentieth century saw zoos reinvent themselves as wildlife parks devoted to the preservation of endangered species. Zoos became arks, crisis heterotopias amid widespread and relentless habitat loss and species extinction, processes in which they were historically implicated. The goal of conserving threatened wildlife populations was pursued within the regime of scientific management described as “ecological governmentality” or “environmentality,”53 which conducted in tandem the “two poles around which the organization of power over life was deployed,” that is, “[t]he disciplines of the body and the regulations of the population,”54 targeting animals through a range of technologies, both broadly and finely calibrated, both in situ and ex situ. Sexual reproduction—as the meeting point of the population and the body—was the central element for intervention, particularly in the form of captive breeding programs directed toward self-sustaining populations in zoos (i.e., maintaining the supply of animals for display55), as well as eventual reintroduction to the wild. The genetic diversity of captive animal populations was monitored through tools such as studbooks and other international records; Species Survival Plans guided breeding exchanges which built on traditional approaches with the latest technoscientific techniques such as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, and intergenic surrogacy. In a further twist, the “natural” behavior that had been the targeted norm of biological care was rejected by some for its unnatural security: to be truly prepared for reintroduction, animals must be subjected to all the risks and stresses of the wild (as best programmed by the zoological apparatus), including disease and predation.56 The epistemic object of a “population,” here, reflected not any actual group of cohabiting animals; rather, the animals resided in disparate sites throughout the world, and their capacity to interbreed only existed as the result of human efforts to transport individuals or substances extracted from their bodies. Nonetheless, via the discourse of the postvital life sciences, the somewhat nebulous object of “species” was provided with a remarkable coherence and efficacy. Richard Doyle argues that molecular biology composed “a technoscientific power that works by producing an invisibility of the body, whose object is no longer the living organism. It is instead an object beyond living,”57 composed of the codes of DNA. Conceived thus as genetic information, the species body is no longer necessarily located in any extant group of living organisms. The archives of genetic material (embryos,

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sperm, tissue) known as “frozen zoos” or genome banks might be seen as the ultimate, somewhat perverse outcome of this abstraction, the effective enactment of a genetic utopia. But while, as Doyle puts it, this biological gaze “does not see bodies; it sees only sequences, genomes,” it nonetheless “requires” bodies for its operation.58 As the means by which to manipulate the immaterial object of knowledge that is the genetic species body, the bodies of animals, “invisible” to the biopolitics of the population, ultimately remain the starkly visible objects of power’s intervention. Such bodies are not only the “source” of the genome; they are also judged against it in terms of genetic fitness, i.e., their capacity to contribute to a future, diverse genome. As a number of “surplus” American-born offspring of immigrant tigers discovered, when calculated in terms of the “carrying capacity” of the zoo qua ark, the consequences of exclusion from the imposed plan for one’s own species’ survival are terminal.59 On the other hand, the reproductively fit, spared the cull, are instead subjected to an increasingly intensive anatomopolitics of the animal body. The closer the species to extinction—when a wild population is most endangered, or a captive one most fragmented; when the species category holds the most importance and thus the whole ensemble’s vision of living organisms is most obscured—the stronger then is the grip in which the bodies of the last remaining individuals (or their surrogates) are held. For some, zoos are essential fronts in the war against extinction: “If zoos did not exist,” writes Colin Tudge, “then any sensible conservation policy would lead inevitably to their creation.”60 But for many others, this controversial approach remains an impoverished alternative to habitat protection itself, which is considered both economically and ecologically superior as a means to protect wildlife.61 Even if the necessity of endangered species management is accepted, its goals and techniques are at odds with those of public display; as Hancocks argues, zoos “are not the best places for holding and breeding rare species. Such an activity is better undertaken on large tracts of land where sufficient numbers of animals can be maintained for best genetic control, away from people, and in conditions conducive to their eventual release.”62 What is rarely questioned is the very value of searching for solutions in the further application of technoscientific rationality. In any case, despite such pretensions to intervene in the wild, and the widespread justificatory focus on conservation, zoos are yet to relinquish their central exhibitionary function. The essential representational element remains largely unchanged: the public display of animals to human visitors as a technique of environmental subjectification.

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Contesting Exhibition It is on this exhibitionary axis—with its power-effects both on the human visitors and animal performers—that zoos must be evaluated. The fact that the exhibitionary apparatus requires the spatial distribution and confinement of animal bodies as a means to their permanent visibility should not in itself be taken to undermine all contemporary attempts to direct this apparatus toward ends more considerate of animals—though it will provide an essential element in the assessment of such displays. Following Hagenbeck’s naturalism, zoos have attempted to recreate (an image of) the natural environment in their exhibits, using artifical materials, such as concrete and plastic, to fake trees, rocks, and other aspects of an animal’s habitat, and present them according to carefully constructed aesthetic and line-of-sight criteria. This goal finds its fulfillment in the quintessential postmodern exhibits which attempt the total simulation of a habitat or ecosystem. Umberto Eco links the reconstruction of Nature in zoos to the American “hyperreal” mode of cultural reproduction, arguing that even San Diego, “the most human, or rather, the most animal” of zoos, is built on the philosophy of the “Industry of the Fake” which “oscillat[es] between a promise of uncontaminated nature and a guarantee of negotiated tranquility.” In such sites, Nature “is erased by artifice precisely so that it can be presented as uncontaminated nature.”63 Nigel Rothfels also describes these immersion exhibits, tracing their historical connection to Hagenbeck, and their contemporary manifestations, where “[i]n the new, more perfect world of the immersion exhibit, a better ‘nature’ is created for animals.”64 Zoos certainly occupy a central position within an enormous worldwide ecotourism industry whose dominant effect is to produce nature as a spectacle for consumption. However, the purpose of such displays and, for Hancocks and others, the central role of zoos, is the education of the public in ecological matters. In the increasingly environmentally conscious twentieth and twenty-first centuries, zoo displays have had the explicit goal of inciting ecological awareness in visitors and, hopefully, follow-on effects in their actions in the “real world” subsequent to visiting the zoo. The environmental message of many self-proclaimed leading zoos, such as Detroit and New York, explicitly aligns their mission with that of museums, to offer narratives and broadening visions to their visitors. Nicole Mazur has demonstrated how declines in public funding have seen this conservationism co-opted as an advertising tool for multinational corporations.65 Viewed with suspicion, we might say that even any successful conservation message simply continues the function of zoos as exhibitionary institutions, now within a

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broader regime of “ecological governmentality” that “elaborates programs of environmental intervention aimed at normalizing the social relation to nature in particular, ecologically benign ways.”66 Thus the role of zoos is to produce “environmentalized” subjects who identify with this particular, green form of power over nature, to initiate visitors into the dominant understanding of animals and environment as resources to be scientifically managed and policed for the benefit of the state, rendered docile and useful for either industry or spectacle. However, we cannot entirely reject this exhibitionary role. Jennifer Wolch argues that “[p]eople should come to know, however partially, the animals with whom they coexist, thereby sustaining webs of connection and an ethic of respect and mutuality, caring and friendship.”67 And as Chilla Bulbeck shows, within the pervasive inauthenticity and managerialism of ecotourism subsists a fundamental desire for contact with animals, with “the other”—and, therefore, a platform of influence with significant potential, beyond and beneath the facile, hypocritical conservation message brought to you by McDonalds.68 Indeed, a number of permutations in zoo display seem to hold some promise of subverting the established forms of exhibition. An increasing number of zoological gardens, from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson to Healesville Sanctuary in Victoria, seek to engage concretely with the specificities of their locality, in particular by focussing their collections on native fauna and flora.69 Here exhibits and pedagogical practices emphasize developing a sense of place, the specific character (and fragility) of local animals and the regional ecosystem, environmental history, human impact on the land, and current conservation activities. This emphasis accords with what Jim Cheney calls “environmental ethics as bioregional narrative.” Cheney argues that acknowledging our situatedness in terms of “home, identity, and community” is an important counter to the totalization of modern and colonial universalist discourse. 70 Engaging with the specificities of where we live can give rise to “narrative grounded in geography” and “a contextualized discourse of place,” particularly “so as to include nature . . . in the construction of community.”71 In this way, animal collections focussed on local “place” might contest the typical demonstrations of colonial reach and power found in zoos by revalorizing indigeneity and regional history, and rejecting the preference for exotic animals transplanted from distant lands. Another tendency has been for zoos to accompany their displays of living animals with exhibitions of modern and postmodern art “that ‘challenges’ visitors’ values, that ‘unsettles’ their preconceptions, that ‘provokes’ them emotionally or intellectually.”72 Effigies such as “a sabre-toothed tiger head made from different colored match-heads” and “a small elephant made from

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gilded live small-arms ammunition” emphasize the connection of animals’ fragility with human activity and technology, while the images of animals as wounded objects of worship in Holly Lane’s ecofeminist installation present “a critique of zoos’ failure” to live up to their “‘sacred duty’ to treat animals well.”73 Such self-conscious and ironic art does not simply aestheticize nature—in fact, in depictions of animals’ affective energy, often opposing the conventional reduction of animals to physiological form—but seeks to provoke an awareness of the baggage shaping our experience of animals, in cultural representations and indeed the living exhibits of zoos, and in doing so it “implicitly criticizes the very institution in which it resides.”74 In thus “providing self-criticism spaces,”75 some zoos may go some way toward challenging their own standard institutional traits. However, even the most radical of displays that challenges the hegemonic subject-position of the exceptional human, provoking visitors to question their attitudes to animals, will fail if it modifies only the exhibitionary axis. A postmodern antiaesthetic in the art accompanying animal displays, while it might undermine conventional representations of animals and the assumption of human supremacy, and provoke “a human being’s creative opportunity to think themselves other-than-in-identity,”76 still risks only treating the nearby captive animals as elements for the unraveling of human subjectivity. Likewise, focussing on the representation of local fauna may contest zoos’ inherited colonial ideology, but it largely only repeats the associated power formation that through incarceration reduces living beings to symbols of their species or region. As important as such changes are, if they remain solely representational, their intended effect will be undermined: there will always be the dissonance that Berger identifies in the “unexpressed question” of zoogoers: “Why are these animals less than I believed?”77 The reason lies in the disjunction between the intended meaning of the displays and the actuality of their creaturely existence—not just that they are living beings, but insofar as the conditions of their captivity for display render them absolutely marginal. Unless this marginalization is itself addressed, then zoos “cannot but disappoint.”78 Any attempt at progressive exhibitry, any endeavor to stage biophilic encounters, will fail if it is established at the expense of, rather than in partnership with, the animals’ lives. The first task must be to alter the very material conditions of the encounter. For many, this means removing the animals themselves. Zoo critics have long suggested that superior environmental education centers would be those without any live animal exhibits, such as natural history museums, wildlife film installations and sculpture gardens, “freezing the animals into stone.”79 But while such withdrawal might indeed free us from the terribly messy

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circumstances of zookeeping, they do not provide much help in working out what to do in those places—i.e., everywhere else—where we are still entangled with living animals. Moreover, as Hancocks recognizes, “[n]atural history museum displays can be things of great beauty and fascination and can even transport one to distant times and places, but they cannot provide the same emotional connections as living plants and animals.”80 What is unique about zoos is the presence of living animals; the potential of not abstract images but a concrete meeting is what interests people and brings them in such numbers. And for all that zoo directors may look down on entertainment as a “justification deemed frivolous,”81 in seeking to educate fee-paying zoogoers despite themselves, they continually pander to this “vulgar” desire for contact with animals, implicitly recognizing and exploiting this common biophilia. Of course, it must not be a matter of simply celebrating such encounters, as if the presence of living animals automatically subverted human ascendancy. Certainly, forms of animal “resistance,” whether through activity or inactivity, have often undermined the anthropocentric cultural expectations of their exhibitors, from their refusal to fight in Renaissance combats, to their sounds, smells, and “inopportune matings” disrupting the clean bourgeois garden.82 But this minimal state of intransigence is far from any truly flourishing sense of freedom. Gail Davies seems to accept such a notion of resistive presence when, in her analysis of a number of “virtual exhibits” that archive filmic and photographic images of wildlife, she argues (with a familiar emphasis on the impacts on human visitors) that the electronic zoo presents us with perfected access to nature: unambiguous, entirely visible, and uncontested by animals’ physical presence. While the virtual zoo, like the traditional one, still “inscribes a dominant position for viewers,”83 she prefers the latter, where “[d]espite their subjugated position within the networks of the zoo, animals are nevertheless active subjects embodying a form of agency in their ability to continue to challenge, disturb, and provoke us.”84 But surely—and most especially in the traditional zoo— “the places that they inhabit”85 are not simply the means of their resistance to our sense of dominance, but precisely that which animals most pressingly need to resist and contest, for themselves? Particularly if, in comparison with other varieties of urban wildlife, certain relationships of power in zoos come to approach the “domination” that Foucault saw as their terminus, “as even tactics of flight or avoidance are impossible for” the captive animals.86 If we are to take seriously this biophilic desire for emplaced, concrete encounters with other species, we must recognize that not only is the potential for such meetings in fact ironically stifled in zoos, but that it is stifled because such

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encounters do not occur to the mutual advantage of both the displayed and visiting creatures.

Encounter Experiments The question is, how to change this situation and bring about different kinds of engagement? How to exhibit or provoke encounter without intolerable forms of discipline and biopower? If we are not to remain captive to a particular, negative figure of the zoo, we will need to carry out the difficult, detailed work of analyzing and reimagining the types of cross-species relations that zoos produce, traversed as they are by knowledge claims and power-effects. After all, it is worth noting that, for all his pessimistic emphasis on the “irredeemable” nature of animals’ historical marginalization, even Berger points to specific elements of the conditions of animals’ captivity in zoos that constitute their marginalization—contingent factors which might, thus, be altered.87 My wager is that valuing the lives and perspectives of the animals ahead of the demands of display would not provide disincentives for visitors (as zoo directors worry) nor lead to their failure as zoophilic exhibitions, but would rather be vital means of achieving these goals. If we can somehow rekindle the extinguished “look between animal and man,”88 then perhaps, as Rothfels suggests was the case with anthropological exhibits of human “natives,”89 this bolstered capacity to return our gaze and upset our voyeuristic expectations will itself be the most powerful force in zoos’ transformation. Of course, zoos today rarely conform to Berger’s description; rather, the “paradox of an exhibit designed not to exhibit is at the heart of most of our ‘better’ contemporary zoos.”90 Thus it will be important to maintain the critique of staged naturalistic exhibits that do not in fact benefit their animal inhabitants—but without, for all that, supposing that simply such displays having been constructed by humans rules out such benefits, “biological” or otherwise. Eco comments that, even in San Diego, where large spaces are provided to the animals to the discomfort of the human visitors (and to the disadvantage of visibility): “this is unquestionably the one [zoo] where the animal is most respected. But it is not clear whether this respect is meant to convince the animal or the human.”91 Is it not possible that it might convince both? Accepting that zoo animals have already been altered by captivity, we should not seek to hide this fact in providing perfect replicas of nature but rather to further invent appropriate conditions that allow co-specific flourishing. At least, achieving clarity on the issue of animal well-being should not be ruled out a priori, even though we should remain suspicious of the selfinterested claims of zoo biologists. It will certainly require that such critical

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approaches be complemented with empirical evidence from ethological science. Though the ethical perspective that he brings to bear is inadequate, Moran is right (in his introduction to a 1987 journal issue devoted to the question of ethology in zoos) that “the debate [over animal welfare in zoos] must include factual information pertinent to the assessment and minimization of suffering by animals in captivity. The study of animal behavior is the sole source of much of this information.”92 For all that animal behavioral science has been the scientific accomplice to the disciplinary production of docile, maximally productive animal bodies for laboratories and capitalist factory farms, hard-earned knowledge of animals’ capacities and conditions is essential for any intervention. Thus a constructive engagement with ethology will be necessary, one made possible by the critique of its customary mechanomorphism,93 heartened by the sophisticated and ethically driven work of thinkers like Marc Bekoff and Barbara Smuts, and constantly aware of the implication of such scientific truth-making in the growth and perfection of biopolitical power over animal bodies. We might collect the many suggestions for zoo improvements from throughout the literature in a petition of sorts. Foremost is a reduction in the number of different species held. This will provide greater space to those that remain, and allow for specialization in staff expertise and exhibition type. Rather than being satisfied to maintain any species in a zoo, irrespective of difference, decisions about appropriateness of zoo exhibition must be made according to species-specific determinations of needs. This will require zoos to relinquish certain animals, particularly their prized charismatic megafauna, to more appropriate habitats such as preserves (where they might still be encountered, although under different material conditions). The enclosures of those that remain should not be simply “enriched” but abundant in opportunities for activity and leisure. Understanding that this particular place in the city is their home, we must provide the conditions for not simply (or barely) living but flourishing. Space should be provided to escape from audience intrusions (though noninvasive televisual media might nonetheless provide some vision of such retreats). Appropriate incentives should be provided for encounters, which nonetheless remain on voluntary terms. Visitors should be expected to alter their comportment within their host animals’ domain. They should not expect a close encounter as a guaranteed right, but may anticipate the possibility of one. Of course, such a list of demands is still entirely insufficient: the zoo we seek is yet to be conceived, let alone effectively enacted, and this essay has merely been an exercise in laying the groundwork for such innovation. The task will be to promote or allow animal prosperity without the penetration

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and intensification of well-meaning biopower. But even if all these conditions for animal thriving were met, any heterotopia of encounter will still require, as a minimum condition, that the animals be brought into contact with an audience. Despite suggestions otherwise, the essential element of zoos, and the most important aspect to interrogate, is that animals must come (by whatever means) into a space where humans can see (or otherwise encounter) them. While most behavioral research has investigated this nexus only in terms of the exhibitionary axis—that is, the effects of different architectural and display elements on the human audiences94—there has been an increasing awareness of the complexity of the interspecies interactions as (something like) relations of power. The effect on animals of the human crowds in themselves has been thematized within animal behavior research as “visitor effect.”95 For all that zoos wish to portray their wards as happily ensconced in natural habitats, oblivious to the wandering human gaze, it is nonetheless clear that the presence of spectators is not a neutral event for the captive animals. And even though Hediger’s “biological keeping” and its offshoots such as behavioral enrichment mean that the worst cases of stereotypy and other “abnormal” behaviors are often eliminated, such that some form of normalized (if sheltered) “naturalness,” even “wildness,” is produced, there is evidence that simply “the presence, and particularly the behavior, of unfamiliar people (usually zoo visitors) is stressful to zoo animals.”96 However, Geoff Hosey’s review of the literature also allows that interactions with visitors, while they in general seem to lead to stress, might also be a source of enrichment for the animals.97 Such interactions should not be romanticized. For all that they seek to erase their own presence, relationships between zookeepers and the animals under their care might approach the mutual engagement and interspecific companionship articulated by theorists of domestication such as Vicki Hearne and Donna Haraway; but as Hosey puts it, “animals in zoos will develop a HAR [human-animal relationship] with their keepers, but may have a different, and probably generalized, relationship with the visiting public.”98 Sporadic zoo visits do not allow for the development of individual connections as is the case with pets or companion species. To the animals, the casual visitor will be an anonymous presence, even though crowds as such may be a familiar event. There is a great need to explore and understand this nexus.. Given the unavoidable fact—and immeasurable blessing—of human participation in the production of wildness, we had better cultivate our techniques. Hosey mentions various influential features of enclosures: the use of netting and other architectural forms; keeper talks; positive reinforcement training; the

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presence of “retreat space” for the animals. If zoos are serious about providing exhibits in which animals are not reduced to means to the end of provoking environmental consciousness, then this will need to be an important area of research: not simply documenting the pathetic interactions that do occur in zoos (and thus “demonstrating” that, for example, visitor-primate interactions are “stressful” for the animals) but rather, actively experimenting with different forms of engagement, inventing modes of interaction that are beneficial for both sides—and the animals first. After all, the circumstances of enclosure are not natural conditions to be recorded as scientific fact but a flexible state of affairs under human control. Zoos are experiments (however botched and one-sided) in human-animal contact: structured encounters between strange hominids and other exotic creatures. It will be a matter of designing environments in which animals can truly make their homes, “and at the same time serve as ‘social spaces’ for wildlife and human interaction.”99 Zoos must become the vanguard in the creative design of “contact zones”100 for the cohabitation of people and wildlife. Hosey’s conclusion is optimistic: “Ultimately we may know enough about the dynamics of human-animal interactions in the zoo context to be able to ensure the best welfare of the animals while still providing a positive and rewarding experience both for the people who work with those animals and the zoo-visiting public.”101 The extent to which such a “best-of-both-worlds” result is possible will rest largely on our efforts in the necessary, difficult task of analyzing, from within the middle of complex structures of interaction, the power-effects of different modes of captivity, as a means toward opening up for the animals spaces of liberty and intransigence. We do not yet know how these differently constituted bodies might perform when allowed to affect one another in as yet unthought modes of interaction. Perhaps wildness, no longer essentially “outside,” might still persist as an unsettling force that dwells within and between “human” spaces, traversing our urban environment and even, perhaps, what were once our zoos. As our intricate relations with animals become even more dense and fragile, we might experiment there with ways to deepen our encounters without simultaneously intensifying relations of power. We will need to remember the barbaric history of the zoo as a civilizing institution: the suffering and death by which the animals were obtained, and the often oppressive networks of value in which they still reside. We will require scrupulous practices of knowledge which do not refuse their entanglement in modes of power over the lives of animals, but engage concretely in the pressing tasks of transforming the circumstances of human-animal interaction. We will need to face squarely the enormous privilege and responsibility of engaging with animals.

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Jennifer Wolch expresses a kindred vision in what she calls “zoöpolis”: “Rejecting alienated theme-park models of human interaction with animals in the city, zoöpolis instead asks for a future in which animals and nature would no longer be incarcerated beyond the reach of our everyday lives.”102 Such a future requires both concrete engagement, from governmental approaches to grassroots activism, as well as speculative imagination. As much as this is a vision of the wild entering the city, it is also, in another sense, an expansion of the zoo to the whole city, as a place in which people can learn how to appropriately interact with nonhuman others. Perhaps, in the challenge to “actually design cities as if animals mattered . . . to figure out how to transform the metropolis into a zoöpolis—a place of habitation for both people and animals,”103 zoos can play a crucial role as experimental sites for discovering how to create shared interspecies habitats—a “basic question of human life” now more than ever. Such sites might become structured but not inflexible heterotopias of encounter, in which animals “are strategic elements in a campaign to deride our pretensions to humanity.”104 Zoos, those grand, old biological experiments, might still reclaim and transform their status as sites of “animal acts,” a performance that “configures the human in the company, in the obscure language and thought, of the animal.”105

An Edenic Coda The Judeo-Christian utopia of the garden, and its repetition amid catastrophe in the ark, have long been central to the configuration and selfunderstanding of zoological gardens. If Hagenbeck’s peaceful naturalistic exhibits tranformed zoos into recreated Edens, heterotopias of communion, then in the context of ecological destruction and extinction, postmodern zoos are the new arks, heterotopias of (eventual?) salvation. Multiple discourses of apology and critique have made use of these biblical tropes and all their ambivalent baggage. As Rothfels argues, “[t]he metaphor of the ark” supplies zoos with “a profoundly resonant justification.”106 Many commentators believe zoos fail to meet these aspirations of care and safekeeping; for others the problem is that, in their acts of ordering and exclusion, control and enclosure, they fulfil them too closely. As arks, zoos fetishize breeding pairs to the exclusion of the remaining animals, whether genetic rejects, overproduced surplus, or just ordinary individuals. As Edens, zoos impose an unnatural peace on ecological and evolutionary processes to which death and predation are intrinsic.107 Either way, such criticism would have it, such antiecological myths should be dispensed with as models for environmental and zoological sites.

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But what if there remains in these ancient tales a kernel worth pursuing? Kate Rigby argues that amid the actuality of environmental apocalypse, “the counter-utopian ethos of radical hospitality instantiated, however imperfectly, in the tale of Noah’s ark, affords an opening for hope.”108 For Jacques Derrida, the myth of Eden likewise offers such promize, insofar as Adam’s naming of the animals is an extraordinary meeting which exposes God himself to surprise.109 We might even detect a sense of playful experiment in the placement of the naming story within Adam’s search for a “suitable partner” (Gen 2:18–22): none may be quite as suitable as Eve, but perhaps something interesting will come of this gathering. After all, concrete cross-species encounters—whether witnessing the gaze of another animal or feeling the warmth of its furred, breathing body—are essential for provoking ethical awareness of nonhuman others, for opening our hearts to the bestiary beyond. Envisaged and enacted under this quasi-Edenic sign of giving place to every other in their specific alterity, delicately staged creaturely meetings might indeed become once more events that rupture the existing, appalling state of things between “man and animal.” If, toward zoöpolis, we are searching for countersites to the widespread marginalization of animals, then we could do worse than try, patiently and creatively, amid our fractured, hybrid wildlife networks, to effectively enact that utopia.

Notes 1. Heini Hediger, Wild Animals in Captivity: An Outline of the Biology of Zoological Gardens, trans. G. Sircom (New York: Dover Publications, 1964), 180. 2. Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow),” Critical Inquiry 28 (2002): 369–418 (399). 3. Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). 4. Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson, eds., The Biophilia Hypothesis (Washington: Island Press, 1993); Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). 5. Paul Shepard, The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (Washington: Island Press, 1996). 6. Jean Baudrillard, Seduction, trans. Brian Singer (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990). 7. Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). 8. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London and New York: Continuum, 2004). 9. John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?,” in About Looking (London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1980), 1–26 (24).

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10. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: New Left Books, 1974), 115. 11. Jean Baudrillard, “The Animals: Territory and Metamorphosis,” in Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 129–143 (133). 12. Dale Jamieson, “Zoos Revisited,” in Ethics on the Ark: Zoos, Animal Welfare, and Wildlife Conservation, ed. Bryan G. Norton et al. (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 52–66. This narrative of “perpetual reinvention” (52) is deployed by even the most progressive of zoo directors; see David Hancocks, A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001). 13. Jesse Donahue and Erik Trump, The Politics of Zoos: Exotic Animals and Their Protectors (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006). 14. Randy Malamud, Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (Washington Square, New York: New York University Press, 1998), 48. See also Nicole A. Mazur, After the Ark? Environmental Policy Making and the Zoo (Carlton South, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2001). 15. Malamud, Reading Zoos, 157. 16. Berger, “Why Look at Animals?,” 26. 17. Jonathan Burt, “John Berger’s ‘Why Look at Animals?’: A Close Reading,” Worldviews 9, no. 2 (2005): 203–218 (212). 18. Keekok Lee, Zoos: A Philosophical Tour (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1. See also Stephen Spotte, Zoos in Postmodernism: Signs and Simulation (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006). 19. Sarah Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2002), 14. 20. Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies, 37, 23. 21. Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies, 14. 22. Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies, 37. See also Paul Rutherford, “The Entry of Life into History,” in Discourses of the Environment, ed. Éric Darier (Oxford and Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 37–62; Timothy W. Luke, “Environmentality as Green Governmentality,” in Discourses of the Environment, ed. Darier, 121–151. 23. Thomas H. Birch, “The Incarceration of Wildness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons,” Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3–26. 24. William Chaloupka and R. McGreggor Cawley, “The Great Wild Hope: Nature, Environmentalism, and the Open Secret,” in In the Nature of Things: Language, Politics and the Environment, ed. Jane Bennett and William Chaloupka (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 3–23 (14). 25. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16 (1986): 22–27 (24). 26. See Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel, eds., Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands (London and New York: Verso, 1998).

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27. Ralph Acampora, “Oikos and Domus: On Constructive Co-Habitation with Other Creatures,” Philosophy & Geography 7, no. 2 (2004): 219–235 (222). 28. Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” in Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, vol. 3, ed. James D. Faubion (London: Penguin Books, 2002), 326–348 (341). 29. Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” 340. 30. Clare Palmer’s work constitutes a notable exception. See Clare Palmer, “‘Taming the Wild Profusion of Existing Things’? A Study of Foucault, Power, and Human/Animal Relationships,” Environmental Ethics 23, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 339–358; Clare Palmer, “Colonization, Urbanization, and Animals,” Philosophy & Geography 6, no. 1 (2003): 47–58. 31. Malamud, Reading Zoos, 58. 32. Burt, “A Close Reading,” 207–208. 33. Bob Mullan and Garry Marvin, Zoo Culture (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), 30. 34. Mullan and Marvin, Zoo Culture, 31. 35. Malamud, Reading Zoos, 182. 36. Malamud, Reading Zoos, 230. 37. Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” in Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, ed. Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 123–154 (124). 38. Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” 130. 39. Michel Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (London: Penguin Books, 1984), 32–50 (49), emphasis added. 40. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Rabinow, 76–100 (83). 41. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 42. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 148. 43. Foucault, The Order of Things, 144. 44. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 141, 143. 45. See, for example, Nigel Rothfels, Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 44–80. 46. Theodore Link, “Zoölogical Gardens, a Critical Essay,” The American Naturalist 17, no. 12 (1883): 1225–1229 (1226). 47. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 48. See also Berger’s comparison of zoos and camps as sites of marginalization. Berger, “Why Look at Animals?,” 24. 49. We must therefore discard the “repressive hypothesis” also in the case of power over animals. Malamud argues that “[t]he common thread in the keeping of captive animals, under whatever conditions hold for different societies and periods, is

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the infliction of pain—widely enough to suggest that such cruelty is inherent in the institution of zoos.” (Malamud, Reading Zoos, 187.) But under the often smothering regime of biopolitics, zoos would anesthetize and even euthanize their animals before they suffered them to endure much pain. 50. Pyrs Gruffudd, “Biological Cultivation: Lubetkin’s Modernism at London Zoo in the 1930s,” in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, ed. Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 222–242 (223). 51. Hediger, Wild Animals in Captivity, 40. 52. Eric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier, Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West, trans. Oliver Welsh (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), 220–221. 53. Rutherford, “The Entry of Life into History”; Luke, “Environmentality as Green Governmentality.” 54. Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 139. 55. Donahue and Trump, The Politics of Zoos, 77. 56. Bryan G. Norton et al., eds., Ethics on the Ark: Zoos, Animal Welfare, and Wildlife Conservation (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 175–180, 224–227. 57. Richard Doyle, On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 59. 58. Doyle, On Beyond Living, 131, emphasis added 59. Donahue and Trump describe how “breeding programs were producing more animals than zoos could exhibit and that the surplus animals were sometimes being euthanized or sold to exotic animal dealers,” Donahue and Trump, The Politics of Zoos, 159. See also Norton et al., eds., Ethics on the Ark, 185–214. 60. Colin Tudge, Last Animals at the Zoo: How Mass Extinction Can Be Stopped (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 243. See also Jon R. Luoma, A Crowded Ark (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). 61. See, for example, Donahue and Trump, The Politics of Zoos; Mazur, After the Ark; Norton et al., eds., Ethics on the Ark. 62. Hancocks, A Different Nature, xv. See also Lee: “The activities of captive breeding with the aim of reintroduction to the wild are incompatible—practically, conceptually and ontologically—with those arrangements associated with exhibition. The latter requires public access, the former its denial.” Lee, Zoos, 96. 63. Umberto Eco, “Travels in Hyperreality,” in Travels in Hyperreality (London: Picador, 1987), 48–53 (50–52). 64. Nigel Rothfels, “Immersed with Animals,” in Representing Animals, ed. Nigel Rothfels (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), 199–223 (202). See also Elizabeth Hanson, Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 130–161. 65. Mazur, After the Ark? 66. Rutherford, “The Entry of Life into History,” 59.

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67. Jennifer Wolch, “Anima Urbis,” Progress in Human Geography 26, no. 6 (2002): 721–42 (734). 68. Chilla Bulbeck, Facing the Wild: Ecotourism, Conservation and Animal Encounters (London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2005). 69. See Hancocks, A Different Nature; Mazur, After the Ark? 70. Jim Cheney, “Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative,” in Postmodern Environmental Ethics, ed. Max Oelschlaeger (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 23–42 (30). 71. Cheney, “Postmodern Environmental Ethics,” 31, 33, emphasis added. 72. Jesse Donahue and Erik Trump, Political Animals: Public Art in American Zoos and Aquariums (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007), 111. 73. Donahue and Trump, Political Animals, 112, 131, 130, 131. 74. Donahue and Trump, Political Animals, 112. 75. Donahue and Trump, Political Animals, 136. 76. Steve Baker, The Postmodern Animal (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), 125. 77. Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” 21. As Jamieson puts it, “despite the best intentions of zoo personnel, the profound message of zoos is that it is permissible for humans to dominate animals, for the entire experience of a zoo is framed by the fact of captivity.” Jamieson, “Zoos Revisited,” 54. 78. Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” 26. 79. Donahue and Trump, Political Animals, 183. 80. Hancocks, A Different Nature, 124. See also Stephen St. C. Bostock, Zoos and Animal Rights: The Ethics of Keeping Animals (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 177–185. 81. Lee, Zoos. 82. Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier, Zoo, 26; Rothfels, “Immersed with Animals,” 207. 83. Gail Davies, “Virtual Animals in Electronic Zoos: The Changing Geographies of Animal Capture and Display,” in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places, ed. Philo and Wilbert, 243–267 (258). 84. Davies, “Virtual Animals,” 253. 85. Davies, “Virtual Animals,” 259. 86. Palmer, “Colonization, Urbanization, and Animals,” 54. 87. Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” 22–23. 88. Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” 26. 89. Rothfels, Savages and Beasts, 145. 90. Rothfels, “Immersed with Animals,” 199. 91. Eco, “Travels in Hyperreality,” 49. 92. Greg Moran, “The Application of the Science of Animal Behaviour to the Zoo and the Ethics of Keeping Animals in Captivity,” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 18 (1987): 1–4 (1). 93. Eileen Crist, Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999).

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94. See, for example, Janaea Martin and Joseph O’Reilly, “Contemporary Environment-Behavior Research in Zoological Parks,” Environment and Behavior 20, no. 4 (1988): 387–395, and the rest of the journal issue devoted to that theme. 95. See, for example, Deborah L. Wells, “A Note on the Influence of Visitors on the Behaviour and Welfare of Zoo-Housed Gorillas,” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 93 (2005): 13–17; Stephen R. Ross, Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf, and Tara Stoinski, “Assessing the Welfare Implications of Visitors in a Zoo Setting: A Comment on Wells (2005),” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 102 (2007): 130–33; Deborah L. Wells, “Response to Ross, Lonsdorf and Stoinski: Assessing the Welfare Implications of Visitors in a Zoo Setting—a Comment on Wells (2005),” Applied Animal Behavior Science 102 (2007): 134–36. 96. Geoff Hosey, “A Preliminary Model of Human-Animal Relationships in the Zoo,” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 109 (2008): 105–27 (110). See also Geoff Hosey, “Zoo Animals and Their Human Audiences: What Is the Visitor Effect?” Animal Welfare 9 (2000): 343–357. 97. This will, of course, vary across different species and individuals: “the responses zoo animals show to unfamiliar humans (i.e., zoo visitors) are not particularly consistent between, and sometimes within, taxa.” Hosey, “A Preliminary Model,” 116. 98. Hosey, “A Preliminary Model,” 109. 99. Diane P. Michelfelder, “Valuing Wildlife Populations in Urban Environments,” Journal of Social Philosophy 34, no. 1 (2003): 79–90 (88). 100. Haraway, When Species Meet. 101. Hosey, “A Preliminary Model,” 123. 102. Jennifer Wolch, “Zoöpolis,” in Animal Geographies, ed. Wolch and Emel, 119–138 (135). 103. Wolch, “Anima Urbis,” 734. 104. Baudrillard, Seduction, 89. 105. Jennifer Ham and Matthew Senior, eds., Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 1. 106. Rothfels, Savages and Beasts, 175. 107. Boria Sax, “Are There Predators in Paradise?” Terra Nova 2, no. 1 (1997): 59–68. 108. Kate Rigby, “Noah’s Ark Revisited: (Counter-)Utopianism and (Eco) Catastrophe,” Arena 31 (2008): 163–177 (177). 109. Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am.” See also Matthew Chrulew, “Feline Divinanimality: Derrida and the Discourse of Species in Genesis,” The Bible and Critical Theory 2, no. 2 (2006): 18.1–18.23.

CHAPTER ELEVEN



Zoöpolis Jennifer Wolch

[W]ithout the recognition that the city is of and within the environment, the wilderness of the wolf and the moose, the nature that most of us think of as natural cannot survive, and our own survival on the planet will come into question.1

Introduction Urbanization in the West was based historically on the notion of progress rooted in the conquest and exploitation of nature by culture. The moral compass of city builders pointed toward the virtues of reason, progress, and profit, leaving wild lands and wild things—as well as people deemed to be wild or “savage” beyond the scope of their reckoning. Today, the logic of capitalist urbanization still proceeds without regard to nonhuman animal life, except as cash-on-the-hoof headed for slaughter on the “disassembly” line or commodities used to further the cycle of accumulation.2 Development may be slowed by laws protecting endangered species, but you will rarely see the bulldozers stopping to gently place rabbits or reptiles out of harm’s way. Paralleling this disregard for nonhuman life, you will find no mention of animals in contemporary urban theory, whose lexicon reveals a deep-seated anthropocentrism. In mainstream theory, urbanization transforms “empty” land through a process called “development” to produce “improved land,” whose developers are exhorted (at least in neoclassical theory) to dedicate 221

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it to the “highest and best use.” Such language is perverse: wildlands are not “empty” but teeming with nonhuman life; “development” involves a thorough denaturalization of the environment; “improved land” is invariably impoverished in terms of soil quality, drainage, and vegetation; and judgements of “highest and best use” reflect profit-centered values and the interests of humans alone, ignoring not only wild or feral animals but captives such as pets, lab animals, and livestock, who live and die in urban space shared with people. Marxian and feminist varieties of urban theory are equally anthropocentric.3 Our theories and practices of urbanization have contributed to disastrous ecological effects. Wildlife habitat is being destroyed at record rates as the urban front advances worldwide, driven in the First World by suburbanization and edge-city development, and in the Second and Third Worlds by pursuit of a “catching-up” development model that produces vast rural to urban migration flows and sprawling squatter landscapes.4 Entire ecosystems and species are threatened, while individual animals in search of food and/or water must risk entry into urban areas, where they encounter people, vehicles, and other dangers. The explosion of urban pet populations has not only polluted urban waterways but led to mass killings of dogs and cats. Isolation of urban people from the domestic animals they eat has distanced them from the horrors and ecological harms of factory farming, and the escalating destruction of rangelands and forests driven by the market’s efforts to create/satisfy a lust for meat. For most free creatures, as well as staggering numbers of captives such as pets and livestock, cities imply suffering, death, or extinction. The aim of this paper is to foreground an urban theory that takes nonhumans seriously. Such a theory needs to address questions about (1) how urbanization of the natural environment impacts animals, and what global, national, and locality-specific political-economic and cultural forces drive modes of urbanization that are most threatening to animals; (2) how and why city residents react to the presence of animals in their midst, why attitudes may shift with new forms of urbanization, and what this means for animals; (3) how both city-building practices and human attitudes and behaviors together define the capacity of urban ecologies to support nonhuman life; and (4) how the planning/policy-making activities of the state, environmental design practices, and political struggles have emerged to slow the rate of violence toward animals witnessed under contemporary capitalist urbanization. In the first part, I clarify what I mean by “humans” and “animals,” and provide a series of arguments suggesting that a trans-species urban theory is necessary to the development of an ecosocialist, feminist, antiracist urban praxis. Then in the second part, I argue that current considerations of ani-

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mals and people in the capitalist city (based on U.S. experience) are strictly limited, and suggest that a trans-species urban theory must be grounded in contemporary theoretical debates regarding urbanization, nature and culture, ecology, and urban environmental action.

Why Animals Matter (Even in Cities) The rational for considering animals in the context of urban environmentalism is not transparent. Urban environmental issues traditionally center around the pollution of the city conceived as human habitat, not animal habitat. Thus the various wings of the urban progressive environmental movement have avoided thinking about nonhumans and have left the ethical as well as pragmatic ecological, political, and economic questions regarding animals to be dealt with by those involved in the defense of endangered species or animal welfare. Such a division of labor privileges the rare and the tame, and ignores the lives and living spaces of the large number and variety of animals who dwell in cities. In this section, I argue that even common, everyday animals should matter. The Human-Animal Divide: A Definition At the outset, it is imperative to clarify what we mean when we talk about “animals” or “nonhumans” on the one hand, and “people” or “humans” on the other. Where does one draw the line between the two, and upon what criteria? In many parts of the world beliefs in transmogrification or transmigration of souls provide a basis for beliefs in human-animal continuity (or even coincidence). But in the Western World animals have for many centuries been defined as fundamentally different and ontologically separate from humans, and although explicit criteria for establishing human-animal difference have changed over time, all such criteria routinely use humans as the standard for judgment. The concern is, can animals do what humans do? Rather than, can humans do what animals do? Thus judged, animals are inferior beings. The Darwinian revolution declared a fundamental continuity between the species, but standing below humans on the evolutionary scale, animals could still be readily separated from people, objectified and used instrumentally for food, clothes, transportation, company, or spare body parts. Agreement about the human-animal divide has recently collapsed. Critiques of post-Enlightenment science,5 greater understanding of animal thinking and capabilities, and studies of human biology and behavior emphasizing human-animal similarities have all rendered claims about human uniqueness deeply suspect. Debates about the human-animal divide have also raged as a

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result of sociobiological discourses about the biological bases for human social organization and behavior, and feminist and antiracist arguments about the social bases for human differences claimed to be biological. Long-held beliefs in the human as social subject and the animal as biological object have thus been destabilized. My position on the human-animal divide is that animals as well as people socially construct their worlds and influence each other’s worlds. The resulting “animal constructs are likely to be markedly different from ours but may be no less real.”6 Animals have their own realities, their own worldviews; in short, they are subjects, not objects. This position is rarely reflected in ecosocialist, feminist, and antiracist practice, however. Developed in direct opposition to a capitalist system riddled by divisions of class, race/ethnicity, and gender, and deeply destructive of nature, such practice ignores some sorts of animals altogether (for example, pets, livestock) or has embedded animals within holistic and/or anthropocentric conceptions of the environment and therefore avoided the question of animal subjectivity.7 Thus, in most forms of progressive environmentalism, animals have been objectified and/or backgrounded. Thinking Like a Bat: The Question of Animal Standpoints The recovery of animal subjectivity implies an ethical and political obligation to redefine the urban problematic and to consider strategies for urban praxis from the standpoints of animals. Granting animals subjectivity at a theoretical, conceptual level is a first step. Even this first step is apt to be hotly contested by human social groups who have been marginalized and devalued by claims that they are “closer to animals” and hence less intelligent, worthy, or evolved than Anglo-European white males. It may also run counter to those who interpret the granting of subjectivity as synonymous with a granting of rights and object either to rights-type arguments in general or to animal rights specifically.8 But a far more difficult step must be taken if the revalorization of animal subjectivity is to be meaningful in terms of day-today practice. We not only have to “think like a mountain” but also to “think like a bat,” somehow overcoming Nagel’s classic objection that because bat sonar is not similar to any human sense, it is humanly impossible to answer a question such as “what is it like to be a bat?” or, more generally, “what is it like to be an animal?”9 But is it impossible to think like a bat? There is a parallel here with the problems raised by standpoint (or multipositionality) theories. Standpoint theories assert that a variety of individual human differences (such as race, class, or gender) so strongly shape experience and thus interpretations of

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the world that a single position essentializes and silences difference, and fails to challenge power relations. In the extreme, such polyvocality leads to a nihilistic relativism and a paralysis of political action. But the response cannot be to return to practices of radical exclusion and denial of difference. Instead, we must recognize that individual humans are embedded in social relations and networks with people similar or different upon whom their welfare depends.10 This realization allows for a recognition of kinship but also of difference, since identities are defined through seeing that we are similar to, and different from, related others. And through everyday interaction and concerted practice, and using what Haraway terms a “cyborg vision” that allows “partial, locatable, critical knowledge sustaining the possibility of webs of connection called solidarity,”11 we can embrace kinship as well as difference and encourage the emergence of an ethic of respect and mutuality, caring and friendship.12 The webs of kinships and difference that shape individual identity involve both humans and animals. This is reasonably easy to accept in the abstract (that is, humans depend upon a rich ecology of animal organisms). But there is also a large volume of archeological, paleoanthropological, and psychological evidence suggesting that concrete interactions and interdependence with animal others are indispensable to the development of human cognition, identity, and consciousness, and to a maturity that accepts ambiguity, difference, and lack of control.13 In short, animals are not only “good to think” (to borrow a phrase from Lévi-Strauss) but indispensable to learning how to think in the first place, and how to relate to other people. Who are the relevant animal others? I argue that many sorts of animals matter, including domestic animals. Clearly, domestication has profoundly altered the intelligence, senses, and life ways of creatures such as dogs, cows, sheep, and horses so as to drastically diminish their otherness; so denaturalized, they have come to be seen as part of human culture. But wild animals have been appropriated and denaturalized by people too. This is evidenced by the myriad ways wildlife is commercialized (in both embodied and disembodied forms) and incorporated into material culture. And like domestic animals, wild animals can be profoundly impacted by human actions, often leading to significant behavioral adaptations. Ultimately, the division between wild and domestic must be seen as a permeable social construct; it may be better to conceive of a matrix of animals who vary with respect to the extent of physical or behavioral modification due to human intervention, and types of interaction with people. Our ontological dependency on animals seems to have characterized us as a species since the Pleistocene. Human needs for dietary protein, desires for

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spiritual inspiration and companionship, and the ever-present possibility of ending up as somebody’s dinner required thinking like an animal. This aspect of animal contribution to human development can be used as an (anthropomorphic) argument in defense of wildlife conservation or pet keeping. But my concern is how human dependency on animals was played out in terms of the patterns of human-animal interactions it precipitated. Specifically, did ontological dependency on animals create an interspecific ethic of caring and webs of friendship? Without resurrecting a 1990s version of the Noble Savage—an essentialized indigenous person living in spiritual and material harmony with nature—it is clear that for most of (pre)history, people ate wild animals, tamed them, and kept them captive, but also respected them as kin, friends, teachers, spirits, or gods. Their value lay both in their similarities with and differences from humans. Not coincidentally, most wild animals habitats were also sustained. Re-enchanting the City: An Agenda to Bring the Animals Back In How can animals play their integral role in human ontology today, thereby helping to foster ethical responses and political practices engendered by the recognition of human-animal kinship and difference? Most critically, how can such responses and practices possibly develop in places where everyday interaction with so many kinds of animals has been eliminated? Most people now live in such places, namely cities. Cities are perceived as so humandominated that they become naturalized as just another part of the ecosystem, that is, the human habitat. In the West, many of us interact with or experience animals only by keeping captives of a restricted variety or eating “food” animals sliced into steak, chop, and roast. We get a sense of wild animals only by watching “Wild Kingdom” reruns or going to Sea World to see the latest in a long string of short-lived “Shamus”14 In our apparent mastery of urban nature, we are seemingly protected from all nature’s dangers but chance losing any sense of wonder and awe for the nonhuman world. The loss of both the humility and the dignity of risk results in a widespread belief in the banality of day-to-day survival. This belief is deeply damaging to class, gender, and North-South relations as well as to nature.15 To allow for the emergence of an ethic, practice, and politics of caring for animals and nature, we need to renaturalize cities and invite the animals back in, and in the process re-enchant the city.16 I call this renaturalized, re-enchanted city zoöpolis. The reintegration of people with animals and nature in zoöpolis can provide urban dwellers with the local, situated, everyday knowledge of animal life required to grasp animal standpoints or ways of being in the world, to interact with them accordingly in particular contexts,

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and to motivate political action necessary to protect their autonomy as subjects and their life spaces. Such knowledge would stimulate a thorough rethinking of a wide range of urban daily life practices: not only animal regulation and control practices, but landscaping, development rates and design, roadway and transportation decisions, use of energy, industrial toxics, and bioengineering—in short, all practices that impact animals and nature in its diverse forms (climate, plant life, landforms, and so on). And at the most personal level, we might rethink eating habits, since factory farms are so environmentally destructive in situ, and the Western meat habit radically increases the rate at which wild habitats are converted to agricultural land worldwide (to say nothing of how one feels about eating cows, pigs, chickens, or fishes once they are embraced as kin). While based in everyday practice like the bioregional paradigm, the renaturalization or zoöpolis model differs in including animals and nature in the metropolis rather than relying on an antiurban spatial fix like small-scale communalism. It also accepts the reality of global interdependence rather than opting for autarky. Moreover, unlike deep ecological visions epistemically tied to a psychologized individualism and lacking in political-economic critique, urban renaturalization is motivated not only by a conviction that animals are central to human ontology in ways that enable the development of webs of kinship and caring with animal subjects, but that our alienation from animals results from specific political-economic structures, social relations, and institutions operative at several spatial scales. Such structures, relations, and institutions will not magically change once individuals recognize animal subjectivity, but will only be altered through political engagement and struggle against oppression based on class, race, gender, and species. Beyond the city, the zoöpolis model serves as a powerful curb on the contradictory and colonizing environmental politics of the West as practiced both in the West itself and as inflicted on other parts of the world. For example, wildlife reserves are vital to prevent species extinction. But because they are “out there,” remote from urban life, reserves can do nothing to alter entrenched modes of economic organization and associated consumption practices that hinge on continual growth and make reserves necessary in the first place. The only modes of life that the reserves change are those of subsistence peoples, who suddenly find themselves alienated from their traditional economic base and further immiserated. But an interspecific ethic of caring replaces dominionism to create urban regions where animals are not incarcerated, killed, or sent off to live in wildlife prisons, but instead are valued neighbors and partners in survival. This ethic links urban residents with people elsewhere in the world who have evolved ways of both surviving

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and sustaining the forests, streams, and diversity of animal lives, and enjoins their participation in the struggle. The Western myth of a pristine Arcadian wilderness, imposed with imperial impunity on those places held hostage to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in league with powerful international environmental organizations, is trumped by a postcolonial politics and practice that begins at home with animals in the city.

Ways of Thinking Animals in the City An agenda for renaturalizing the city and bringing animals back in should be developed with an awareness of the impacts of urbanization on animals in the capitalist city, how urban residents think about and behave toward animal life, the ecological adaptations made by animals to urban conditions, and current practices and politics arising around urban animals. Studies that address these topics are primarily grounded in empiricist social science and wildlife biology. The challenge of trans-species urban theory is to develop a framework informed by social theory. The goal is to understand capitalist urbanization in a globalizing economy and what it means for animal life; how and why patterns of human-animal interactions change over time and space; urban animal ecology as science, social discourse, and political economy; and trans-species urban practice shaped by managerial plans and grassroots activism. Animal Town: Urbanization, Environmental Change, and Animal Life Chances The city is built to accommodate humans and their pursuits, yet a subaltern “animal town” inevitably emerges with urban growth. This animal town shapes the practices of urbanization in key ways (for example, by attracting or repelling people/development in certain places, or influencing animal exclusion strategies). But animals are even more profoundly affected by the urbanization process under capitalism, which involves extensive denaturalization of rural or wild lands and widespread environmental pollution. The most basic types of urban environmental change are well-known and involve soils, hydrology, climate, ambient air and water quality, and vegetation.17 Some wild animal species (for example, rats, pigeons, cockroaches) adapt to and/or thrive in cities. But others are unable to find appropriate food or shelter, adapt to urban climate, air quality, or hydrological changes, or tolerate contact with people. Captives, of course, are mostly restricted to homes, yards, or purpose-built quarters such as feed lots or labs, but even the health of pets, feral animals, and creatures destined for dissecting trays or dinner

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tables can be negatively affected by various forms of urban environmental pollution. Metropolitan development also creates spatially extensive, patchy landscapes and extreme habitat fragmentation that especially affects wildlife. Some animals can adapt to such fragmentation and to the human proximity it implies, but more commonly animals die in situ or migrate to less fragmented areas. If movement corridors between habitat patches are cut off, species extinction can result as fragmentation intensifies, due to declining habitat patch size,18 deleterious edge effects,19 distance or isolation effects, and related shifts in community ecology.20 Where fragmentation leads to the loss of large predators, remaining species may proliferate, degrade the environment, and threaten the viability of other forms of wildlife. Weedy, opportunistic and/or exotic species may also invade, to similar effect. Such accounts of urban environmental change and habitat fragmentation are not typically incorporated into theories of urbanization under capitalism. For example, most explanations of urbanization do not explicitly address the social or political-economic drivers of urban environmental change, especially habitat fragmentation.21 By the same token, most studies of urban environments restrict themselves to the scientific measurement of environmental-quality shifts or describe habitat fragmentation in isolation from the social dynamics that drive it.22 This suggests that urbanization models need to be reconsidered to account for the environmental as well as political-economic bases of urbanization, the range of institutional forces acting on the urban environment, and the cultural processes that are the background for nature in the city. Efforts to theoretically link urban and environmental change are at the heart of the new environmental history, which reorients ideas about urbanization by illustrating how environmental exploitation and disturbance underpin the history of cities, and how thinking about nature as an actor (rather than a passive object to be acted upon) can help us understand the course of urbanization. Contemporary urbanization, linked to global labor, capital, and commodity flows, is simultaneously rooted in exploitation of natural “resources” (including wildlife, domestic, and other sorts of animals) and actively transforms regional landscapes and the possibilities for animal life—although not always in the manner desired or expected, due to nature’s agency. Revisiting neo-Marxian theories of the local state as well as neoWeberian concepts of urban managerialism to analyze relations between nature and the local state could illuminate the structural and institutional contexts of for example, habitat loss/degradation. One obvious starting place is growth machine theory, since it focuses on the influence of rentiers on

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the local state apparatus and local politics;23 another is the critique of urban planning as part of the modernist project of control and domination of others (human as well as nonhuman) through rationalist city building and policing of urban interactions and human/animal proximities in the name of human health and welfare.24 Finally, urban cultural studies may help us understand how the aesthetics of urban built environments deepen the distanciation between animals and people. For instance, Wilson demonstrates how urban simulacra such as zoos and wildlife parks have increasingly mediated human experience of animal life.25 Real live animals can actually come to be seen as less than authentic since the terms of authenticity have been so thoroughly redefined. The distanciation of wild animals has simultaneously stimulated the elaboration of a romanticized wildness used as a means to peddle consumer goods, sell real estate, and sustain the capital accumulation process, reinforcing urban expansion and environmental degradation.26 Reckoning with the Beast: Human Interactions with Urban Animals The everyday behavior of urban residents also influences the possibilities for urban animal life. The question of human relations with animals in the city has been tackled by empirical researchers armed with behavioral models, who posit that, through their behavior, people make cities more or less attractive to animals (for example, human pest management and animal control practices, urban design, provision of food and water for feral animals and/or wildlife). These behaviors, in turn, rest on underlying values and attitudes toward animals. In such values-attitudes-behavior frameworks, resident responses are rooted in cultural beliefs about animals, but also in the behavior of animals themselves—their destructiveness, charisma, and charm, and, less frequently, their ecological benefits. Attitudes toward animals have been characterized on the basis of survey research and the development of attitudinal typologies.27 Findings suggest that urbanization increases both distanciation from nature and concern for animal welfare. Kellert, for example, found that urban residents were less apt to hold utilitarian attitudes, were more likely to have moralistic and humanistic attitudes, suggesting that they were concerned for the ethical treatment of animals, and were focused on individual animals such as pets and popular wildlife species.28 Urban residents of large cities were more supportive of protecting endangered species; less in favor of shooting or trapping predators to control damage to livestock; more apt to be opposed to hunting; and supportive of allocating additional public resources for programs to increase wildlife in cities. Domestic and attractive animals were most preferred, while animals known to cause human property damage or inflict injury were among the least preferred.

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Conventional wisdom characterizes the responses of urban residents and institutions to local animals in two ways: (1) as “pests,” who are implicitly granted agency in affecting the urban environment, given the social or economic costs they impose: or (2) as objectified “pets,” who provide companionship, an aesthetic amenity to property owners, or recreational opportunities such as bird-watching and feeding wildlife.29 Almost no systematic research, however, has been conducted on urban residents’ behavior toward the wild or unfamiliar animals they encounter or how behavior is shaped by space or by class, patriarchy, or social constructions of race/ethnicity. Moreover, the behavior of urban institutions involved in urban wildlife management or animal regulation/control has yet to be explored.30 How can we gain a deeper understanding of human interactions with the city’s animals? The insights from wider debates in nature/culture theory are most instructive and help put behavioral research in proper context.31 Increasingly, nature/culture theorizing converges on the conviction that the Western nature/culture dualism, a variant of the more fundamental division between object and subject, is artificial and deeply destructive of Earth’s diverse life-forms. It validates a theory and practice of human/nature relations that backgrounds human dependency on nature. Hyperseparating nature from culture encourages its colonization and domination. The nature/ culture dualism also incorporates nature into culture, denying its subjectivity and giving it solely instrumental value. By homogenizing and disembodying nature, it becomes possible to ignore the consequences of human activity such as urbanization, industrial production, and agroindustrialization on specific creatures and their terrains. This helps trigger what O’Connor terms the “second contradiction of capitalism,” that is, the destruction of the means of production via the process of capital accumulation itself.32 The place-specific version of the nature/culture dualism is the city/country divide: as that place historically emblematic of human culture, the city seeks to exclude all remnants of the country from its midst, especially wild animals. As we have already seen, the radical exclusion of most animals from everyday urban life may disrupt development of human consciousness and identity, and prevent the emergence of interspecific webs of friendship and concern. This argument filters through several variants of radical ecophilosophy. In some versions, the centrality of “wild” animals is emphasized, while the potential of tamer animals, more common in cities but often genetically colonized, commodified, and/or neotenized, is questioned. In other versions, the wild/tame distinction in fostering human-animal bonds is minimized, but the progressive loss of interspecific contact and thus understanding is mourned.33 Corporeal identity may also become increasingly destabilized as understanding

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of human embodiment traditionally derived through direct experience of live animal bodies/subjects evaporates or is radically transformed. Thus what we now require are theoretical treatments explicating how the deeply ingrained dualism between city (culture) and country (nature), as it is played out ontologically, shapes human-animal interaction in the city. The ahistorical and placeless values-attitudes-behavior models also miss the role of social and political-economic context on urban values and attitudes toward animals. Yet such values and attitudes are apt to evolve in response to place-specific situations and local contextual shifts resulting from nonlocal dynamics, for example, the rapid internationalization of urban economies. Deepening global competition threatens to stimulate a hardening of attitudes toward animal exploitation and habitat destruction in an international “race to the bottom” regarding environmental/animal protections. Moreover, globalization sharply reveals the fact that understandings of nature in the West are insufficient to grasp the range of relationships between people and animals in diverse global cities fed by international migrant flows from places where nature/culture relations are radically different. Variations on the theme of colonization are being played back onto the colonizers; in the context of internationalization, complex questions arise concerning how both colonially imposed, indigenous, and hybrid meanings and practices are being diffused back into the West. Also, given globalization-generated international migration glows to urban regions, we need to query the role of diverse cultural norms regarding animals in the racialization of immigrant groups and spread of nativism in the West. Urban practices that appear to be linked to immigrant racialization involve animal sacrifice (for example, Santeria) and eating animals traditionally considered in Western culture as household companions. An Urban Bestiary: Animal Ecologies in the City The recognition that many animals coexist with people in cities and the management implications of shared urban space have spurred the nascent field of urban animal ecology. Grounded in biological field studies and heavily management-oriented studies of urban animal life focus on wildlife species; there are very few ecological studies of urban companion or feral animals.34 Most studies tend to be highly species- and place-specific. Only a small number of urban species have been scrutinized, typically in response to human-perceived problems, risk of species endangerment, or their “charismatic” character. Ecological theory has moved away from holism and equilibrium notions toward a recognition that processes of environmental disturbance, uncer-

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tainty, and risk cause ecosystems and populations to continually shift over certain ranges varying with site and scale.35 This suggests the utility of reconceptualizing cities as ecological disturbance regimes rather than ecological sacrifice zones whose integrity has been irrevocably violated. In order to fully appreciate the permeability of the city/country divide, the heterogeneity and variable patchiness of urban habitats and the possibilities (rather than impossibilities) for urban animal life must be more fully incorporated into ecological analyses. This in turn could inform decisions concerning prospective land-use changes (such as suburban densification or down-zoning, landscaping schemes, transportation corridor design) and indicate how they might influence individual animals and faunal assemblages in terms of stress levels, morbidity and mortality, mobility and access to multiple sources of food and shelter, reproductive success, and exposure to predation. Scientific urban animal ecology is grounded in instrumental rationality and oriented toward environmental control, perhaps more than other branches of ecology since it is largely applications driven. The effort by preeminent ecologist Michael Soulé to frame a response to the postmodern reinvention of nature, however, demonstrates the penetration into ecology of feminist and postmodern critiques of modernist science.36 Hayles, for instance, argues that our understanding of nature is mediated by the embodied interactivity of observer and observed, and the positionality (gender, class, race, species) of the observer.37 Animals, for example, construct different worlds through their embodied interactions with it (that is, how their sensory and intellectual capabilities result in their worldviews). And although some models may be more or less adequate interpretations of nature, the question of how positionality determines the models proposed, tested, and interpreted must always remain open. At a minimum, such thinking calls for self-reflexivity in ecological research on urban animals and ecological toolkits augmented by rich ethnographic accounts of animals, personal narratives of nonscientific observers, and folklore. Finally, scientific urban animal ecology is not practiced in a vacuum. Rather, like any other scientific pursuit, it is strongly shaped by motives of research sponsors (especially the state), those who use research products (such as planners), and ideologies of researchers themselves. Building on the field of science studies, claims of scientific ecology must thus be interrogated to expose the political economy of urban animal ecology and biodiversity analysis. How are studies of urban animals framed, and from whose perspective? What motivates them in the first place—developer proposals, hunter lobbies, environmental/animal rights organizations? Sorting out such questions requires not only evaluation of the technical merits of urban wildlife

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studies but also analysis of how they are framed by epistemological and discursive traditions in scientific ecology and embedded in larger social and political-economic contexts. Redesigning Nature’s Metropolis: From Managerialism to Grassroots Action A nascent trans-species urban practice, as yet poorly documented and undertheorized, has appeared in many U.S. cities. This practice involves numerous actors, including a variety of federal, state, and local bureaucracies, planners, and managers, and urban grassroots animal/environmental activists. In varying measure, the goals of such practice include altering the nature of interactions between people and animals in the city, creating minimum-impact urban environmental designs, changing everyday practices of the local state (wildlife managers and urban planners), and more forcefully defending the interests of urban animal life. Wildlife managers and pest-control firms increasingly face local demands for alternatives to extermination-oriented animal-control policies. In the wildlife area, approaches were initially driven by local protests against conventional practices such as culling; now managers are more apt to consider in advance resident reactions to management alternatives and to adopt participatory approaches to decision-making in order to avoid opposition campaigns. Typically, alternative management strategies require education of urban residents to increase knowledge and understanding of, and respect for, wild animal neighbors, and to underscore how domestic animals may harm or be harmed by wildlife. There are limits to educational approaches, however, stimulating some jurisdictions to enact regulatory controls on common residential architectures, building maintenance, garbage storage, fencing, landscaping, and companion-animal keeping that are detrimental to wildlife. Wild animals were never a focus of urban and regional planning. Nor were other kinds of animals, despite the fact that a large proportion of homes in North America and Europe shelter domestic animals. This is not surprising given the historic location of planning within the development-driven local state apparatus. Since the passage of the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973, however, planners have been forced to grapple with the impact of human activities on threatened/endangered species. To reduce the impact of urbanization on threatened/endangered animals, planners have adopted such land-use tools as zoning (including urban limit lines and wildlife overlay zones), public/nonprofit land acquisition, transfer of development rights (TDR), environmental impact statements (EIS), and wildlife impact/habitat conser-

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vation linkage fees.38 None of these tools is without severe and well-known technical, political, and economic problems, stimulating the development of approaches such as habitat conservation plans (HCPs)—regional landscape-scale planning efforts to avoid the fragmentation inherent in projectby-project planning and local zoning control.39 Despite the ESA, minimum-impact planning for urban wildlife has not been a priority for either architects or urban planners. Wildlife-oriented residential landscape architecture remains uncommon. Most examples are new developments (as opposed to retrofits), sited at the urban fringe, planned for low densities, and thus oriented for upper-income residents only. Many are merely ploys to enhance real estate profits by providing home buyers, steeped in an antiurban ideology of suburban living emphasizing proximity to “the outdoors,” with an extra “amenity” in the form of proximity to wild animals’ bodies. Planning practice routinely defines other less attractive locations which host animals (dead or alive), such as slaughterhouses and factory farms, as “noxious” land uses and isolates them from urban residents to protect their sensibilities and the public health. Wildlife considerations are also largely absent from the U.S. progressive architecture/planning agenda, as are concerns for captives such as pets or livestock. The 1980s “costs of sprawl” debate made no mention of wildlife habitat, and the adherents to the so-called new urbanism and sustainable cities movements of the 1990s rarely define sustainability in relation to animals. The new urbanism emphasized sustainability through high density and mixed-use urban development, but remains strictly anthropocentric in perspective. Although more explicitly ecocentric, the sustainable cities movement aims to reduce human impacts on the natural environment through environmentally sound systems of solid waste treatment, energy production, transportation, housing, and so on, and the development of urban agriculture capable of supporting local residents.40 But while such approaches have longterm benefits for all living things, the sustainable cities literature pays little attention to questions of animals per se.41 Everyday practices of urban planners, landscape architects, and urban designers shape normative expectations and practical possibilities for humananimal interactions. But their practices do not reflect desires to enrich or facilitate interactions between people and animals through design, nor have they been assessed from this perspective. Even companion animals are ignored; despite the fact that there are more U.S. households with companion animals than children, such animals remain invisible to architects and planners. What explains this anthropocentrism on the part of urban design and architectural professions? Social theories of urban design and professional

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practice could be used to better understand the anthropocentric production of urban space and place. Cuff, for example, explains the quotidian behavior of architects as part of a collective, interactive social process conditioned by institutional contexts including the local state and developer clients; not surprisingly, design outcomes reflect the growth orientation of contemporary urbanism.42 More broadly, Evernden argues that planning and design professionals are constrained by the larger culture’s insistence on rationality and order and the radical exclusion of animals from the city.43 The look of the city as created by planners and architects, dominated by standardized design forms such as the suburban tract house surrounded by a manicured, fenced lawn, reflects the deep-seated need to protect the domain of human control by excluding weeds, dirt, and—by extension—nature itself. Environmental designers drawing on conservation biology and landscape ecology have more actively engaged the question of how to design new metropolitan landscapes for animals and people than have planners or architects.44 At the regional level, wildlife corridor plans or reserve networks are in vogue.45 Wildlife networks and corridors are meant to link “mainland” habitats beyond the urban fringe, achieve overall landscape connectivity to protect gene pools, and provide habitat for animals with small home ranges.46 Can corridors protect and reintegrate animals in the metropolis? Corridor planning is a recent development, and we need case-specific politicaleconomic analyses of corridor plans to answer this question. Preliminary experience suggests that at best large-scale corridors can offer vital protection to gravely threatened keystone species and thus a variety of other animals, while small-scale corridors can be an excellent urban design strategy for allowing common small animals, insects, and birds to share urban living space with people. However, grand corridor proposals can degrade into an amenity for urban recreationists (since they often win taxpayers’ support only if justified on recreational rather than habitat-conservation grounds). At worst, corridors may become a collaborationist strategy that merely smooths a pathway for urban real estate development into wilderness areas. A growing number of urban grassroots struggles revolves around the protection of specific wild animals or animal populations, and around the preservation of urban wetlands, forests, and other wildlife habitat due to their importance to wildlife. Also, growing awareness of companion-animal wants and desires has stimulated grassroots efforts to create specially designed spaces for pets in the city, such as dog parks.47 But we have very little systematic information about what catalyzes such grassroots trans-species urban practices or about the connections between such struggles and other forms of local eco/animal activism. It is not clear if grassroots struggles around animals

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in the city are linked organizationally either to larger-scale environmental activism or green politics, or to traditional national animal welfare organizations, suggesting the need for mapping exercises and organizational network analyses. Ephemeral and limited case study information suggests that political action around urban animals can expose deep divisions within environmentalism and the animal welfare establishment. These divisions mirror the broader political splits between mainstream environmentalism and the environmental justice movement, between animal rights organizations and environmentalists, and between groups with animal rights and groups with animal welfare orientations. For example, many mainstream groups only pay lip service (if that) to social justice issues, and so many activists of color continue to consider traditional environmental priorities such as wildlands and wildlife—especially in cities—as at best a frivolous obsession of affluent white suburban environmentalists, and at worst reflective of pervasive elitism and racism. Local struggles around wildlife issues can also expose the philosophical split between holistic environmental groups and individualist animal rights activists; for example, such conflicts often arise over proposals to kill feral animals in order to protect native species and ecosystem fragments. And reformist animal welfare organizations such as urban humane societies, concerned primarily with companion animals and often financially dependent on the local state, may be wary of siding with animal rights/liberation groups critical not only of state policies but also the standard practices of the humane societies themselves.48 The rise of organizations and informal groups acting to preserve animal habitat in the city, change management policies, and protect individual animals indicates a shift in everyday thinking about the positionality of animals. If such a shift is underway, why and why now? One possibility is that ecocentric environmental ethics and especially animal rights thinking, with its parallels between racism, sexism, and “speciesism,” have permeated popular consciousness and stimulated new social movements around urban animals. Other avenues of explanation may open up by theorizing trans-species movements within the broader context of new social movement theory, which points to these movements’ consumption-related focus; grassroots, localist, and antistate nature; and linkages to the formation of new sociocultural identities necessitated by the postmodern condition and contemporary capitalism.49 Viewed through the lens of new social movement theory, struggles to resist incursions of capital into urban wildlife habitat or defend the interest of animals in the city could be contextualized within larger social and political-economic dynamics as they alter forms of activism and change individual level priorities for political action. Such an exercise might even reveal that new social movements around animals transcend both

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production and consumption-related concerns, reflecting instead a desire among some people to span the human-animal divide by extending networks of caring and friendship to nonhuman others.

Toward Zoöpolis Zoöpolis presents both challenges and opportunities for those committed to ecosocialist, feminist and antiracist urban futures. At one level, the challenge is to overcome deep divisions in theoretical thinking about nonhumans and their place in the human moral universe. Perhaps more crucial is the challenge of political practice, where purity of theory gives way to a more situated ethics, coalition building, and formation of strategic alliances. Can progressive urban environmentalism build a bridge to those people struggling around questions of urban animals, just as reds have reached out to greens, greens to feminists, feminists to those fighting racism? In time- and place-specific contexts where real linkages are forged, the range of potential alliances is apt to be great, extending from groups with substantial overlap with progressive environmental thinking to those whose communalities are more tenuous and whose focuses are more parochial. Making common cause on specific efforts to fight toxics, promote recycling, or shape air quality management plans with grassroots groups whose raison de’être is urban wildlife, pets, or farm animal welfare may be difficult. The potential to expand and strengthen the movement is significant, however, and should not be overlooked. The discourse of zoöpolis creates a space to initiate outreach, conversation, and collaboration in these borderlands of environmental action. Zoöpolis invites a critique of contemporary urbanization from the standpoints of animals but also from the perspective of people, who together with animals suffer from urban pollution and habitat degradation and who are denied the experience of animal kinship and otherness so vital to their well-being. Rejecting alienated theme park models of human interaction with animals in the city, zoöpolis instead asks for a future in which animals and nature would no longer be incarcerated beyond the reach of our everyday lives, leaving us with only cartoons to heal the wounds of their absence. In a city reenchanted by the animal kindom, the once-solid Enchanted Kingdom might just melt into air.

Acknowledgements This chapter is reprinted from Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (Eds.) Animal Geographies: Place, Politics and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands. London, New York: Verso Press (1998).

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Notes 1. Daniel B. Botkin, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Oxford, 1990), 167. 2. Such commodified animals include those providing city dwellers with opportunities for “nature consumption” and a vast array of captive and companion animals sold for profit. 3. For exceptions, see Ted Benton, Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal Rights and Social Justice (London: Verso Books, 1995); and Barbara Noske, Humans and Other Animals (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 4. Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (London: Zed Books, 1993). 5. For example, Lynda Birke and Ruth Hubbard, eds., Reinventing Biology: Respect for Life and the Creation of Knowledge (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1995). 6. Barbara Noske, Humans and Other Animals, 158; for similar perspectives, see also Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991); Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993); and, from the perspective of a biologist, Donald Griffin, Animal Thinking (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984). 7. Progressive environmental practice has conceptualized “the environment” as a scientifically defined system; as “natural resources” to be protected for human use; or as an active but unitary subject to be respected as an independent force with inherent value. The first two approaches are anthropocentric; the ecocentric third approach, common to several strands of green thought, is an improvement, but its ecological holism backgrounds interspecific difference among animals (human and nonhuman) as well as the difference between animate and inanimate nature. 8. A recovery of the animal subject does not imply that animals have rights, although the rights argument does hinge on the conviction that animals are subjects of a life; see Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1986). 9. Thomas Nagel, “What is it Like to be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83 (1974). 10. This argument follows those by Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. See also Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination (London: Virago, 1988); and Jean Grimshaw, Philosophy and Feminist Thinking (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). 11. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 191. 12. This in no way precludes self-defense against animals such as predators, parasites, or microorganisms that threaten to harm people. 13. This evidence has perhaps most extensively been marshaled by Paul Shepard in Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence (New York: Viking Press, 1978); Nature and Madness (San Francisco, Calif.: Sierra Club Books, 1982); and most recently, The Others (Washington, D.C.: Earth Island Press, 1996).

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14. “Shamu” was the name used for a series of killer whales who performed in a major US marine theme park. 15. Mies and Siva, Ecofeminism. 16. As highlighted in the following section, there are many animals that do, in fact, inhabit urban areas. But most are uninvited, and many are actively expelled or exterminated. Moreover, animals have been largely excluded from our understanding of cities and urbanism. 17. Ahn Whiston Sprin, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design (New York: Basic Books, 1984); and Michael Hough, City Form and Natural Process (New York: Routledge, 1995). 18. O. H. Frankel and Michael E. Soulé, Conservation and Evolution (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and M. E. Gilpin and I. Hanski, eds., Metapopulation Dynamics: Empirical and Theoretical Investigations (New York: Academic Press, 1991). 19. Michael E. Soulé, “Land Use Planning and Wildlife Maintenance: Guidelines for Conserving Wildlife in an Urban Landscape,” Journal of the American Planning Association 57 (1991). 20. M. L. Shaffer, “Minimum Population Sizes for Species Conservation,” Bioscience 31 (1981). 21. See, for example, Michael Dear and Allen J. Scott, Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society (London: Methuen, 1981). 22. An example is Ian Laurie, ed., Nature in Cities (New York: Wiley, 1979). 23. John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 24. Elizabeth Wilson, The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Christine M. Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983); and Chris Philo, “Animals, Geography and the City: Notes on Inclusions and Exclusions,” Environment & Planning D: Society and Space 13 (1995). 25. Alexander Wilson, The Culture of Nature: North American Landscapes from Disneyland to the Exxon Valdez (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Books, 1992). 26. Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco, Calif.: North Point Press, 1990). 27. See the three-part study by Stephen R. Kellert, Public Attitudes toward Critical Wildlife and Natural Habitat Issues, Phase I (U.S. Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, 1979); Activities of the American Public Relating to Animals, Phase II (U.S. Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, 1980); and, coauthored with Joyce Berry, Knowledge, Affection and Basic Attitudes toward Animals in American Society (Phase III, U.S. Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, 1980). 28. Stephen R. Kellert, “Urban Americans’ Perceptions of Animals and the Natural Environment,” Urban Ecology 8 (1984). 29. David A King, Jody L. White, and William W. Shaw, “Influence of Urban Wildlife Habitats on the Value of Residential Properties,” in Wildlife Conservation in Metro-

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politan Environments, ed. L. W. Adams and D. L. Leedy (National Institute for Urban Wildlife, 1991), 165–169; and William W. Shaw, J. Mangun, and R. Lyons, “Residential Enjoyment of Wildlife Resources by Americans,” Leisure Sciences 7 (1985). 30. For an exception, see William W. Shaw and Vashti Supplee, “Wildlife Conservation in a Rapidly Expanding Metropolitan Area: Informational, Institutional and Economic Constraints and Solutions,” in Integrating Man and Nature in the Metropolitan Environment, ed. L. W. Adams and D. L. Leedy (National Institute for Urban Wildlife, 1987), 191–198. 31. Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989); Neil Evernden, The Social Creation of Nature (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); and Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. 32. James O’Connor, “Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Theoretical Introduction,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 1 (1988). 33. Paul Shepard, “Our Animal Friends,” in The Biophilia Hypotheses, ed. S. R. Kellert and E. O. Wilson (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993), 275–300, stresses the wild, while others are more inclusive, such as Noske, Humans and Other Animals, and Karen Davis, “Thinking Like a Chicken: Farm Animals and the Feminine Connection,” in Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations, ed. Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan (Durham, N. C. and London: Duke University Press, 1995), 192–212. 34. For exceptions, see Alan M. Beck, The Ecology of Stray Dogs: A Study of Freeranging Urban Animals (Baltimore, Md.: York Press, 1974); and C. Haspel and R. E. Calhoun, “Activity Patterns of Free-Ranging Cats in Brooklyn, New York,” Journal of Mammology 74 (1993). 35. S. T. A. Pickett and P. S. White, eds., The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1985); and Botkin, Discordant Harmonies. In extreme form, the disturbance perspective can be used politically to rationalize anthropogenic destruction of the environment: see Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), and Ludwig Trepl, “Holism and Reductionism in Ecology: Technical, Political and Ideological Implications,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 5 (1994). But see also the response to Trepl from Richard Levens and Richard C. Lewontin, “Holism and Reductionism in Ecology,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 5 (1994). 36. Michael E. Soulé and Gary Lease, eds., Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1995). For feminist/ postmodern critiques of science, see Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986); Haraway, Primate Visions; and Lynda Birke, Feminism, Animals and Science: The Naming of the Shrew (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994). 37. Katherine N. Hayles, “Searching for Common Ground,” in Reinventing Nature? ed. Soulé and Lease, 47–64.

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38. Daniel. L. Leedy, Robert M. Maestro, and Thomas M. Franklin, Planning for Wildlife in Cities and Suburbs (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978); and Arthur C. Nelson, James C. Nicholas, and Lindell L. Marsh, “New Fangled Impact Fees: Both the Environment and New Development Benefit from Environmental Linkage Fees,” Planning 58 (1992). 39. Only a small number of HCPs have been developed or are in progress, and the approach remains hotly contested. See Timothy Beatley, Habitat Conservation Planning: Endangered Species and Urban Growth (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1994). 40. Sim Van der Ryn and Peter Calthorpe, Sustainable Cities: A New Design Synthesis for Cities, Suburbs, and Towns (San Francisco, Calif.: Sierra Club Books, 1991); Richard Stren, Rodney White, and Joseph Whitney, Sustainable Cities: Urbanization and the Environment in International Perspective (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992); and The Ecological City: Preserving and Restoring Urban Biodiversity, ed. Rutherford H. Platt, Rowan A. Rowntree, and Pamela C. Muick (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). 41. An interesting exception is the green-inspired manifesto for sustainable urban development: see A Green City Program for San Francisco Bay Area Cities and Towns, ed. Peter Berg, Beryl Magilavy, and Seth Zuckerman (San Francisco, Calif.: Planet Drum Books, 1986), 48–49, which recommends riparian setback requirements to protect wildlife, review of toxic releases for their impacts on wildlife, habitat restoration, a department of natural life to work on behalf of urban wildness, citizen education, mechanisms to fund habitat maintenance, and (somewhat oxymoronically) the “creation” of “new wild places.” 42. Dana Cuff, Architecture: The Story of Practice (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991). 43. Evernden, Social Creation of Nature, 119. 44. R. T. T. Foreman and M. Godron, Landscape Ecology (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1986). 45. Charles E. Little, Greenways for America (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); and Daniel. S. Smith and Paul Cawood Hellmund, Ecology of Greenways: Design and Function of Linear Conservation Areas (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 46. There is also scientific debate about the merits of corridors: see, for instance, Daniel Simberloff and James Cox, “Consequences and Costs of Conservation Corridors,” Conservation Biology 1 (1987); Simberloff and Cox argue that corridors may help spread diseases and exotics, decrease genetic variation or disrupt local adaptation and co-adapted gene complexes, spread fire or other contagious catastrophes, and increase exposure to hunter/poachers and other predators. Reed F. Noss, however, in “Corridors in Real Landscapes: A Reply to Simberloff and Cox,” Conservation Biology 1 (1987), maintains that the best argument for corridors is that the original landscape was interconnected. 47. Jennifer Wolch and Stacy Rowe, “Companions in the Park: Laurel Canyon Dog Park, Los Angeles,” Landscape 31 (1993).

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48. Such practices include putting large numbers of companion animals to death on a routine basis, selling impounded animals to biomedical laboratories, and so on. 49. Alain Touraine, The Return of the Actor: Social Theory in Postindustrial Society (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1988); Alberto Melucci, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1989); and Alan Scott, Ideology and the New Social Movements (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990).

CHAPTER TWELVE



Inventionist Ethology: Sustainable Designs for Reawakening Human-Animal Interactivity Ralph R. Acampora

A living civilization creates; a dying, builds museums. —M. Fischer1 But [the designers] had more in mind Than filling out the plenum of a zoo; They were composing a community, A new branch of natural history. —F. Turner2

Part of the cultural imperative of devising ecologically sustainable praxis is the demand for revival and enhancement of human beings’ (inter)relations with other animals, especially free-ranging ones. Of late, dormant tendencies of biophilia have been stoked by developments in diverse fields such as interspecies ethics, comparative psychology, and zoocentric artwork. Posthumanist forms of morality are emerging, cognitive and behavioral zoologists investigate the undeniable intelligence and sociality of complex organisms (such as cetaceans, primates, and elephants), and artists breathe new life into the representation of animality (see, e.g., the work of Marshall Arisman). Against this backdrop, I would like to present and advocate innovative technologies for cross-species encounter as designed and implemented by Natalie Jeremijenko (see URL addresses for graphics).

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These designs can be introduced by understanding them as an ethological variant or retooling of Frederick Turner’s “inventionist ecology.”3 In the 1980s and 1990s Turner put forth a provocative new form of environmentalist theory and practice. He distinguished it from traditional currents of environmentalism—namely, conservation as “wise use” of resources, preservation as a quixotic if not incoherent attempt to “save or rescue” nature, and restoration as the endeavor to bring back “authentic” ecosystems by reestablishing their unsullied or pre-industrial (pre-human?) conditions. What Turner anointed and proffered as inventionist ecology would be instead a human program of creative intervention not so much into as with nature, itself now understood as the ur-force of creativity: “Nature is the process of everything interfering with—touching—everything else,” and so “potentially at least, human civilization can be [not only] the restorer, [but also] the propagator, and even the creator of natural diversity, as well as its protector and preserver.”4 This approach transcends the drawbacks of pursuing prior models by themselves—it moves beyond, that is to say, the retentive resourcism of conservation, the static nostalgia of preservation, and the arbitrary designs for always-onlyinadequate compensations of pure restoration. Inventionist ecology would create and disseminate new biomes or species.5 Similarly, what I am dubbing inventionist ethology designs for and then practices novel forms of relationship between different species—in other words, a zoologically inflected kind of techno-cum-performance artwork. New interventions of this sort resist misguided attempts of preserving artistry and animality by mummifying them in museum-type contexts, whether galleries or zoos;6 instead, they proactively seek to recreate living connections and biotic conscience in situ. For example, Jeremijenko has launched a series of projects under the title of “Ooz” (zoo spelled backwards, with a coincidental yet significant connotation of spreading beyond containment like ooze). Ooz interrupts the typical grammar of zoological exhibition that assumes animals on display are primarily passive objects of viewing and human spectators cannot be participants in the encounter: www.nyu.edu/ projects/xdesign/ooz/. At one installation in the Netherlands, for instance (see “Robotic Geese” link at Web site), humans can direct artificial geese by remote control and have them swim toward and vocalize at natural birds of that or other species, whose own reactions can in turn be watched via computerized video cameras.7 Now, while this interactive context might be deemed intrusive upon the nonhuman animals involved, it is important to keep in mind that these same animals are free-ranging organisms with full liberty to engage or avoid the scenario just described—quite to the contrary of standard zoo protocol. An-

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other objection could be that the techno-goose milieu brings us further away from authentically encountering other animals insofar as it injects yet more mediation of artifice (usage of tracking/projection apparatus as well as ducklike doppelganger) between us and them (the biological birds on the scene). Here I would highlight that inventionist ethology challenges the unfortunate tradition in mainstream environmentalism to demonize technology as always only alienating—through Ooz it rather becomes the motive force that mediates the crafting of a convivial creole of zootic communication and interaction (whenever actual animals take up the gambit of their artificial cousins), which I argue is a salutary project for any truly sustainable lifestyle. In effect, displacing the us/them dynamic of unilateral spectatorship, Ooz generates the promise of establishing an interspecies we. Such a perspective, by virtue of a Turnerian twist of vision, radically shifts our conception of Nature: no longer is it opposed to humanity and artifice— rather it becomes, as a universe always already technological itself, inclusive of homo faber. According to Turner, biological bodies are themselves highly organized systems of electrochemical and mechanical energy. Indeed, even absent conscious contrivance, all live bodies are prosthetic in the sense that they incorporate alien matter and press it into service for “artificial” interests that extend the body’s field of influence and exposure. One could say, then, that “the body of a living organism is its technology; the technology of an organism is its body.”8 The corollary for humankind is that “our own technology is an extension of our bodies.”9 Taken together, and projected onto the level of ecological evolution, Nature is a realm of becoming that develops complexity through the operation of continuously and interactively technical functions. Thus, inventionist ethology is consonant with, rather than detractive from, “natural” processes; on this view, Ooz is seen to be only a more densely organized node of organismic interaction. Another Ooz project that exemplifies inventionist ethology is the open aviary “For the Birds” that was perched atop the Postmasters gallery in the lower west side of Manhattan (New York City) during the autumn of 2006— see postmastersart.com (link for “Natalie Jeremijenko,” under “Artists” menu). Central to this “model urban development” of multispecies cohabitation was a “rooftop prairie grid” that presented a matrix of staged opportunities for visiting birds (chiefly, but also butterflies, squirrels, microbes, and plants) to eat, rest, play, decompose, and/or propagate as and when they saw fit—see www.environmentalhealthclinic.net/projects/mud/. Human artists set up the scenario and human visitors could share in the resulting activity or watch/hear it in person or by remote camera-feed projected onto a screen downstairs (follow “Communication Technology” link, under “For the Birds”

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menu at Ooz Web site). Included were several sorts of feeding and/or composting stations, a miniature ferris wheel that pigeons found interesting, and a microphonic sound-catching dish that allowed songbirds to amplify their tunes (for more items, see “Twoilets” link, under “For the Birds” menu).10 “For the Birds” brings to the fore an ethically salient feature of inventionist ethology, namely that it upsets the paradigm of species apartheid perpetrated by most of dominant civilization (via socially invisible regimes of abuse, e.g., “pest control” of urban animals) and paradoxically perpetuated even by some abolitionist forms of animal advocacy (liberation or rights schemes beholden to no-contact dictates). The penthouse prairie also furnishes a concrete illustration of what some animal geographers and trans-species theorists are calling zoöpolis;11 urban “feralands” such as greenroofs, initially interstitial albeit, give embodiment to the visionary planning ideal of welcoming commensal creatures and/or weedy wildlife in/to metropolitan areas inclusive of city centers.12 One of the project’s elements in particular, the ferris wheel utilized by local pigeons, further exhibits what Jeremijenko refers to as the impromptu “spectacle of adaptation”—a site and sight in which other animals display a dynamic agency that is not normally conceived as part of their behavioral ensemble. This enriches the phenomenology of nonhuman life, instead of seeing and describing it as limited to mere instinctual response or automatic activity. A third case of inventionist ethology is the “fishface sensor array” deployed along with a sea level scoping device in the Hudson River just below Chelsea Piers in N.Y.C. (for introduction, see www.environmentalhealthclinic.net/projects/fwish/ or “For the Fish” link at Ooz Web site): Fishface is a grid of fish-detecting buoys . . . creating a low-resolution display of the activity and flow conditions in a shoreline section of the river. The fish interface is communication technology for fish. It renders the presence or absence of the fish in its immediate vicinity, and provides an interface for humans to communicate with fish (and vice versa). Functionally, each device also contains a sonar transducer that lights up if there are fish present. A single fish swimming through the array appears as a series of lights sequentially marking its path; a school of fish will produce a drifting cloud of lights.13

Also planned is a nearby lookout station of a rather different kind than usual: The Eye-Level Observatory (EO) produces a public place to view the water at eye level. This viewing position presents the underbelly of the body of water, and stretches the surface tension across the eyes. The view from the Eye-Level

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Observatory (EO) is intended to profoundly transform the water surface, from a reflective surface or mirror into a membrane. It is an instrument to produce a gestalt[-shifting] effect, so that once a viewer has been immersed in the visceral relationship between the viewer’s body and the body of water, [s/he] will never again see the lake [only] as a surface but [also] as an active skin under which life and possibilities are teeming.14

A remarkable aspect of this project is that a by-product of the cross-species interaction could actually provide ecological services of benefit directly to the riverine biome and indirectly to any humans who may swim or fish in the lower Hudson. One possibility is that the fish could be attracted to the sensor buoys with an offering of food (pellets or flakes) that contains a PCBabsorbing agent. Through the fishes’ daily routines of eating and excreting, the toxin would then become amalgamated into a heavier compound, a state that renders the pollutant less bioavailable and results in relatively safe sedimentation. By distributing such chelates, in other words, the fish would become themselves agents of remedial action against a notorious problem of water pollution in the area. Thus, a virtuous cycle of multispecies interactivity results: humans’ aesthetic predilections (for the array’s display of lighting patterns) would contribute to allaying fishes’ hunger, which would in turn contribute to a process of cleaning filtration (via chelation), which would finally conduce toward healthier enjoyment and usage of the river by both humans and fish (as well as other organisms not immediately involved).15 What about fellow mammals, aside from the birds and fish discussed so far? The so-called bat-bar and “Bats in Place” projects speak to this kind of concern. The former, as designed by architect Laura Kurgan, involves humans having cocktails within a translucent terrace that includes imitation eaves functioning as bat-hutches with suitable attractants come the happy hours of twilight (see “Ooz Architect” at Ooz Web site). The latter is more complex: human interfaces are set up near urban bat roosts, such that people and bats can switch various (visible or infrared) lights on or off and so that they might communicate via robotic bat devices: What people can do: move the robotic bat to approach other bats; issue verbal utterances, either prerecorded or their own human interpretations; observe the bats as a larger social unit; observe particular bats more closely through the eyes of the robotic bat; listen to the bat chatter through the robotic bat, which will act as a “spotlight mike” and transform the dynamic and frequency range into human audible range. What bats can do: verbally [vocally] or physically [tangibly] respond by moving toward or away from the robotic bat; observe the humans if they care to;

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tune into human generated sounds by triggering a speaker that plays the human sounds transposed into bat frequency.16

It may appear dubious that humans actually “converse” with bats via such an ensemble of engineering. These other mammals are, after all, fairly alien in that their primary perceptual field is echolocation rather than vision (as with us)—in other words, theirs is not really a worldview but rather a soundscape. Inventionist ethology can grant (and even capitalize upon) this sort of difference between specific phenomenologies, because the kind of interspecies communication it seeks is not so much a matter of translation from one organismic idiom to another (in either direction) as it is a gambit at developing a communicative nexus or creole that evolves from, stirs up, and spurs on interactivity.17 We don’t have to teach bats human language, nor do we have to learn their dialect; instead, a new and coproduced (quasi-)linguistic system might emerge on the scene. Indeed, mutuality is a hallmark of inventionist ethology as envisaged here. The various projects I am presently explaining constitute object lessons in what Jeremijenko dubs the “architecture of reciprocity”—which designs for interaction, as opposed to such unilateral technologies and arts as hunting or photography. This approach may be used aside from, but also within, established zones of animal encounter: although Ooz proper is conceived as a paradigm for in situ interventions, “oozy” techniques might be used at institutions such as zoos (in which case, the term of art that Jeremijenko has coined would be “zooz”). When the latter type of intervention occurs (and there are plans afoot in Stockholm and San Diego), the hosting establishment opens itself to elements and ventures of radical reform and engages the possibility of self-reinvention as a potentially transformative exercise. Fully aware of institutional impediments, I would nonetheless encourage existing zoos to consider incorporating apparatus and the aspect of zooz.18 Speaking of incorporation, Jeremijenko and others are investigating the option of taking some practices of inventionist ethology public. That is to say, they are looking to establish a holding company for a particular siteinstallation (e.g., Fishface). Once the corporation comes into existence, the idea would be to allow relevant nonhumans on the board of directors (as ex officio members or para-consultants) in a bid to grant them legal standing via the convention of personhood for incorporated firms. Jeremijenko: Because corporations are granted “personhood” with the rights of an individual, and equal protection under the 14th Amendment, they provide a unique structure and opportunity to extend personhood to other nonhumans. Cor-

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porations are the only nonpersons considered [legal] “people,” whereas other forms of organization including governments, unions, not-for-profit 501-c, art museums, zoological gardens, galleries, and small unincorporated businesses do not have “rights.” Nor [usually] do other forms of life, and if they do, they are limited at best.19

Given this situation, Ooz Inc. would endeavor to circumvent the law’s blindspot regarding nonhuman animals and transcend for other organisms their current consignment to the juridical status of mere property. Even if the notion of placing nonhuman directors on the board does not eventuate, by at least upgrading other animals from stakeholders to shareholders, economic benefits may accrue that could be reinvested into protection or restoration of relevant habitats. Having presented several instances of inventionist ethology, let us now take stock of its moral status and educational promise. It may have struck some readers that the approach taken here valorizes technology to such an extent that it loses the critical capacity to gain ethical distance from the artifacted universe, in effect “letting anything go” in terms of technical mediation of animal encounter. Fortunately, this worry can be mollified if not dispelled by relying on the very exemplar already invoked—for Turner himself has offered means of making appropriate value distinctions: Good technology . . . increases and does not decrease the organized complexity of the world . . . respects the existing technology of nature, and even when adding to it does not destroy the complex order and beauty that helped it evolve and upon which it is based. Bad technology . . . destroys technology, whether in the form of the bodies of animals and plants, or in the form of our own rich material and mental culture.20

If we apply these criteria,21 the Ooz projects discussed above tend to fit fairly well in the “good technology” category. Certainly, none of them is destructive of organic or artificial technology in the senses indicated by Turner. Moreover, installations like “For the Birds” or “Fishface” as well as “Bats in Place” do in fact increase organized complexity in their respectively airy, aquatic, and/or terrestrial environments. They do this by constituting and encouraging denser nodes of interspecies networking, including the sort that bring about biocultural ecologies of animal association. Another justification of inventionist ethology, primarily pedagogical and indirectly ethical (if we take education as a moral imperative), can be constructed in the context of Steven Fesmire’s contrast between different educational paradigms and their contributions to or detractions from

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environmental learning.22 A philosopher of the pragmatist school, Fesmire makes a distinction between “fast food” and “slow food” education. Broadly speaking, the former is the sort that conduces to spiritual anorexia whereas the latter enables sustainable living. The anorexic, fast-food model is rootless in the sense that it takes place to be irrelevant for learning; it assumes that knowledge is context-free (disconnected or mechanical in nature); it keeps disciplines isolated (as if cogs in a knowledge factory); it tends to homogenize pedagogy into an educational monoculture for the sake of efficiency and measurable uniformity; it anaesthetizes and obscures awareness of relations; it is given to the pedagogical methods of content delivery and data storage; ultimately, yet more often implicitly rather than consciously, it defines success in terms of hyperconsumption (grooming of “productive citizens” who participate in and perpetuate economic status quo, a model of quantitative growth). The sustainable, slow-food model is rooted in a place-based, bioregional outlook; it promotes organic, contextual learning rich in associative cognition; it is inherently interdisciplinary and seeks integration of studies across domains of inquiry; in terms of methodological diversity, it is given to pluralism and cultivates a polyculture of education; it refines aesthetic sensibilities and discloses multiple (kinds of) relations, including so-called internal or constitutive ones; it projects a pedagogical image of teachers and students as coinquirers belonging to a larger community of knowers (a la pragmatist Charles Peirce); ultimately, and quite self-consciously, it defines success as the multifaceted ability to perceive and respond constructively to changes in complex systems of (inter)relationship—producing, in effect, not merely clever world-citizens but wise inhabitants-of-the-earth.23 Granting the assumption that education for sustainability is preferable to the alternative described above, it makes sense to increase and enhance techniques for implementation of so-called slow-food pedagogy. In this context, then, it can be seen that inventionist ethology accomplishes just that sort of development. The case studies we have surveyed are rooted in place in that they involve native fauna already at large in a given bioregion (rather than imported exotics, as per zoo contact). Contextual or associative learning is promoted by inventionist ethology—usage of Fishface, for example, encourages cognitive connections between the appreciation of lighting, knowledge of fish behavior, and understanding the nature of ecological services at stake. Typically, Ooz projects proceed on a multidisciplinary front—the robotic geese and bat interfaces, for instance, involve cybernetics/computer science, biology/zoology, anthropology/sociology, artistic design and engineering—which are integrated by the attempt at ethological performance and understanding. Inventionist ethology is quite obviously not education-

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ally monocultural or classroom-bound, as it supplies ample opportunity for experiential and even service learning in the field (which might be located right on top of a school building—think of the greenroof prairie matrix, etc.). Aesthetic sensibility is refined by appreciating the nuances of architectural design (structure and apparatus) and by heightening awareness of the sensory modalities needed for zoological interaction (in my examples, chiefly vision, audition, and haptic cues); discovery of external relations and creation of internal ones are the prime pair of goals at which inventionist ethology aims—at Fishface we can learn about polluting and restorative connections to the Hudson’s ecosystem, for example, and through its associated eye-level observatory we experience a gestalt-shift of identity such that the river’s surface becomes a membrane or nexus (partially) constitutive of an ecosystemic self.24 Sites employing the artificial geese or the bat equipment exemplify the inherently interactive nature of oozy pedagogy—not only do designers collaborate with participants in a community of inquiry, but still more radically the human and other animals’ co-production of communicative creoles comes about through reciprocal efforts at engagement and establishes a network of behavioral exchange that might be called an “epistemic neighborhood” of mutual acknowledgment. Inventionist ethology succeeds, of course, exactly to the extent that it empowers its co-participants to achieve perception and response modalities sensitive to changes in relational complexity—and so it makes earthlings more ecosophic entities.25 Some (especially country-dwellers) may look on this approach with bemusement: if biophilic tendencies of humanity are to be nourished outside of captivity contexts, then the obvious prescription is greater exposure to rural living and/or foraging lifestyles—not the crafting of sophisticated new artifice to build contrived contact between species. This objection makes a point worth keeping, namely that residence in and habitation of hinterland and relative wilderness (where possible and desirable) can augment ecopsychological health. Still, the nub that I insist upon is that the parenthetic proviso is usually not met in today’s world, where most of (human) global population lives in urban areas and where sheer numbers (of humans) would ruin the prized qualities of rural/wild zones if everyone were to relocate there. We have to deal with the crisis of cross-species encounter in citified contexts, and inventionist ethology is well suited as therapy for the deficit therein. The original theorist of Gaia, J. E. Lovelock, comments: As society became more urbanized, the proportion of information flow from the biosphere to the pool of knowledge which constitutes the wisdom of the city decreased. . . . Soon city wisdom became almost entirely centered on the

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problems of human relationships, in contrast to the wisdom of any natural tribal group, where relationships with the rest of the animate and inanimate world are still given due place.26

In light of this epistemic problem, Ooz and suchlike projects can be seen as ways to recharge biospheric information flow back into city-knowledge; the human-animal interfaces I have presented and interpreted create a cognitive loop that might be termed “eco-feedback” (biofeedback raised to the level of relational/systemic wisdom). Here it is worth noting that the inventionist enterprise under discussion enhances ethology in a significant way, for it begins to fill the gap in research of precisely urban wildlife behavior.27 It does this in an appropriately dialogic and recursive fashion, aware of and in fact utilizing the behavorial influences that subject and object have on each other as they become together a synergistic field. “The point is to see the inter-relation human/animal as constitutive of the identity of each,” critical theorist Rosi Braidotti has argued in a different yet related context, “It is therefore a relation, a transformative or symbiotic relationship that hybridizes, shifts and alters the ‘nature’ of each one.”28 And this, in conclusion, also indicates the moral upshot of the approach I advocate: inventionist ethology proffers designs for the cultivation of a sustainable, posthumanist ethos of cross-species encounter that emphasizes relational ethics as such.29

Notes 1. Martin H. Fischer, “Curmudgeon,” comp. J. Winokur, Funny Times (August 2007): 8. 2. “Evolution and the City,” Act V/Scene II (ll.43–46) of Genesis: An Epic Poem (Dallas: Saybrook, 1988), 261. 3. Much of the explanation in this passage is paraphrased from his “The Invented Landscape,” in Environmental Ethics: Divergence and Convergence, 2nd ed., R. G. Botzler and S. J. Armstrong, eds. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1993), 330–342; also in Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing Landscapes, ed. A. D. Baldwin et al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1994), 35–66. 4. Ibid., 331. 5. A hypothetical if grandiose example, science fiction on the border of technical feasibility, is Turner’s own illustration of terraforming Mars on the macro-scale of planetary bioengineering—for explanative essay, see his “Life on Mars: Cultivating a Planet—and Ourselves,” Harper’s (August 1989): 33–40; for poetic exposition, see his Genesis. 6. In this sense they partake in a Deweyan aesthetic, wherein art(work) is broadly conceived not as high-culture ornamentation or cloistered decoration but rather as any conscious endeavor that enriches experience at large; Dewey himself included the crafts in this definition, and I think it encompasses certain kinds of technology

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too (e.g., installations of inventionist ethology). Cf. Dewey’s Art as Experience (New York: Penguin, 2005 [orig. 1934]). 7. A variant of this scheme involves the generation and mobilization of virtualreality avatars that then enable human participants to conduct mimetic experiences amongst actual counterparts (see “Ooz Chair” link at Web site above). 8. Turner, “Invented Landscape,” 337. 9. Ibid. 10. Jeremijenko choreographed the site; teams of inventors for various elements included: Evo Design, Leeser Architects, Bonnetti/Kozerski, Materialab, System Architects, and The Living. 11. See, e.g., Jennifer Wolch’s contribution to the present volume. Cf. J. Wolch et al., “Trans-species Urban Theory,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13 (1995): 735–760. 12. In his Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), J. E. Lovelock, biogeologist and cyberneticist, bemoans “the extent to which the conventional wisdom of a closed urban society becomes isolated from the natural world” (135); “oozy” practices of inventionist ethology can reduce precisely this kind of alienated and alienating insularity. 13. Jeremijenko et al., “Fish Communication” at www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/ ooz/ (accessed July 21, 2007). 14. Ibid., “Waterlevel Viewer,” loc. cit. Cf. “Amphibious Architecture” at same site and “Whale Belly” at www.animalarchitecture.org/?p=458. 15. This inventionist motif of ecological services appears also in the case of robotic geese attracting specimens of the actual species, whose guano can then be used as fertilizer for farming or horticulture (as a beneficial way of alleviating the perceived nuisance of avian excrement). 16. Jeremijenko, “Case Study: High Line” (italics added) at www.nyu.edu/projects/ xdesign/ooz/bats_highline.html (accessed July 21, 2007). 17. Linguist Derek Bickerton theorizes that the Chomskian “universal grammar” has the character of a fundamental predisposition to precisely creole-type language; if so, then human biology itself may incline toward the very trajectory of communication I spotlight here (with the challenge, admittedly, of overlapping species boundaries or exploiting their permeabilities). See Gerry O’Sullivan, “Inventing Arcadia: An Interview with Frederick Turner,” The Humanist (Nov–Dec 1993), at findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_n6_v53/ai_1489335 (accessed July 5, 2007). 18. Nicole Mazur, a constructive critic, comments: “Rigid administrative rationality, which informs many organizational processes, actually favors a more conservative role for the zoo. Zoo professionals who want to incorporate more progressive ecological ideals into zoos’ principles and programs must work against these arrangements rather than be supported by them.” Undaunted, she continues: “Yet achieving such substantive environmental policy reform requires that professionals (and the citizenry alike) recognize and then challenge both long-standing and current assumptions of their institutions.” See her After the Ark? Environmental

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Policy Making and the Zoo (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 209 and 6, respectively. 19. “The Incorporation,” at www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/ooz/ (accessed July 25, 2007). 20. “Invented Landscape,” 338. 21. That we should indeed apply them follows from the intrinsic valuations of creativity and diversity, which are widely accepted as aesthetico-ethical axioms of currently common morality. 22. The rest of this paragraph is a synopsis of certain ideas presented by him under the title of “Ecological Imagination,” delivered at Fordham University (Lincoln Center), May 18, 2007. 23. The models as so described are, of course, ideal types; actual practices of education show inclinations toward one or the other as a matter of degree, rather than pure instantiation of either. 24. Cf. Freya Mathews’ The Ecological Self (London: Routledge, 1991). 25. For more context of and on environmental education, see David Orr’s Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2004) and Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992) as well as Mitchell Thomashow’s Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), esp. chap. 6. 26. Gaia, 135. 27. A notable exception is Melanie S. Thomson’s “Placing the Wild in the City: ‘Thinking with’ Melbourne’s Bats,” Society and Animals 15.1 (2007): 79–95; even this, though, is more about discursive symbology at a meta-level than about city-bat behavior itself. Cf. Annabelle Sabloff’s Reordering the Natural World: Humans and Animals in the City (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 2001), which is similarly pitched more at the hermeneutic or metaphoric level than at the primary order of literal activity. 28. Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 2007), 108. 29. Cf. Clare Palmer’s Animal Ethics in Context (New York: Columbia University, in press) and Ralph Acampora’s Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2006), esp. chs. 3f.



Afterword: Following Zootopian Visions Nicole Mazur

The last time I spent a considerable period of time thinking about the zoo, I was busy looking at their evolution and questioning how well they had realized their stated mission to help restore certain animal species and to encourage people to care more for nonhuman nature.1 Toward the end of that work, between 2001 and 2002, what did seem clear to me was that zoos (or “the Ark”) had come some way toward meeting such ambitious and admirable goals. Many people in the zoo community had been working tirelessly for decades to chart and steer a course for “the Ark” that would bring it closer to the dark-green end of a continuum of environmental values. Still, while important steps had been taken, the zoo’s journey seemed incomplete. More substantive progress was being restricted by various social, economic, environmental, and political constraints. I was left wondering “where to next” for the zoo? Ten years on, it may still be too soon to tell what waters the Ark has sailed to: Is its journey complete? Will the zoo continue to evolve along a more environmentally-friendly trajectory? Will the zoo community and the public remain satisfied that the zoo of today does not need to change any further? Irrespective of the answers to those questions, it is encouraging to see that the dialogue about zoos and human relationships with nonhuman nature is continuing. It is encouraging to hear calls for people to be more reflective about and innovative in the way we interact with animals in particular and nonhuman nature more generally. 257

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The collection of writings in Metamorphoses of the Zoo: Animal Encounter After Noah rightly challenges us to imagine a different way of relating to nonhuman nature, especially animals. The authors beseech us to consider the impact on animals of our observations, interactions, and use of them, and ask what those impacts say about who we are as a species. Metamorphoses of the Zoo suggests that our encounters with “wild” animals impose varying degrees of “captivity” on those animals. Zoos might be seen as being at one end of a spectrum of captivity. Here, human needs are primary—they drive the very existence of zoos, and various attempts are made to accommodate animal needs within that basic premise. At the other end of the spectrum wild animals have a right to exist in and of themselves, they are left to live their lives relatively unfettered by human interference, and therefore human encounters with them occur more by chance. Collectively, the zootopian visions presented offer two main pathways for change. Some of the authors focus largely on identifying the ethical, moral, and practical weaknesses of the zoo and how it might be modified. The other authors are less focused on the zoo per se and spend more time considering other spaces in which we interact with (by chance or with intent) nonhuman nature more generally and “wild” animals in particular (e.g., ecotourism, urban parks). The authors struggle with the act of confining animals—be that literally (keeping them in an enclosure) or figuratively (through our unseeing gaze). The morality of imposing captivity on wild animals in zoos is questioned strongly. Irrespective of even the best of intentions, confining wild animals in zoos often fails to meet the needs of individual animals, compromises their “true animality,” and often fails to realize conservation goals on a significant scale. After reading the works of Kemmerer, Fawcett and Warkentin, Rollin, Lulka, Margodt, and others before them, one would really be inclined to wonder if zoos are better at meeting human needs than they are at meeting other animals’ needs. And one might even need to consider how beneficial zoos really are for humans, given that the symbolic value of confining animals can send an unpalatable message back to us about how we consistently privilege ourselves above other animals. Metamorphoses of the Zoo makes important suggestions for using progressive principles and practices in zoo reform, some more radical than others. Principles of reciprocity, accommodating the full range of animals’ needs, including the need to choose, underpin the recommendations to change: • The emphasis of existing zoo collections: reduce the number of species held, shift the emphasis to smaller species whose needs can be more readily accommodated within the confines of urban spaces;

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• the existing spaces and the design of new spaces to reflect more closely those zoos/wildlife parks that feature endemic flora and fauna and use large naturalistic enclosures (or no enclosures) to display animals, which gives animals more space (and therefore more choice) and potentially sends more healthy messages to human visitors; and • the very existence of zoos by phasing them out and replacing them with welfare sanctuaries that allow animals used by zoos, circuses, and research to live out the remainder of their lives in more appropriate spaces. The theme of minimizing anthropomorphism continues in the work of Acampora, Bradshaw et al., Chrulew, Pedersen and Dian, Malamud, and Wolch. They look further afield from the zoo and make suggestions for changing the nature of human-animal encounters in other spaces. In these brave new worlds our heightened sensitivity to animals means that we have created innovative places and spaces where—if we are lucky—we might see “wild” animals. For example, the “architecture of reciprocity” between humans and animals is becoming a fundamental principle of planning theory and practice and has driven the rise of “urban renaturalization.” In these cases, our chances of encountering animals might even be increased, because there are now more spaces in urban environments that have been designed to meet humans’ and other animals’ needs. There might also be vast tracts of environmentally valuable and protected land that essentially morph zoos, botanical gardens, national parks, and forests into a functioning ecosystem, which in turn would support scientific and educational endeavors and local economies. All the ideas for change in Metamorphoses of the Zoo are exciting and important. They give us plenty food for thought, helping us imagine new relationships with and spaces for other species that are more considerate of their needs. These ideas and examples are fundamental to helping us understand where we are now and where we might get to. They inspire us and provide us with some guidance for our “voyage,” should we collectively choose to take it! Yet at this juncture I feel compelled to step away from thinking more about the “whats” of a future in which humans and animals interact in more mutually beneficial ways, and delve instead into the “how” of our possibility of getting there in the first place. The notion of change is at the very heart of Metamorphoses of the Zoo. If we are abandoning the more traditional ideas and practices of “the Ark,” we need strong, durable, and more contemporary vehicles (or vessels!) to lift us out of our current inertia and move us steadily

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along a different pathway. We also need high-quality maps to guide us in the right direction (toward an appropriate destination). Finally, we need fair and equitable processes for determining who gets to help plan and steer that voyage. Our ability to realize these zootopian visions depends in part on improving our understanding of how people’s identities (their basic values, attitudes, beliefs, and corresponding behaviors) differ, how such differences influence our relationships with nonhuman nature, and what kind of relations tend to dominate society today. Each individual develops perspective on the world in the context of a particular culture and society. These mental characteristics and associated actions are learned as part of the broader processes of acculturation and socialization. Factors influencing people’s values and attitudes include a wide range of aspects of their society, culture, and immediate situation—including their family context and lifestyle, religious beliefs, the values and attitudes of the groups they mix with, and their exposure to other social influences like the mass media. As they mature, people often tend to seek out particular groups and roles (professional, interest-based, political, etc.) that are consistent with their values, and experience in these groups or roles in turn tends to reinforce their tendency to perceive problems and solutions in the ways that are typical of their peers or colleagues. The outcome of such complex social processes is that people, groups, and organizations perceive and approach problems, such as how to manage our environment or how to design and maintain zoos, in similar and different ways. The way problems are perceived and framed influences how these problems are understood, who participates in problem-solving and how, and what values will be favored by actions and results.2 Eventually, different standpoints are reconciled in some way when contradictions or opposing sets of beliefs and actions clash in societal decision-making settings or systems. As Pedersen and Dian note, realizing a vision like the Earth Trusts requires a critical mass of particular voices that support such “post-zoo developments.” I would suggest that the outcome of these contests to date is that technocentric or materialistic values still tend to dominate our environmental decisions, including those relating to wildlife conservation, zoos, etc. These values tend to drive more negative environmental attitudes and behaviors, are unsupportive of social justice and equality, and reward manipulative, competitive behaviors.3 While Western society has made considerable progress in affording nonhuman nature greater consideration, it would be fair to say that the ideas promoted in Metamorphoses of the Zoo are not fully supported by and challenge the kind of values that dominate that society today.

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One example is the New South Wales Government’s recent $40 million investment in renovating Taronga Zoo’s elephant enclosure and then importing nine Asian elephants from Thailand. Zoo critics, like the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), were disappointed that zoo officials seemed to be—once again—prioritizing commercial value and imperatives (using high-profile species in the hopes of drawing in ever more visitors) over animal welfare concerns (confining such large animals in a city environment). The way we value and interact with nonhuman nature is always at the heart of debates about environmental and natural resource issues. Conflicts about these issues are among the most intractable problems facing our society.4 One need only consider the current debate about climate change to see how difficult it is to shift the power imbalance away from “climate change skeptics” to “climate change believers.” Protecting ecosystems, using natural resources wisely, creating animal-friendly spaces in urban environments are really about improving our relationships with nonhuman nature, which is extremely challenging. This involves a fundamental questioning of our traditional, deeply entrenched values and political and economic arrangements and relationships, which in turn requires some profound identity and paradigm changes (e.g., questioning the worth of unrestricted economic growth, posing new questions about how institutions should function, and improving the equity of planning and decision-making systems).5 As social movements, environmentalism and animal advocacy have helped us to challenge the dominant paradigm and realize some zootopian principles and practices. We still have a long journey ahead of us—one fraught by the stormy seas and navigational challenges of getting past the entrenched positions and conflicts that characterize environmental and animal welfare issues. Keeping our vessel seaworthy might be helped by continually reminding ourselves that we are part of a social process of change. Understanding the more environmentally problematic aspects of human identity and the social structures that enable and sustain those values and behaviors will help us (researchers, policy makers, conservation managers, citizens) to bring about more environmentally favorable outcomes.6 Achieving further change requires that we systematically and simultaneously explore the tacit or explicit threats embodied in proposals like Metamorphoses of the Zoo that trigger (consciously and/or unconsciously) people’s defense mechanisms and that we identify ways to sensitively address concerns in a manner that encourages acceptance and support. We must also consider what people value and what potential there is to find common ground, and then move toward achieving shared aspirations.7

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Notes 1. Nicole Mazur, After the Ark? Environmental Policy-Making and the Zoo (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001). 2. L. V. Bardwell, “Problem Framing: A Perspective on Environmental Problem Solving,” Environmental Management 15, no. 5 (1991): 603–612; T. W. Clark, A. R. Willard, and C. M. Cromley, Foundations of Natural Resources Policy and Management (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); R. Harding, Environmental Decisionmaking: The Role of Scientists, Engineers and the Public (Leichardt, Australia: The Federation Press, 1998); S. Swaffield, “Frames of Reference: A Metaphor for Analyzing and Interpreting Attitudes of Environmental Policy Makers and Policy Influencers,” Environmental Management 22, no. 4 (1998): 495–504. 3. Kasser et al. (2007), as cited in T. Crompton and T. Kasser, Meeting Environmental Challenges: The Role of Human Identity (WWF-UK, 2009), 65. 4. N. A. Connelly and B. A. Knuth, “Using the Co-orientation Model to Compare Community Leaders’ and Local Residents’ Views about Hudson River Ecosystem Restoration,” Society and Natural Resources 15 (2002): 933–948; B. Shindler and M. Brunson, “Changing Natural Resource Paradigms in the United States: Finding Political Reality in Academic Theory,” in Handbook of Global Environmental Policy and Administration, ed. B. Soden (New York: Marcel Decker Publishing, 1999); J. A. Taylor and R. W. Braithwaite, “Interactions between Land Uses in Australia’s Savannas: It’s Largely in the Mind,” in The Future of Tropical Savannas, ed. A. Ash (Collingwood, Australia: CSIRO, 1996). 5. Crompton and Kasser; L. Salzmann, “Ecology and Social Change,” New Politics 6, no. 3 (Summer 1997), www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue23/salzma23.htm. 6. Crompton and Kesser. 7. J. A. Creighton, T. Pinney, and S. Scott, Lets’s Get to It: Getting beneath Difficult Environmental Resource Debates (Minnesota: Harwood Group and Great Plains Partnership, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, 1997); Taylor and Braithwaite.



Index

affect, 87, 116–17, 129–30, 194, 207 Agamben, Giorgio, 193, 201–2 amphibians, 14, 16, 50, 86, 95 animal agency, 25–26, 29, 47, 91, 94, 109–11, 115–17, 126, 142–43, 224, 248; representations of, 72, 76; uncontainability of, 123–24, 128, 130, 134 animal culling, 26–27, 41–42, 157, 204, 217n animal feeding, 51–52, 112, 126, 137, 202, 248; in the wild, 87–90, 115– 117, 121n animal images, 79 animal mental illness: depression, 50, 62, 158; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, 49, 158 animal resistance, 111, 118, 134–35, 198, 208 animal rights movement, 2, 83, 184–86, 195, 233, 237 animal salutary effects on humans, 58, 89, 143–44, 153

animal television programs, 57, 83–84, 88–89, 154 animal telos, 61–62 animal welfare, 21–32, 46, 92–94, 115, 126, 143, 209–10, 223, 238, 261; public concern for, 57, 154, 230 anthropocentrism, 1, 16, 154, 194, 199, 207–8, 221, 224, 235, 258–59 Aristotle, 61, 134 ark model, 7, 11–12, 17, 28, 105, 127, 213; Noah’s Ark, 103–4, 107–10, 195 art as strategy for animal interaction, 69, 206, 245–54 artefactual animals. See authenticity of animal nature Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), 12–15, 43, 119n, 139. See also international zoo community authenticity: of animal encounter, 2–3, 60, 87–89, 95, 113–18, 185, 195, 206, 246–47; of animal nature, 61– 62, 67–68, 77–80, 92–93, 196–98, 230

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Index

Barad, Karen, 109–10, 113, 117 Baudrillard, Jean, 193–94 behavioral bottleneck, 19, 24, 26, 156–60 behavioral enrichment, 8, 58, 137–38, 184, 202 Berger, John, 76, 86, 105, 125, 194–95, 198, 207, 209 Bhabha, Homi, 111 captive breeding programs, 12–13, 27, 42–43, 86, 95, 132; viability of, 18, 26, 105 captive carnivory, 51–54 capture of wild animals, 28, 37–48, 79, 109, 132, 201; moral justifications of, 39, 106, 147n, 153–54 chimpanzees, 29–30, 47 climate change, 91, 95, 180, 184, 261 conceptual dualisms, 90, 108, 197, 231 conservation, 20, 85, 93, 184, 203; as advertising, 205; failed strategies of, 20; new conceptualizations of, 131– 34; of endangered species, 11–14, 42–48, 85–86, 105–6, 127, 153–54, 203–4, 221–23, 234 critical animal futures, 173–75; research process of, 175–77

of animals in, 77; zoo models of, 20, 85–86, 92, 199 elephants, 31, 38–39, 41–42, 47–49, 135, 139, 157–58, 190n, 261 embodied experience, 4, 91, 116, 173, 225, 232–33 endangerment, 11–12, 127, 234 environment enrichment of zoos. See behavioral enrichment; dynamic zoo mobility environment protection. See habitat preservation ethological science, 187, 194, 210, 245–55; “inventionist ethology” definition, 246 feral culture, 160–66, 234, 247–48 Foucault, Michel, 196–202, 208 futures studies. See critical animal futures genetic diversity, 12–13, 17–28, 146n, 184; anthropocentric interest in, 43, 127; epistemic status of, 127–28, 203–4; genetic reservoir, 106–7 Gombe National Park, 29, 159 gorillas, 19–20, 31–32 Greer, Germaine, 84, 89–90 Grosz, Elizabeth, 129–30, 142

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, 87, 130, 194 Derrida, Jacques, 193, 214 dolphins, 39–40, 47, 88–92, 115–17, 121n, 153, 159 domestication, 3, 28–30, 58, 63–64, 222–25 Dürer, Albrecht, 77–80 dynamic zoo mobility, 137–44

habitat preservation, 19, 46, 50, 105, 178 Haraway, Donna, 104–7, 118, 119n, 194, 211, 225 Hediger, Heini, 193, 202, 211 Human-animal coconstitution, 69, 194, 196, 209, 223–26, 250–51, 254 human-damaged animals, 46–49. See also sanctuary model

Earth Trust vision, 177–88 ecological governmentality, 206–7, 229 ecotourism, 87, 155–60, 172, 181, 205–6 education: alternative models of, 177– 78, 180–82, 185–86, 251–52; role

imagination of animals, 67–68, 77–80 individualism in conception of animal. See species status versus individual status international zoo community, 12, 85

Index

intersubjective interaction, 114 intraspecific animal violence, 23, 25, 39, 158 Jamieson, Dale, 21, 58, 60, 195, 218n Jeremijenko, Natalie, 245–56 Kapoor, Ilan, 111–12 kinesthetic sense, 129, 138 Kruger National Park, 60–61, 157 labyrinthine zoo. See dynamic zoo mobility Lee, Keekok, 1, 86, 92, 196 Lewontin, Richard, 107, 109 lions, 29, 156–57 menageries, 18, 60, 125, 171, 186, 199–201 “The Monkeys,” 70–75 Moore, Marianne, 67–80 national parks. See wildlife parks niche construction, 128, 141 objectification of animals, 74–75, 108, 152–53, 200, 223 ontological dependency on animals. See human–animal coconstruction orcas, 39–40, 107–8, 111, 114, 159 Ota Benga, 109–111, 153 pathological contact, 60 phenomenology of zoo experience, 57–59, 61–63, 71 Pilanesberg National Park, 156–57 Plumwood, Val, 91, 107–8 polar bears, 22–25, 62, 139 power relations in zoos, 198–209 public sentiment, 90–91, 126, 176, 183, 260; in the urban progressive movement, 230–231, 237–238



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reciprocity, 69, 250–251 relational ontology, 109–110 reintroduction programs, 17–19, 44, 95, 133, 197 rhinoceros, 78–80 Rockingham Dolphin Swim, 115–18 sanctuary model, 30–31, 47; Hohenwald Elephant Sanctuary, 31, 47–49 seeing of animals, 69, 87, 180–183, 196, 211; as an act of power, 59, 151–53, 210; and capacity of animals to withdraw from sight, 26, 112, 179, 249; diminishing the importance of, 124–27; and the gaze of the animal, 113–15, 161–66, 209; and the logic of saturation, 127, 138–39, 143–44; within “exhibitionary axis,” 199–201, 204–6 species status versus individual status, 21–22, 45–46, 107, 187, 203, 237 spectacular framing, 61 stereotypy, 24, 62, 211; as manifestation of animacy, 135–37 stewardship, 85–92, 178–79 surplus animals. See animal culling technology as mediation with animals, 246–47, 250–51; “Smell Suits,” 179–80; video cameras. See video technology translocation of wild animals, 20, 30, 156, 178 trans-species living. See feral culture Tudge, Colin, 12, 16, 204 urbanization’s impact on animals, 221– 23, 228, 230–33, 253–54 veterinary care, 49–50, 58, 105 video technology, 64–65, 88–89, 179

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visitor behavior regulation, 88, 115–16, 181

wolves, 44–45 wormhole concept, 139–40

whales, 5, 40, 87, 108, 111–18, 158–59 wildlife corridors, 178–180, 229, 236 wildlife parks: as extractive reserves, 28; as model, 29, 65, 86, 156–160, 196, 227; as sites for transformation, 178–182; parks. See Gombe National Park; Kruger National Park; Pilanesberg National Park; Rockingham Dolphin Swim Wilson, Edward O., 12, 16, 193, 241n

zoo: abolition, 54, 194–95; architecture, 1, 104, 112, 172, 184; as experimental sites, 212–13; popularity of, 85–86; pornographic function of, 3, 63–65; space allocation for charismatic megavertebrates, 14, 15, 16, 25, 210, 258. See also ark model; behavioral enrichment; conservation; dynamic zoo mobility; education; sanctuary mode



About the Contributors

Ralph R. Acampora, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University, conducts research in the fields of environmental philosophy, bioethics, and animal studies. He has authored Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), coedited A Nietzschean Bestiary (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), has published work in a variety of books and journals, and is a member of the editorial boards for Society and Animals as well as Humanimalia. As a result of recent researches, he tries to avoid (at least being seen at) zoos. G. A. Bradshaw, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of The Kerulos Center (www.kerulos.org). She founded the field of trans-species psychology with the discovery of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in wild elephants, the topic of her book Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us About Humanity (Yale University Press, 2009). She works with severely psychologically distressed animals who have suffered captivity and for the promotion of wildlife cultural restoration and self-determination. Chilla Bulbeck is emeritus professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Adelaide. She has published widely on issues of gender and difference, most recently Sex, Love and Feminism in the Asia Pacific: A Crosscultural Study of Young People’s Attitudes (Routledge, 2009). Her research has also engaged with the meaning of animals in advanced industrialized societies, 267

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About the Contributors

leading to the publication of Facing the Wild: Ecotourism, Conservation and Animal Encounters by Earthscan in 2005. With Sandra Bowdler, she has published a paper on the international debate over the hunting of the grindradráp or pilot whales in the Faroes (Australian Archaeology 67 [2008]). She lives at the beach in Perth where she sees dolphins, whales, stingrays, and ospreys much less often than she would like. Matthew Chrulew is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He is writing the volume Mammoth for Reaktion Books, and has published a number of essays and short stories. See: www.ecologicalhumanities.org/ chrulew.html. Natalie Dian is an organizational consultant with over 30 years experience working with people. She has worked on environmental scanning, trend analysis, scenarios, and visions. She has developed Basic Values Charts, a method for helping individuals and organizations to identify and articulate their values and she has written a number of articles about futures studies and values published by professional journals. Dian is continuing her privately funded research on the theory of foresight styles. She published her introductory article entitled, “Foresight Styles Assessment: A Theory Based Study in Competency and Change” (www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-3/A05.pdf) in February 2009. Debra Durham is an ethologist who specializes in primate psychology and behavior. She serves as a Senior Research Scientist with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, D.C. Her study seeks to understand how primates and other animals respond to trauma as well as how human guardians and caregivers can support the recovery process. Durham’s current research is focused on chimpanzees who live in sanctuaries. Her work has been printed in New Scientist, Chronicle of Higher Education, USA Today, Financial Times, and Chicago Tribune. Leesa Fawcett is Associate Professor in Environmental Studies and Coordinator of Graduate Diploma in Environmental/Sustainability Education, with the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Her work ambles through the fields of environmental and cultural studies with a particular focus on the relationships between human beings and other animals. For a long time she has been fascinated by animal subjectivities and cultures—how certain animals are considered and by whom. She has worked largely on the

About the Contributors 

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study of wild animals but is intrigued by feral, captive, domestic, and companion animal relationships. Lisa Kemmerer is the author of In Search of Consistency, which won the International Critical Animal Studies Book Award in 2006, and a poetry chapbook, Curly Tails and Cloven Hooves (Finishing Line Press, 2008). She has also written or edited several upcoming books, including Religion and Animals (Oxford University Press), Women as Animal Advocates and Activists (University of Illinois Press), Call to Compassion (Lantern), Primate People (University of Utah), The Bible and the Beasts and Buddhism and the Beasts (all expected later in 2010). Lisa is a philosopher-activist, artist, and lover of wild places, who has hiked, biked, kayaked, backpacked, and traveled widely. She currently teaches at Montana State University-Billings. David Lulka is an itinerant geographer, who has lately haunted the hallways and queried the classes of several institutions of higher education in California. His research has touched upon many species, but has most intensively examined the ongoing reintroduction of American bison in the United States since the end of the nineteenth century. Recent publications include a consideration of roadkill in Emotion, Society and Space, a critique of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man in Animals and Agency, and an exposition of an ethics of extension in Ethics, Place, and Environment. Randy Malamud is Professor of English at Georgia State University. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (1998), Poetic Animals and Animal Souls (2003), and A Cultural History of Animals in the Modern Age (2007). He is a patron of the Captive Animals’ Protection Society (CAPS) and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. He serves on the editorial boards of Society & Animals, Brill’s Human-Animal Studies book series, and Palgrave Macmillan’s Animal Ethics book series. He is an international associate of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies at the University of Canterbury. He writes frequently for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Web site: www .english.gsu.edu/people.php?req=malamud. Koen Margodt is an ethicist with a special interest in animal ethics. He is the author of The Welfare Ark: Suggestions for a Renewed Policy in Zoos (VUB Press, 2000), in which he argues that zoos should be transformed into sanctuaries. In 2005 he obtained a Ph.D. in moral philosophy from Ghent University,

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About the Contributors

Belgium, on the moral status of nonhuman great apes and is currently preparing a book on that topic. Nicole Mazur is Principal Consultant for ENVision Environmental Consulting and Adjunct Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University’s Institute for Land, Water, and Society. She has a long-standing interest in understanding the different ways that people interact with each other in making decisions about how we value the natural environment and use its resources. Her passion for working with people to build a more sustainable world has driven her work with governments, industry, and communities, encouraging an increased awareness of self-in-context and critical thinking. Mazur was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian National University, where she wrote After the Ark? Environmental Policymaking and the Zoo (Melbourne University Press, 2001). She has managed diverse projects and programs covering a range of community engagement and resource management issues. Helena Pedersen holds a Ph.D. in education and is a researcher in the School of Education at Malmö University. Her primary research interests include critical animal studies, critical theory, critical pedagogy, and posthumanism. She is author of Animals in Schools: Processes and Strategies in HumanAnimal Education (Purdue University Press). Other recent works appear in the volumes Social Justice, Peace, and Environmental Education (Routledge, 2009), Global Harms: Ecological Crime and Speciesism (Nova Science Publishers, 2008), and Values and Democracy in Education for Sustainable Development (Liber, 2008). Pedersen received the American Sociological Association’s award for Distinguished Graduate Student Scholarship (Animals and Society Section) in 2006. See her Web site: www.gender.uu.se/node286 Bernard E. Rollin is University Distinguished Professor, Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Professor of Animal Sciences, and University Bioethicist at Colorado State University. He is one of the leading scholars in animal rights and animal consciousness and has lectured over 1,300 times all over the world in twenty-eight countries. He was a major architect of the 1985 U.S. Federal laws protecting laboratory animals. Rollin is the author of fifteen books, including Animal Rights and Human Morality and The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain and Scientific Change, Farm Animal Welfare, Veterinary Medical Ethics: Theory and Cases, and over 500 articles. He has edited a major two-volume work, The Experimental Animal in Biomedical Research. He writes a popular monthly column on veterinary ethics for the Canadian Veterinary Journal and edits an ethics column for Veterinary Forum.

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Rollin served on the Pew National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production and serves on the Institute for Laboratory Animal Resources Council of the National Academy of Sciences. He has won numerous U.S. and international awards, including the AVMA Humane Award (2007). Barbara Smuts is Professor of Biopsychology at the University of Michigan. She uses perspectives derived from evolutionary theory, studies of complex systems, and developmental research to examine the dynamics and functions of long-term social relationships. She focuses on social behavior in animals such as primates, wolves, and domestic dogs. Topics of her current interest include play, social reciprocity, cooperation, greetings, conflict resolution, emotions, and mood. Smuts edited Primate Societies (University of Chicago Press, 1987) and authored Sex and Friendship in Baboons (Harvard University Press, 1999). She has written articles on animal being in a variety of scientific and multidisciplinary contexts. Traci Warkentin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Hunter College and is a member of the advisory board for the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities. Her research interests include human-animal relations, environmental ethics, environmental and geographic education, and animal and cultural geographies. She is currently investigating opportunities for reciprocity in whale-human encounters and best practices for environmental education in aquariums, involving extensive fieldwork in the U.S. and Canada. Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of her work, she has published articles in Ethics and the Environment, the Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, AI & Society, entries in the Encyclopedia of HumanAnimal Relationships, as well as book chapters on methods for studying animal minds and on whale agency in captivity. Jennifer Wolch is Dean of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley and the William W. Wurster Chair of City and Regional Planning. She was the founding director of the University of Southern California’s Center for Sustainable Cities, where she also served as Professor of Geography. Her research focuses on metropolitan sprawl, physical activity and urban design, urban environmental justice and political ecology, and society-animals relations. With Jody Emel, she edited Animal Geographies: Place, Politics and Identity in the Nature/Culture Borderlands (Verso, 1998), and has published articles and book chapters on population diversity and attitudes toward animals, racialization, and animal practices, and the place of animals in the city.