Although he made a good point to reiterate what zoo staff told him about how they help endangered species and work for the good of the animals, a lot of what's in this book made me feel dubious about zoos for the first time- usually I enjoy visiting them.
Most of the time I appreciated the author's attempts to imagine what the animals were thinking, feeling or perceiving in certain moments, but I found his constant comparison of human behavior to chimpanzees (especially in terms of males seeking high status) annoying- it just started to get old. The appendix has detailed notes about sources for all the described scenes and conversations, very thorough. It's all based on six years of research- four of which the reporter spent in visiting the zoo and going behind-the-scenes. Some other animals featured in the book are the manatees which the zoo rehabilitates and releases into the wild, patas monkeys that escape off their island and run around the outskirts of the city for weeks, and endangered frogs being bred in captivity. Quite a lot about the zoo director's decisions and actions, how it impacted the workers, the animals, even how his wife felt about things. This book, like the other, also had a lot about how inner operations and politics, but it felt more focused.
There was also a lot of conflict among the zoo staff- some wanted direct contact methods used with the animals, others pushed for new methods that kept the keepers and staff safer from the elephants. The zoo's acquisition of these elephants caused a huge outcry from animal welfare groups. Main thread going through the book was about the elephants- brought over from Swaziland to spare them from being killed in a cull. The tiger- beautiful and always fierce- even to the older, larger male tigers they bought in hoping to be her mate- met a tragic end after getting out of her enclosure one day. The shuffling of hierarchy among the half dozen chimps at the zoo as some aged and younger ones came in, was pretty fascinating. There's also a lot about a certain chimpanzee who had lived in the zoo a very long time, seen many changes- but started his life raised in a private home, so he had some confusion including a fixation on human females instead of his own species. In this book, a few animals get most of the focus- tigers and elephants.
0 kommentar(er)
