A callow youth could be imagined who considered a museum excursion quite as good as, possibly superior to, visiting the zoo. It is, after all, common practice nowadays for museums to have large animal exhibits packed into conveniently browse-able indoor displays - thoroughly sheltered from the variable weather of the seasons.
It true, of course, that the museum animals do lack a rather distinctive quality: which is to say that they're dead -- and stuffed! The truth is though, recalling from my childhood, many of the zoos I visited had animals which were so inanimate, they might well have been stuffed.
One can say now though, with some relief, that behind us now is the days when zoos were largely animal museums. In fact, it's almost come to the point that the barometer for measuring the best zoos in America is precisely the degree to which one distinguishes itself from these older model zoos.
The best zoos now are not storage displays - warehouses with bars - but active participants in the cultivation and preservation of the earth's wildlife. They have facilities and missions for research and enterprise to help preserve wildlife in its natural habitat.
The result of these mission defining initiatives is a symbiosis: the lessons learned about optimum wildlife habitat preservation enables more rigorous habitat design within the modern zoo. This creates an environment far better suited to the zoo's animals. The result is a greatly more stimulating and rewarding experience for everyone involved.
As zoo animals have the experience of living in environments more closely fit with their evolved dispositions, their natural liveliness is invigorated. This leads to animals with energy and curiosity. Such animals are active and involved with their environment and each other.
Not only does this make for psychologically and physically healthier conditions for the animals, but it provides a more enjoyable zoo-going experience for us. The energy and vitality of animals living in a stimulating environment, sculpted to their evolutionary needs, means we get to see animals that are alive and engaged. This is exciting in itself.
Furthermore, as the animals' living experience is so much better suited to their evolved disposition, such zoos become far more effective learning opportunities than ever could have been the old stand-and-gawk zoos of my youth. This is a wonderful development for all zoo guests.
One of the great outcomes of this new style zoo has been the construction of far vaster ranges for the animals to live within. This improvement in the living conditions of the animals, though, has posed challenges regarding the means to allow zoo visitors to experience the animals in this new habitat, without undermining its initial virtues. Leaders in the zoo community addressed these challenges with various kinds of carry-through technology and process reorganization. These have included monorails, safari tours and walk through zones.
The best zoos in America , or elsewhere, are characterized by this kind of synthesis. A conservationist mission, revised facility designs, and innovative applications of technology dovetail into an entirely new kind of institutional style that is not unfairly described as a zoological renaissance.
This renaissance allows zoo visitors to have experiences as rich in their learning opportunities as in their sheer exotic wonder. In the process, they inspire in us a sense of awe for the wonders of nature while providing us that rare opportunity for communion with another life: one so different from our own yet also, as an inevitable consequence of our common evolutionary heritage, in some uncanny way also strangely like us.
This is the extraordinary magic of the best zoos: they marry the insights of science and technology to create a sense of the sublime.
It true, of course, that the museum animals do lack a rather distinctive quality: which is to say that they're dead -- and stuffed! The truth is though, recalling from my childhood, many of the zoos I visited had animals which were so inanimate, they might well have been stuffed.
One can say now though, with some relief, that behind us now is the days when zoos were largely animal museums. In fact, it's almost come to the point that the barometer for measuring the best zoos in America is precisely the degree to which one distinguishes itself from these older model zoos.
The best zoos now are not storage displays - warehouses with bars - but active participants in the cultivation and preservation of the earth's wildlife. They have facilities and missions for research and enterprise to help preserve wildlife in its natural habitat.
The result of these mission defining initiatives is a symbiosis: the lessons learned about optimum wildlife habitat preservation enables more rigorous habitat design within the modern zoo. This creates an environment far better suited to the zoo's animals. The result is a greatly more stimulating and rewarding experience for everyone involved.
As zoo animals have the experience of living in environments more closely fit with their evolved dispositions, their natural liveliness is invigorated. This leads to animals with energy and curiosity. Such animals are active and involved with their environment and each other.
Not only does this make for psychologically and physically healthier conditions for the animals, but it provides a more enjoyable zoo-going experience for us. The energy and vitality of animals living in a stimulating environment, sculpted to their evolutionary needs, means we get to see animals that are alive and engaged. This is exciting in itself.
Furthermore, as the animals' living experience is so much better suited to their evolved disposition, such zoos become far more effective learning opportunities than ever could have been the old stand-and-gawk zoos of my youth. This is a wonderful development for all zoo guests.
One of the great outcomes of this new style zoo has been the construction of far vaster ranges for the animals to live within. This improvement in the living conditions of the animals, though, has posed challenges regarding the means to allow zoo visitors to experience the animals in this new habitat, without undermining its initial virtues. Leaders in the zoo community addressed these challenges with various kinds of carry-through technology and process reorganization. These have included monorails, safari tours and walk through zones.
The best zoos in America , or elsewhere, are characterized by this kind of synthesis. A conservationist mission, revised facility designs, and innovative applications of technology dovetail into an entirely new kind of institutional style that is not unfairly described as a zoological renaissance.
This renaissance allows zoo visitors to have experiences as rich in their learning opportunities as in their sheer exotic wonder. In the process, they inspire in us a sense of awe for the wonders of nature while providing us that rare opportunity for communion with another life: one so different from our own yet also, as an inevitable consequence of our common evolutionary heritage, in some uncanny way also strangely like us.
This is the extraordinary magic of the best zoos: they marry the insights of science and technology to create a sense of the sublime.
About the Author:
Mitchell Jone's top five list of the best zoos in America is a must read when you're planning a family trip around a zoo holiday. Also, you'll enjoy our YouTube video .
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