Zoo Culture Paperback – December 1, 1998

A great book on rethinking what zoos are in modern culture.

This book is really horrible. The authors purport to write about what the existence of zoos means about humans. That would be a wonderful and important thing for them to write about, but they are so narcissistic and so anthropocentric that most of the book is meaningless at best, and more to the point promotes the sort of mindset that inevitably leads to the imprisonment and extirpation of nonhuman animals. The authors actually argue AGAINST giving these caged animals larger cages (while not, unfortunately, arguing against caging them at all), by saying that because the creatures generally stay in one part of the cage, they don't NEED a larger territory, and, incredibly, cite that if you lock someone in an office over a weekend with lots of pencils and books that they might not get bored. I'm sure you can see the fallacies: these creatures are not locked in zoos for the weekend, and I dare say that just because the authors spend most of their time in their little offices that they would not want to be locked in there forever. Their argument against this? That we must not "project" onto (nonhuman) animals the dissatisfaction we would feel if we were so caged. But the authors miss the point entirely: we don't need to "project" this dissatisfaction: we can merely observe that zoos drive animals insane. But the authors are more interested in their own theories and in maintaining their own perception of humans as separate from and superior to other beings than they are in recognizing the independent and willful existence of these others, or indeed, recognizing that they exist at all.I could cite dozens of examples, but I'll just do one more, which is even more obscene. The authors ask why wildlife should be preserved, and then answer their own question in a way that makes their arrogance and stupidity especially clear: "Our answer is that the human world would be impoverished, for animals are preserved solely for human benefit, because human beings have decided they want them to exist for human pleasure. The notion that they are preserved for their sakes is a peculiar one, for it implies that animals might wish a certain condition to endure. It is, however, nonsensical for humans to imagine that animals might want to continue the existence of their species."This book is a prime example of the narcissismm, stupidity, and arrogance that is causing industrial civilization to kill the planet. It's a horrid, horrid book.