I remember watching a troupe of baboons at the zoo in Paris when I was young. Some kind of fight broke out among a few of the animals. It ended with one of the adults grabbing an infant baboon and running back and forth over the scenery, dragging the screaming infant over the molded concrete rocks. I'm not sure if this killed the baby or not. The zookeepers either weren't aware of this or adopted a laissez faire attitude as you suggest.
I was about twelve or thirteen at the time, so for me it was definitely educational, if disturbing. A lot of smaller children were watching the ordeal too, and many of them were crying by the end.
Ah, baboons are bad for children. Alcohol and baboons are fit only for adults. State-issued ID is required to visit the liquor store and the baboon exhibit. Soon to come: trigger warnings on the baboon enclosure. And on Jane Austen and the complete Bronte oeuvre.
From what I understood from the article, they closed the exhibit because they didn't want the visitors to see the (potentially unsettling/traumatizing) injuries on the baboons. Which actually sounds reasonable to me.
At something like 4 or 5 years old I lived in Pittsburgh. The zoo had an elephant with a red eye that terrified me. These were the days of bars and chains and up close displays so you could see right into its horrible red eye and after it tore aside the bars and snapped its chains it could easily destroy you. (Note: 4 or 5 years old). The elephants were one of my brothers favorites so we spent a lot of time there. I can still see that eye after more than half a lifetime, I expect I'll still see it at the end. (LOTR could have had a much more ominous eye.) I spent a lot of time looking at the animal opposite the aisle pretending there was no elephant, it was in a low cage, I have no recollection of what it was, maybe a marsupial? Now I can hear the elephant shifting its weight back and forth behind me.
Point being, eventually… A zoo probably does not want 4 year old children looking at a baboon with the side of its face torn away to expose the bone. In this case, "think of the children".
Children all over the world participate in animal slaughter ever day. That's just a normal part of being a human (historically). Only recently has our society hidden that from view. Now as a result, we're becoming increasingly crueless about the realities of survial.
I agree, but personally it has been somewhat emotionally taxing that this deer season I've had to cut two throats. Too much bow hunting seems to have left me a poorer shot with a gun.
At some level, however, if I'm not comfortable cutting the throat of an animal that is staring at me in fear, how comfortable should I be eating meat?
Totally agree wrt 4-year olds - but perhaps it should be up to the parents to decide what age is appropriate to show their kids the more gory aspects of wild life (if they choose to do it at all), rather than closing the whole exhibit? For older teenagers and adults, there is a bit of science to be learned there.
When I was 5 or so, a baby elephant in the children's section of the Pittsburgh zoo reached through the bars and put its trunk around my waist - pulling me against the bars. I wasn't hurt but it was pretty terrifying.
"they closed the exhibit because they didn't want the visitors to see the (potentially unsettling/traumatizing) injuries on the baboons"
Have they tried closing the Zoo and releasing the animals back into the wild. Zoos are a nineteenth century anachronism, designed for when that was the only way people could get a look at such exotic animals. Last time I was in one, the animals looked tired, stressed and listless.
"Have they tried closing the Zoo and releasing the animals back into the wild." YES. This. Literally laughing out loud at the obviousness of this.. Rediculious that we still keep wild animals as pets and call it educational. It's an amazing lesson in speciesism.
Given how freaked out a lot of people are by the baboons at the Singapore Zoo that are apparently completely healthy (according to all the signs that attempt to reassure visitors, but I remain dubious), but have what look like pretty scary tumors on their buttocks, I can imagine how poorly they would react to actual injuries.
Then issue a warning. I actually think it's unethical to hide the animals. The public can't make informed decisions about visiting the zoo if the zoo is hiding the reality the animals live in.
Zoos are for entertaining families. And while they desire to fill that entertainment with factually correct bits that's only secondary. Schools are for educating the interested. Any entertainment you find at school is wholly secondary to the purpose of school.
the purpose of school is to train kids to get up on time, to endure an unpleasant commute to an unpleasant place where they engage in unpleasant activities all day for the better of society.
I'm happy to response that I'm neither 14, nor old enough to have realized the idea on my own before I came across it.
>And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose.
A zoo is not a good place to learn and understand animals and especially not animal behavior (at least not animal behavior in the wild). Its a very artificial environment.
Exactly. And I also wonder how "safe and fed" zoo animals feel, as opposed to feeling endangered by being trapped and/or at the mercy of a different animal (humans).
If you have a hamster as a pet and you don't separate the young ones you have a good chance of them being eaten alive and that's because your hamster is under quite a bit of stress even if they seem chill, is it natural? yes, do you want your 5 year old seeing your hamster eating her babies alive with blood splattering all over? I guess not.
