Zoos?

Going to a zoo again made me question the purpose of zoos.

When I was a child it was exciting & educational. In those days wildlife filming was in its infancy. TV was in black & white. There was very little opportunity to see what animals were like in their natural habitat. Oh, yes, occasionally animals appeared in films, but so often they were stock animals that would suddenly appear in countries they would not naturally be found, so we could quite easily find elephants in South America for example.

Times have changed. These days you have brilliant full colour TV programmes. Animals can been seen without the animals even being aware of their watchers.

So I come back to the question, why have zoos. They do play an important role in preserving rare endangered animals, often providing them a good home when their own natural habitat has been destroyed. It doesn’t say much for man that we have destroyed that habitat but at least it eases our consciences. And if they successfully breed, allows for the possibility of their re-introduction into their natural homes & live wild once more.

I hope there is still some educational value, though most of the schoolchildren I saw seemed more involved with gawping or just enjoying a day out of the school setting. I suppose young children will always appreciate the amazement of seeing different animals.

We found ourselves thinking of some of our other visits to see animals in captivity, or semi-captivity. Undoubtedly our most memorable visit was to a wildlife sanctuary near Port Stephens in New South Wales, Australia. What made it so special was that you could handle some of the animals – the Fox got to hug a koala, I found myself surrounded by curious kangaroos.

I remember, too, a trip to a local wildlife centre & being encourage to hold a skink. Our friend handled a snake. The Fox nearly got peed on by a fruit bat. All close encounters of a special kind.

Then there was a trip to the butterfly house in Lancaster. We wowed over the brilliant colours & size of some of the butterflies – so much more impressive than the butterfly house at Chester.

For fish, we visited both the aquarium just outside Tours (unfortunately I think that has ceased to exist) & the one in La Rochelle, both in France. Although I’m not sure I learnt much, beyond recognising a few more, the experience was strangely relaxing as we watched the fish gently swimming around.

So what did we see at Chester we enjoyed? Firstly was the very inquisitive meerkats. I think they were almost more curious about their visitors that we were them. We enjoyed being able to go inside one large covered area where various birds flew around. We felt that much closer to them.

Would we go again? I doubt it. I would sooner go their home countries & see them live or watch one of the many excellent natural history programmes on the TV.