Scaling the walls

On Christmas day, a Siberian tiger escaped its enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and attacked three teenage boys, killing one, before police shot and killed it. The zoo claims the teen and his friends were throwing things, harassing the tiger, and had evidence of drugs in their car. But the real concern seems to be whether the walls should be higher; clearly the public isn’t safe around a caged wild animal.

Yesterday, the paper reported that since the attack, in two separate incidents, a 600-pound polar bear scaled the wall of her enclosure and nearly escaped and a snow leopard, while being moved between enclosures, chewed a 4-inch hole in the mesh cage and stuck its head and paw through. The zoo administrator denied these reports as escape attempts or anything to be worried about. Of course, they mean that we don't have to worry about ourselves. We should still be worried about the animals.

Most of the animals that people like to see in zoos are mammals. Mammals are the only species that need touch from other mammals to survive. Our social structures are built around that touch – how and when and who can touch us. These majestic animals that we love to look at - gorillas, tigers, lions, elephants and polar bears – have incredibly complex social structures like our own. Think about your life. How many people you see on a daily basis, how many you talk to, how many are your friends and your family. Think about how many miles you travel, all the different kinds of foods you eat and the places you go and look at.

Now imagine that you instead you spent your whole life in an apartment with one person you don’t even know and might not even like. Your keepers expect you to mate and have children with that person! Should you actually like this person enough to do so, it's very probable that they'll take your child or sell you to another zoo. They feed you the same thing every day. You never leave, you never see anyone different, you weigh twice as much as you do now, and you sleep all the time because you’re depressed.

Now imagine that six days a week visitors came to look at you. They yell at you, pound on your windows, take pictures of you and sometimes throw things. They want you to do something entertaining, to make them laugh or smile but they get to leave and you will always be there. Would you regard that life as anything but torture? Wouldn’t you also scale a wall or chew a hole through your cage and attack someone? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to get out of that situation?

I have said before that PETA is too extreme but on this issue, I agree with them one hundred percent. Zoos are pitiful prisons and they should be closed. All of them. The position of the Humane Society, whom I normally support, is pathetic and contradictory:

The Humane Society of the United States strongly believes that under most circumstances wild animals should be permitted to exist undisturbed in their natural environments. However, we recognize the widespread existence of zoos and acknowledge that some serve a demonstrable purpose in the long-term benefit of animals, such as the preservation and restoration of endangered species, and the education of people to the needs of wild animals and their role in ecosystems. [Emphasis mine]

But then they go on to say that not only is it impossible to simulate an animal's natural environment, only 10% of facilities are accredited to humane standards - and even that doesn't ensure humane treatment! Their focus is to work for better treatment of animals in zoos. It reminds me of the tobacco companies who, when their sales are dropping, ask how they could get people smoking more and never question whether they should even be making cigarettes. That's what we should be asking here, why are there zoos?

Zoos fail at everything they claim to do. They don't educate. Where's the education is seeing an animal in a cage? It's not going to do anything it does in the wild and people don't want to learn anyway, they want to be entertained. Zoos don't preserve species. Even if they breed endangered species, those animals can never be released into the wild because if they're raised in captivity, they aren't really wild animals! In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond says that the animals that are domesticated are domesticated because it was possible, because it was easy. Wild animals are not meant to be raised by humans.

How many people, I wonder, after learning that an animal they've seen in the zoo is endangered, like the Siberian Tiger that killed the teenager, go home a write a check for preservation, or find out what they can do to help that species, get involved or write a letter? Are people really more concerned about poaching and encroachment and loss of habitat when they've just seen a majestic animal pacing in a cage like a creature that's lost its mind? Clearly it only sends a message that it's acceptable to torture animals.

"But the kids LOVE the zoo!" No, kids don't love zoos, they love animals. They come out of the womb loving animals but they have to be taught to love the zoo. Whenever I’ve gone with my nephew, we spend more time trying to get him excited about the exhibits than anything else. “Look Jonathan, look over here!” we yell while he seems perfectly fine to look at the plants, climb on a rock or watch other people.

Our pets are treated ten times better than these animals. They're domesticated for one thing, so human company is something they choose and enjoy. (Except for some states like North Carolina that allow ownership of wild animals including tigers.) They get to eat all different kinds of foods, or whatever food they want. They get out into the world, get to socialize with other animals, get love and affection and new experiences. Even so, we've all seen what happens when a dog is tied up and neglected. They're mean, they bark and bite and attack. Why? Because it's inhumane to restrict an animal's movement and deprive them of social interaction. Even domesticated animals have been known to escape from the slaughter house.

So I find it really sad that people love zoos. A Google search of "I love zoos" turned up 225,000 results while "I hate zoos," only 26,400. Ten times more people find the idea of building bigger walls and restricting the animals even more to be preferable over closing the zoo altogether. We put people in prisons as a punishment but what did the animals do to us? I say if you really like animals, boycott the zoo, donate to WWF, watch animal shows like Planet Earth, buy your kids a subscription to National Geographic Kids and take them hiking where you can see wild animals in their own habitat.

Here's the way kids should enjoy lions!

An underground forest

I'm sorry for the absence of regular posts. The job hunt has taken most of my time and zapped my creativity. It's been an interesting, enlightening and at times, treacherous search. I'll write more about it later. Today I was reminded of something else I wanted to write about.

Something that I am very keen on is perspective. Nothing is more fascinating to me than the powerful and intensely personal idea of perspective. No one sees any one thing the same way. There are very few absolutes in this world. Einstein theorized that we don't even experience time the same way. I love anything that makes me experience this shift in perspective. An article, a book, a movie, a photograph, a trip, a relationship - all of these things have at one time profoundly revealed a new way of experiencing my reality.

There was an article in National Geographic a few months ago about the prairie in the Flint Hills of Kansas. A pull quote reads "See the tallgrass prairie for itself, and you begin to suspect that grasses are what hold this world together." I love how the quote doesn't read "see the prairie for yourself" it says "itself." The vastness of plains belies the hidden complexity of this vital ecosystem. It reminded me of the Planet Earth episode on The Great Plains.

"The plains of our planet support the greatest gatherings of wildlife on earth," says David Attenborough in his delicious accent. "At the heart of all that happens here is a single living thing, grass. This miraculous plant covers a quarter of all the lands of the earth...and feeds more wildlife than any other plant."

The article starts with looking over the plain, what do you see? The answer might be nothing. The reason that grass is almost impossible to kill is because it lives under the ground with roots reaching up to eight feet below the soil. Grazing and fire are a natural part of the lifecycle of grasses, clearing away debris and allowing more light to warm the soil, fueling growth. While our instinct is to look out over a plain, to actually see the plain, you have to look down.

"Imagine the prairie upside down - the leaves and stems growing downward into the soil and the roots of all these species growing skyward. You are suddenly walking through a dense, tenacious thicket of roots. The horizon is gone because you are over-ears in plant fibers, some spreading and slender, some tall, with strange bulbous growths on them. It is as though you were walking through a forest of veins and capillaries, each species finding a different niche - a different height, a different strategy - in the competition for resources."

"The tallgrass prairie also reminds us how we should think about the life that surrounds us. Our old habits of seeing find in all of this a familiar simplicity, the kind you push past on your way to a more human future. But in the ancient prairie...there is a new way of seeing waiting to be found."

Amazing Planet Earth

Every month, I hit the gym with my new Wired magazine and read it cover to cover. Even things I don't think I'll find interesting, I become engrossed in. Last month, they featured an article about new camera techniques, made possible by HD video, that allowed photographers to capture footage of animals in nature better than ever before. The techniques were used for a miniseries running now on the Discovery Channel called "Planet Earth."

If you haven't seen it, it is breathtakingly gorgeous, awe-inspiring, and simply amazing. I think it's so fantastic that we have used our awesome technology to record the wondrous beauty and fascinating complexity of our planet. Quite simply, this footage is like nothing you've never seen before.

I was giggling hysterically at the sped up footage of hundreds of gelada baboons in the Ethiopian Highlands all following the same daily agenda. My jaw hit the ground at the extremely slowed down footage of a great white shark LEAPING out of the ocean while swallowing a whole seal in a split second. And I was wowed by the aerial view of a MILLION caribou, the largest traveling pack of animals on the planet, streaming across the tundra, pursued by wolves.

It's available for pre-order at Amazon and I've already secured my copy. You can see some of the fantastic-ness in the meantime on their official site.