today when i was visiting the bronx zoo, i shared prolonged eye contact with a gorilla. we studied each other. i bore into his deep brown eyes and marveled at our similarities. the deep eyes, the ears, our same hands, the shape of his back the same as many men i’ve seen on the streets of new york. i’m sure he understood me in the way a gorilla could. he’s not the first gorilla i’ve seen, and i’m not the first human he’s seen.
what snapped me out our moment was a woman lamenting his "boredom in his prison."
i looked back to him. he did not seem bored to me. he seemed immensely fascinated with the world around him. the revolving door of humans to ogle. the beautiful mansion of an exhibit that he and his troop got to share. no predators. no fear. he looked at peace.
in our moment, i was jealous of his peace. he gets to live in perfect peace. eating as he please, sleeping as he pleases, playing as he pleases. i am in the capitalist hellscape that threatens his native territory.
this gorilla, like the rest of his troop, was born in the zoo. there was a plaque of every gorilla, their name, their personality, and where they were born. every single one of them was born in a zoo.
yet, the woman was complaining about his human inflicted imprisonment. he’s never known anything different. this is the best life for him.
in a perfect world, we wouldn’t need zoos. we would have perfectly coexisted with the wilderness. we wouldn’t be more concerned with industry and factory than deforestation and pollution, but unfortunately, our reality is that we’ve royally messed it up.
we’ve created a world where animals are struggling to survive, but when we keep them in zoos, we are no better than a prison warden.
i’ve had the joy of working for central park zoo for two summers. i’ve gotten to learn the many ins and outs of what goes on in a zoo, what makes a good zoo, and why zoos are good, actually.
zoos have a messy history (as most things do), but i’ve come to learn that accredited zoos do so much for the animals they keep and the remaining wild places.
the association for zoos and aquariums (the aza for short) is a private organization that seeks to accredit and certify zoos that meet a higher standard. i’ve done many a deep dive into their website and read their 80+ pages of certification requirements. they check to make sure every department of a zoo is doing everything it can to prioritize conservation and education. and they have to maintain those standards for the recertification process every 5 years.
technically, any facility that houses animals could be considered a zoo. which confuses the public as to what the difference is between the zoo shown in Netflix’s Tiger King and an accredited facility like San Diego Zoo.
an accredited facility is doing everything possible to save wild spaces whereas roadside zoos are trying to make a quick buck getting you as close as possible to a malnourished tiger.
but why do we need accredited zoos, katie?
because we need to care.
humans are naturally empathetic creatures. when a human shows a lack of empathy, it is considered a disorder. we yearn to care, we crave it.
but, we’re also selfish. we don’t care for things that don’t really concern us. that’s why so many humanitarian crises are polarizing. for some, that situation doesn’t matter because it’s happening so far away and i’m not involved, so why should i care? (note: i’m not saying this is the right way of thinking)
if humans are both empathetic and selfish, then in order to care about wildlife, we need to be able to get close to it and make it about us.
“then just go on a safari in tanzania!!!!”
in our economy a trip of that gravitas is out of budget for nearly all people. it costs hundreds to thousands of dollars to fly to a new country and take a life changing wildlife trip. like snorkeling in fiji. it is a privilege to see animals in their wild spaces.
additionally, humans are destroying so much of the remaining wild that we are running out of space for the animals to live even if we CAN afford to see them out in the wild. the orangutans currently living in the borneo rainforest are going to be the last generation to live there if we keep destroying their habitat at the rate we have been.
so what? only the rich and punctual get to see animals? they alone get to care?
zoos are a relatively inexpensive trip for many. most zoos i’ve been to cost less than $40 per ticket (some as low as $10). the animals in zoos are fully wild, fully alive, fully near to us, and fully incapable of living in the wild.
to be an accredited facility, the animals in your care must be born in a zoo and deemed unreleasable or be a rescue deemed unreleasable.
a lot of grizzly bears are unreleasable rescues either due to poaching or their affinity for getting too close to human stuff and endangering themselves and us.
but most gorillas are born in zoos. some get released back to the wild, but for the most part they develop in human care and become ambassadors for their species.
they allow us selfish empathetic humans to get close to a gorilla in a way that is safe for the both of us, so we can study each other and learn to care.
i have many friends who believe visiting the zoo is sad and the animals are bored in their “prison” and yearn for freedom.
sometimes, we care too much. when we stare at a gorilla, who looks so much like us, we think he feels like us and understands like us.
when we begin anthropomorphizing animals, we hurt them more than we could imagine. gorillas are social animals and are intelligent, but we have no proof that they understand the man-made concepts of freedom and prison.
we project boredom onto animals as well. while i was at the bronx zoo bear exhibit, someone loudly complained that the lounging bears looked SO bored, and someone else was mad that the bears chose to lie in the warm sun rather than the ample amount of shade.
this is anthropomorphic language. a bear taking a nap is not a sign of boredom and, unlike many humans, lots of species of animals actually prefer to bask in the warm sun than sit in the shade 24/7.
on a side tangent re: boredom: why do we demonize boredom so much lately? some of the best moments of my life are when i’m allowed to be bored and i get to just exist for a while. i get to notice things and enjoy. it’s makes me feel like i’m in a poem. just because the bear doesn’t have tik tok or isn’t playing with a ball every second doesn’t mean they’re bored.
(an accredited facility gives them plenty to do by the way. it's required.)
when our cats sleep 18 hours a day, do we consider it boredom? or just what they need to thrive? why is it so different with zoo animals?
it’s hard to think about because nature documentaries are really just a highlight reel of the coolest, sickest, most dopest moments in an animals life, but a lot of animal life is them living in “boredom.”
we’ve eradicated boredom in our human life. we use every waking second to stare at a screen or work on a task or do something, listen to something, say something. if our brain is idle for even a second, it has been wasted.
maybe we think they “look bored” because we are bored. we find the fact that they are taking a nap boring, and we wish they were wearing a little outfit and doing tricks, but we can’t say that. because that's animal cruelty. so, we say, “they look bored.”
because to a human living in 2024, nothing is worse than being bored.
we need zoos.
we need zoos to teach us to care about things outside of us. we need zoos to remind us to slow down and take in the moment. we need zoos to allow people young and old to connect with nature in a way that is safe and affordable. we need to go to accredited zoos, so they can fund conservation projects and save the world.
please go to your local accredited zoo this summer.
thriving in boredom,
katie
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ps: i’m working on a long term project where i visit all of the currently accredited zoos in the united states. i’ll fill you in on my thoughts? which ones are best?? what they’re doing for the world!! how good the layout is!!!!!!
the central park zoo bears: treena (sitting up), luna (just a face), and amber (right next to the camera). they were rescued from yellowstone after being orphaned and left helpless. they are thriving in their boredom.
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