Some European zoo enthusiasts either zoo people, or non zoo employees, keep their life list. Sometime, 1000. Sometime 1500. Someone said, oh mine is 1500 something something. And they even come up with a solid list of number of zoos in the whole world. That aspect, the global aspect, American… Read More
Lack of coordination. Individual zoos doing their things. Another aspect is also the cost, of course. You’ve traveled extensively through Europe, and the United States. Read More
Are there major differences in philosophies in European zoos and US zoos?… Read More
Doesn’t show on the surface. But Europe is where the modern zoo, not ancient zoos, but the modern zoo was born. First one being in Paris, think it was November 1794. Now the core of the professional zoos, in my opinion, is not in North America, but in German speaking… Read More
Sounds like what Bill Conway said, but anyway, to an extent, if you keep elephants in captivity, you’re obligated to provide the best care for them. To do that, it’s expensive, but you have to build decent facility to meet their requirement. That money you have to invest. Beyond that,… Read More
Why do you think zoos did not implement, speaking of elephants, a major elephant national breeding program?… Read More
Would this money be better spent going for in situ conservation of elephants?… Read More
What are the issues, the problems?… Read More
Used to be that you have to have an elephant, so you have a single elephant. Buy a little baby from an animal dealer, two three year old. By the time an elephant becomes five, six years old, he she, mostly she, begins to knock down keepers. Oh, call up… Read More
You have to sell them, or keep them chained up. It’s been changing, fortunately. You mentioned elephants. Zoos are spending many tens of millions of dollars on elephant exhibits. Mm-hmm. Read More
Probably related to wild animal biology, the requirements, and so on. But that was, that came much earlier. That came recently, rather recently. Earlier, the focus was how the exhibit looked like, with material available. You know that gunnite, the fake rock, or artificial rock once conquered the American zoos. Read More
So it’s been improving, very, very slowly, but improving. The good example, a typical example of excellent exhibit being in the Bronx Zoo, what you call the gorilla forest. That’s a masterpiece. Before reaching to that gorilla area, they have that okapi exhibit. Very well done. But again, knowledge probably… Read More
Don’t be hypocritical. Period. Come to think of it, Hagenbeck family had a tradition of being animal dealers. And zoo people. Now, you’ve written extensively about the evolution of zoo exhibits. What would you say, as you mentioned Hagenbeck. Read More
What would you say have been the high points, based on your research?… Read More
High point?… Read More
What do you see as the cause of this change, and how has the role of individual dealers or companies changed with respect to the development of modern zoos?… Read More
Animal dealers are there because there are customers. Supply and demand. If there hadn’t been zoos or circuses, animal dealers were not there. Didn’t even exist. They provided animals for us, so the basis of the exotic animal collection was really built upon the animals sold to us. Earlier zoo… Read More
In the process of shooting them, how many adult great apes were blown away, including the mother, before stealing one little baby?… Read More
And that baby, from one hand to the other, may have died some way, in other words, to make long story short. Before the little baby gorilla arrived at the zoo, how many adults and also baby gorillas had been wasted, you don’t know. After the baby arrives at the… Read More
That, today’s generation should know, that before the first baby was born, how many hundred had been wasted and killed. Today’s gorillas in captivity all came from that stock of a wasteful, cruel past. You have to realize that. When you talk about that, the relationship of zoos and aquariums… Read More