"In these five acres something very different was demanded. It was rather more like landscape gardening, he mused. Or even town planning, with the proviso that he was building for birds and beasts rather than humans. No, he corrected himself, that was not true. The challenge was to create an environment where humans could comfortably, elegantly, enjoyably observe the creatures. Of course he was building for mankind, rather than for beasts."
This was not always in the case.
In the beginning of the modern zoo era was the Jardin des Plantes, born from the ruin of the French royal menagerie at Versailles. Perhaps the first true modern zoo, however, could be said to have been born across the Channel in London - the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London, popularly known as the London Zoo. Looking back at this institution and the age at which it was constructed, it seems highly improbable that such a facility could ever have arisen. And it was.
Isobel Charman tells the story of the birth of the Zoological Society of London in, The Zoo: The Wild and Wonderful Tale of the Founding of the London Zoo: 1826-1851. It was one of the two finest histories of the Zoo in Regent's Park, the other being Wilfred Blunt's The Ark in the Park. The two books vary in two important details, however. The first is scope. While Blunt's work focuses on the whole of the nineteenth century, Charman limits her story to the early founding days of the Zoo, focusing on the times when it seemed that it surely must crash and burn (sometimes literally). The second difference is in the telling. Charman uniquely frames her story from the perspective of seven individuals who have shaped the history of the park, from its founding visionary Sir Stamford Raffles (a busy man who was also responsible for the founding of modern Singapore) to the 13th Earl of Derby, who's seemingly quixotic quest for a hippopotamus may very well have been what saved the young zoo. Among the other luminaries features is an unassuming naturalist named Charles Darwin, for whom the animals in the Zoo were in some ways equally important to his theorizing about evolution as were the finches of the Galapagos.
If Charman's book were a work of fiction - and therefore you didn't already know how the story was going to end, more or less - you would swear that there was no way that there would be a happy ending. The book is largely one long catalogue of disaster, punctuated by a few minor successes, before sinking back into despair. Animals die in great quantities. Staff members don't know what they are doing. Attendances sinks to new lows, threatening the future of the park. More animals are brought in to try and boost attendance. The staff doesn't know what they are doing, so they die. Repeat. Meanwhile, they face constant competition from a rival zoo popping up across town, run by Mr. Cross, an infamous former menagerie-owner who seeks respectability at the expense of the London Zoo.
If anything, the sad fates of the animals - many of whom seem to be headed for the taxidermist as soon as they arrive - were some of the most intriguing. It really shouldn't but it's still so surprising to me to read about how difficult it proved for the fellows of the ZSL - ostensibly some of the finest scientific minds of their age - to keep alive some animals that we now consider to be extraordinarily easy to maintain and breed. I mean, folks in Texas trailer parks can easily keep tigers, breed them even, but they drop like flies in the world's first scientifically run zoo?
There's a lot to be said about being "the first," I suppose, and part of that is that you get to be the first one to make all of the new mistakes. There were parts of The Zoo that I found almost cringe-worthy for those reasons. I just wanted to climb into the book and shout, "You idiots, you're doing it all wrong!" If I had lived at the time, I might very well have begged them to give up the whole enterprise, seeing the sacrifices of animals as unworthy for whatever goal they thought they were working towards.
I'm glad they didn't. London and Paris - followed by Philadelphia, Berlin, and other early modern zoos - created the foundation of the modern zoo, zoos that would go into directions that these early pioneers never dreamt of. Who would imagine back in the mid-1800s that a day would come when, instead of plucking animals from the wild (with massive casualties) we would be reintroducing species back there? That we would be breeding species - with regularity - that were considered impossible to keep alive back then. That instead of crude stone sheds, we would see some animals in enormous free-flight aviaries, aquarium tanks of millions of gallons of water, or paddocks acres in size.
If our zoos and aquariums have grown into something new, something special, and we feel inclined to look down our noses at our progenitors, who should remember - we have only seen this far because we've stood on the shoulders of giants. Sure, giants who might have stumbled and blundered around a bit. But giants nonetheless, who are still standing today.
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