From the News: SF Zoo Monkey Island: Depression jobs and fun for humans, mixed bag for animals

This isn't so much a "From the News" - as it refers to events from 70 or 80 years ago - as it is a historical reminiscence of what was one a staple of every zoo collection - monkey islands.  These exhibits were once wildly popular with zoos.  For reasons that the author explores, they weren't necessarily the best for the animals, despite popular appearances.   While a few zoos still maintain monkey islands - some of them, I will admit, quite good - for the most part they have faded away, torn down and filled in.

SF Zoo Monkey Island: Depression jobs and fun for humans, mixed bag for animals

For more than half a century, one of the most beloved attractions at the San Francisco Zoo was a man-made simian playground called Monkey Island. Visitors were enthralled by the antics of dozens of spider monkeys that scampered about the moated island, cavorted on trapezes, rang a bell, pushed each other into the water and lay in the sun.

Children were particularly enchanted by this endlessly entertaining mini-universe, which looked like a huge pile of enormous toy blocks dumped into a haphazard pile. As a visitor to the zoo in the 1960s, I always had to be dragged away from it by my parents.

Read the rest here.