Living Art

It's been a long time since I've been to the Fort Worth Zoo, and the zoo has changed so much since then that I didn't think I could really write a review of it without visiting again.  Probably the biggest change that the zoo underwent since I saw it last was the reptile house.  The reptile house that I saw on my visit years ago was impressive enough in terms of its collection, but the building was fairly typical.  Little did I know then that its days were already numbered, and that the zoo had something spectacular in the works.  In 2009, the zoo unveiled an enormous new building, sprawling half-an-acre and filled with beautiful, naturalistic, state-of-the-art habitats featuring some of the most spectacular reptiles and amphibians on earth.

They called it MOLA - the Museum of Living Art.

From Architect Magazine

Zoos have often showcased reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates as artwork.  You go into a darkened building with tile floors, the tanks set into the walls like paintings.  Most of the "paintings" (which were themselves painted with murals in the background) were the same size, possibly for reasons of convenience when building, also for aesthetics.  Animals came almost exclusively from the wild - if a specimen died and an exhibit was emptied, the zoo would put whatever was available in to fill the gap (which is part of the reason that many of the exhibits were so uniform - the animals were interchangeable).  You'd walk down the hall, stopping at this "painting," passing by the next, maybe stopping longer at one where it took more work to find the hidden animal.  Historically, the focus was on rarity and completeness of collections.

The trend is starting to change, thankfully, towards a mindset of viewing reptiles in zoos and private collections as individuals with individual species needs.  An exhibit for one species of snake should be different from that of a different species in terms of space, size, dimensions (relative height vs length or width), complexity, heating, humidity, and furnishings.  A green iguana needs a very different habitat from a Grand Cayman iguana, a crocodile monitor from a savannah monitor, a leopard tortoise from a radiated tortoise.  To make the best habitat for the animal, you have to build it with the animal in mind.

Ironically, despite the name, Fort Worth's MOLA actually treats its animals much less like artwork than many of the old, antiquated reptile houses that I've seen.  It's lighter, airier, and more spacious, with exhibits made to fit the animals, rather than the other way around.  Sure, it has "Art" in its name... but it puts more emphasis on the "Living" part.