Not a Pet Rock

There were a lot of exhibits that I enjoyed at Aquarium of the Pacific, but the hellbender exhibit was a special treat for me.  I've seen this species in many zoos - it's easily one of the most commonly kept salamander species these days.  I'd just never seen one active before.  Usually, all you see is an amorphous green-brown mottled blob protruding out from under a rock - which, to be fair, has also been representative of all of my encounters with this species in the wild.  To see one swimming was very cool.

Part of it, I'm sure, was just luck - me happening to be at the exhibit at the right time.  Even more importantly, though, may have been the animals having an exhibit that actually lets them move and be active.  There's a certain set of animals - most invertebrates, fish, and herps, but also some mammals (like sloths) and birds (like frogmouths) which are pretty inactive by nature.  As a result, they are often given enclosures that don't really provide opportunities for animals to be as active as they might be.  It makes it all the more impressive when those animals do come out and get moving.

Maybe it's because visitors are so used to these animals being inactive, to the point where some refuse to believe that they are even real/live, that when they are doing something, even something as mundane as crossing their enclosure to have a drink of water, it can draw quite a crowd.  I've seen sloth exhibits with crowds four or five people deep when a sloth is climbing through the branches.  At Zoo Atlanta's reptile house, I stood transfixed watching an alligator snapping turtle swim along the underwater viewing window - I'd seen them in dozens of zoos before, but never saw one swim.  I had the same reaction to watching a tawny frogmouth, a bird that spends most of its life pretending to be a branch, grow irritated at other birds in its aviary and swoop down and fly across the aviary.

Most animals, including (or even) the "dullards" are a lot more active and complex that we may give them credit for being.  Many can survive in a smaller, less developed habitat and not show any outward signs of distress or discomfort - no pacing or other stereotypic behaviors.  But they won't be able to show and express the full natural range of their behaviors.  And we won't know what we're missing unless we give them more room to roam.