Archetypal Animals

 "I hope that you're the one - if not, you are the prototype."

- OutKast

Visitors go to the zoo to see animals, but with a few specific exceptions, they aren't too particular about what exact animals they see.  For example, you might ask someone what animal they're more keen to see, and they might say "monkeys."  They probably don't care too much about what monkeys they see, whether they're spider monkeys or macaques or guenons.  There are some animals that, while being monkeys, might not be "monkey enough" for the visitor, such as night monkeys or marmosets.  Similarly, they want to see parrots, but for the most part don't care as long as they are "parrot enough" - the key requirements being loud and colorful.

A trend that I've noticed in a lot of zoos is that you get zoo directors and presidents with less direct experience with animals, who are mostly brought in to run the business and drive the gate.  These are the folks who are often making decisions about collection planning and new exhibits, and that includes selecting animals.  They want animals to satisfy the visitors, and look for species that fill the niches that visitors are looking to see.  The thing is, for all of these niches of animal, there's inevitably one or two species which become the most popular by virtual of their visitor appeal (color, strange appearance), ease of care (cold hardiness, simple diet, compatibility with other species), or some other reason.

The result is that many zoos start holding those same few species, resulting in diminished diversity in species across zoos.

Visitors love crocodilians, for example.  Almost every zoo I've ever been to has a crocodile or alligator.  Of all of the world's crocodilians, there's none which probably makes a better exhibit animal than the American alligator.  They grow big, making an impressive animal.  They are tractable and ease to work around.  They are one of the most cold-hardy crocodilians, able to be outside for a great part of the year than tropical species.  Everyone's heard of them; they're cultural icons to a degree few other reptiles are.  Also, they're native to much of the US, and as such work in displays of native wildlife.  It's no surprise that so many zoos favor them.  If a zoo director wanted a crocodilian for display, why pick an small, obscure, delicate, or otherwise more difficult species, like a Philippine crocodile, when you could have an American alligator and the visitors would be just as happy? 

The more zoos work with that one (or handful of) species, the more set their husbandry become, and the more established it becomes in everyone's mind that this is the easier animal to work with, everything else starts to seem more difficult by comparison, and more zoos opt to work with those common species,

The scenario, or similar ones, plays out for penguins (African penguin), lemurs (ring-tailed lemur), waterfowl (mandarin duck, white-faced whistling duck), antelope (bongo, addra gazelle), and a host of other taxa.  The result is zoos that start to look a lot like one another - which maybe visitors don't mind too much.  The end result, however, is that we can support fewer species and have fewer assurance colonies of endangered or threatened species in our care.  

Some zoos, I feel, just need to start being willing to be a little more risk-averse and open to working with species that other zoos aren't working with and to do and be husbandry leaders, not just followers.