Our zoos are the first point of contact for man and animal. National parks have three major disadvantages – they are far from cities, they are expensive, and you don’t see all the animals in one day. A zoo overcomes all these. Therefore, a zoo is extremely important in the lifecycle of nature education.
When a person is watching an animal in the cage, it is at that time, that he is most interested in what he is seeing. It is when this curiosity is not satisfied that he loses interest in the animal and dismisses it as a senseless, useless creature. When he feels handicapped by his ignorance he decides to boost his self-esteem by teasing the animal, throwing bottles or pebbles at it or even, senselessly, feeding it. To avoid this it is extremely important that we inform visitors when they are in the receptive mode.
Zoos try to inform visitors. They have a variety of illustrated and bilingual display panels. Good. But what the zoo forgets is that the visitors are there to see the animals, not to read texty informational panels. It would be a better solution to have volunteers to talk to our visitors, take them form cage to cage and give them a guided tour of the zoo. Much like what you could get at the Taj Mahal in Agra or the Red Fort in Delhi. If you can do it for national heritage, you can do it for natural heritage. Don’t make the zoo into a visit, make it an experience.
The zoos in our country are in a pathetic state, the cages are too small, the animals are not comfortable, factors concerning their health are not considered, manpower and maintenance is severely lacking and many more problems persist.
The Central Zoo Authority, an autonomous body regulating the functioning of zoos, has laid down the standards for housing, upkeep, health care and overall management of zoos in the country. Your recent zoo visit will be the judge of how upto-the-mark these standards are.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I was 23 when I last went to a zoo. The animals didn’t look depressed to death. People weren’t littering. A few children did make faces at some of the animals but they were also promptly chided for doing so, by their parents/guardians. This was in UAE.
Going further back, I think I was 14 when I went to a zoo (in India). I recoiled at the state of most of the caged animals. Filthy inside. Filthier outside. The animals were ‘fed’ snacks one carried along for a fun trip to the zoo. The empty chips and biscuit covers were more outside than in the garbage bin.
What can the zoo authority do? Place volunteers, like the author suggested. They can keep the visitors informed about the animals and also stop them from dirtying the surroundings and from being kind enough to feed the animals.
We can come up with a hundred and one suggestions for the upkeep of zoos and the inhabitants. However, getting an implementing force is the problem. Sitting on my swivel chair, typing away will not do the trick. People like you and I need to tighten the noose around the collars of the concerned authority to stop the slack attitude. But then, who has the time for them. They are after all animals, caged, harmless and mute. They won’t complain and we can pretend we didn’t know.
Hi Divya,
I was hoping someone would mention foreign zoos. Its good you put it in your comment.
Why is is that people in other countries care more for animals (even if they are in cages). Is is just my perception or is it really true? And why is it that the best of plans and projects get muddled up in the implementation stage. Is there no way to ensure we have better implementation of systems?
Almost all issues boil down to responsible citizenship. There has to be some way of awakening the public at large.
!!…looks like this questions is meant for me (the kid in me).
my experiences to a zoo (all in India so far) has been fantastic. each visit, have been fun, learning and joyful. btw: with reference to the earlier blog: my first sighting of a tiger tiger! has been in the zoo. his name was jackie. it was in the scorching heat of May 2001, he wud’nt even come out, & then it rained, guess it was conspired for our courtship. loved him at the first sight!
and of course my best experiences have been, when brought kid groups there. nothin can be bartered for their joy on the first sight of an elephant, monkeys, & bear. It’s criminal not to bring children to zoo, jus b’coz of some adult analyis of good & bad, right & wrong.
lot of things around us exist in this duality. guess the key is to include & then resolve thru’ partnership.
Dear Krishna,
I am very happy to hear that you are so excited about our zoos. Our zoos do not need to be written off but they need some serious TLC.
I would like you to elaborate on the “fun, learning and joyful” experiences. Especially “learning”, this, being a very serious function of the zoo is also being overlooked by people at large (both — educators at all levels and masses).
Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Enforcement of any kind of law or regulation in India is pathetic.
Most of the issues will automatically take care of themselves if the national character of India improves. Empathy, concern, honesty will become visible if the youth of india who will be the ‘incharge’ in days to come is well educated (in terms of character) now itself.
What i feel is that the literate youth who connects socially and has access to interactive media is sharing concern over the issues of national and global importance and that is a sign to watch for.
Good people will be good wherever they are put. They can’t just be bad in one place ad good at the other. A good citizen will be good be it his — job, city, park, or Zoos etc.
Unless the good character is part of lives we will always find excuse to act bad.
Enforcement doesn’t work well ‘coz both enforcers and the enforced both join hands in corrupt ways.
Till then animals are at the mercy of some handful of thotful people who are concerned.
Zoos are a mess these days. Blame can only be placed on the politicians we vote into power. Have you checked what our annual budget is for fauna conservation? Or what the payscale is like in zoos? Or why there aren’t many private zoos in India? What’s the FDI policy on investing in zoos? I have no clue and I’m too lazy to google.
No one really pickets India Gate and holds a debate if a species go extinct. They reserve that loyalty for important stuff like whom Ms Saawant should marry.
Now that being said, zoos should not really exist. Your argument that zoos are the first point of contact holds true. I feel that’s just one side of the story. We encroach valuable ecosystems, tear everything down and then catch a few of ‘em, put them in cages and tell everyone we care. Instead of promoting zoos, we should work towards preserving natural habitats.
Our attitude towards creating living space for humans while zoofying fauna can be compared to one Mr Adolf who tried to do the same for Germans. If that plan had succeeded half the people reading this blog would be in a zoo. How do you like ‘em apples?
Forgive the ranting, you’re a very talented writer. Keep up the great work. Write less about zoos and more about how we can preserve it if possible. You’ll have one extra reader for sure.
Madhavan, Madhavan, Madhavan…you have said a lot! I really appreciate your passion for (the welfare of) animals, but you are mixing up a few unrelated concepts.
Unfortunately, zoos do not symbolise that we care for animals. They are just a collection of animals on display, just like a museum. Having said that, what we have to do is treat those animals as living beings and care for their welfare.
Now you might argue that if we care so much for them why don’t we leave them in the wild. Thats because we cannot – for their own welfare. We stopped capturing wild animals to fill our zoo donkeys years back. The animals we see in the zoo today are kids of those captured years ago. If some zoo in the country has a surplus of animals then those are sent to a zoo which has less (or none) of that species. These animals have never been in the wild and don’t know how to hunt or live on their own. They will not survive in the wild.
Better management of the zoos is the only solution. But FDI is not the solution to that. The investing agency will want to recover its investment and to that effect it will charge a higher entry fee. The high entry fee keeps out the poor masses of the country; these masses are the ones we most want to sensitize towards our natural heritage. These people are not watching National Geographic and Discovery Channel, they do not have the money to visit national parks, a zoo is an important experience for them.
Privatizing may defeat the very purpose of zoos in our country.
I am not pro-zoos. I am not saying we should have more of them – we should not especially since we cannot maintain them. All i am saying is to use the zoos we have to the maximum positive effect. Use them to educate, inform and sensitize people towards animals and their needs. Make a visit to the zoo “edutaining”.
I really appreciate you writing in and hope you continue to five me your feedback. I value it.
Thank you.
Really a very good blog written about the Animals and zoo. i appreciate meethil’s attitude towards this. just i gone thru the glimpse only, so i wont be able to write more. still i remember my first visit o the Trivandrum Zoo at the age of 13.( 1990) i enjoyed that time as a child. still now i love to visit zoo and see the nature around us.
Dear Johnson,
Thank you for sharing your experience and for the good words! Its really encouraging.
i was double checking..with a alphabet book in hand. it was our school trip in Peshawe park Pune-the city zoo. i was in fourth and i had carried my younger brother’s alphabet book to check what all animals are there. i was very disappointed to find that Z for zebra was not there.
any way that was my first encounter zoo and wild life.. wild mammals i should say. apart from the condition of animals in zoo and how they should be kept, there are several other issues raised about zoo–one of them is should we have the zoos in the first place? what do they achieve? is it fair to keep wild animals in captive condition to entertain us? how will we feel if we are kept in cage to entertain some body? but then there is another line of thoughts is what to do with the injured wild creatures who even after recovery of the injury are not in the position to live in wild? what to do with the kids/ pups/chooks born in zoo? i feel these questions are equally relevant too. recently with rapid decline in habitat and subsequently wildlife a group of people are looking at wild life in zoo as a the core gene bank to bounce back in a destructive biological mishap on human kind. cause hybridization and advanced medication ( e.g.vaccination) has lead us in to a very vulnerable biological world ( e.g swine flue) so i would like to take a note of this also. i am very confused and scared of upcoming world. i dunno this is what all think of when zoo comes in picture.
to be precise on topic yes animals should be kept in better conditions… they should have free walking, swimming, jumping space. good water , food n hygiene but every body knows this i need not specify deeply.
Dear Wasim,
You always have something very personal and ‘different’ to share. I deeply appreciate your openness (though that is not the reason you won a book!).
Your sincerity towards your first zoo visit amazes me. I want children to be so ‘involved’ with animals, i’m sure it will do then no harm.
Thank you all, for participating on the fourth day!
I will announce the winner today.
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