On a sunny spring Sunday a few years ago, my wife and I went to the art museum next to the zoo. After spending a long time in the dark and static art museum, we entered the zoo next to the art museum, lured by the clear, clear sky. My wife and I were a little reluctant, but decided to take a walk for a while. As a result, the two hours or so we spent looking around the gloomy zoo under a sunny sky became a time of confirmation of misery and helplessness.
Of all the animals in the zoo that could run fast, none of them did/could. No bird that can soar far did/could not fly. Everyone was just sitting blankly in the corner, dozing off, or lying helpless, as if they had made a promise or were familiar with it. The zoo animals all seemed to be suffering from one or two of the physical or mental problems commonly attributed to those in captivity/isolation.
Various notices with lovely and cute animal characters were hung on the wire mesh cage where the animals were confined. There was a message written there expressing concern about the health and extinction risk of animals and trying to elicit sympathy. The more it happened, the more it felt like an effort to cover up some deeply hidden crime. The claims made by the zoo, such as species protection, research value, and educational value, were in fact just standing on a precarious and weak self-assertion to hide commercial value, entertainment value, and, above all, species-dominant value. If we truly want to protect endangered species, we need to research and protect the species through animal research institutes that are not open or on display to the public (like some that already exist) and release them back into nature.
The concept of zoos open to the public arose with imperialism in the 19th century. The long relationship between humans and animals (over 5 million years) collapsed in just 100 years. Until now, animals have been objects of spiritual (communication) before human means, tools, and various (food) materials. Rather, they were gods. Since the 19th century, when the way of looking/gazing fundamentally changed, the perspective on them has fundamentally changed. No, a new way of looking at them arose. It was rational and justifiable for the strong to dominate, teach, and conquer the weak. If we take for granted the idea and perception that animals are made into a spectacle for people by charging an admission fee to a small space that is clumsily modeled after nature, that is because we are so familiar with 19th century thinking. The zoo is the materialization and expression of that 19th century perspective.
Most large mammals perceive situations, think in the present, and sometimes remember things from the past, although not in the same way as humans. Often, we know that the object in the mirror is ourselves. There was no way that the taciturn male lion sitting close to the glass wall, staring somewhere, would not have known. Usually, lions stay far away from visitors, but when I met him that day, he didn’t seem to mind the visitors. I thought he was seeing me looking at him, but he was looking beyond me, somewhere far away. I wanted to make eye contact with him, but I couldn’t. Are his eyes looking somewhere between helplessness and despair? Are you actually not seeing anything? I sat like that for a long time, without focus or even shaking my eyes. He didn’t do anything wrong, but for some reason he’s trapped here just because he’s an animal, and I’m standing in front of him behind a glass wall.
Unfortunately, there are few places as violent and uneducational as zoos (and of course aquariums with large marine mammals). Children cannot have any interaction with the animals in the zoo. Children get nothing more out of it than checking out the originals of the stuffed animals they own. Our perspective is one-sided and closed. Here, children only learn dominant attitudes or experience the imperialistic gaze that was popular in the 19th century. Most animals are indifferent to our gaze. In order for our gaze and their gaze to meet and produce a certain response, there must be a corresponding experience, but such an experience does not exist between them and us. So they cannot communicate with us, and it is difficult for us to communicate with them.
You can’t help but fall in love with their wonderful way of life. They do not run across the grasslands, catch prey, fly through the sky, or flip over while making huge splashes. They are now spending the rest of their lives helplessly in a prison where our eyes have become a background, and in a kitschy space modeled after nature where there is no need to catch any prey or woo any, not knowing when it will end. Even if lifespan was extended here, what good would it be?
The trees, blooming and sprouting buds, looked vibrant, bathed in the sunlight of a spring afternoon. Like fingers playing a leisurely piano piece between white and black keys, the people who came out were walking between sunlight and the shade of trees. We also walked slowly, leaving the animals behind. It was impossible to meet animals in the true sense of the word at the zoo. The animals in the zoo were no longer animals. Tragically, they were real but not real, and were helpless and gloomy animal symbols or images that represented reality. Alive, but not functioning properly, the depressed animals shook their heads, paced around anxiously, or lay down. Under these green and beautiful trees and sky.
