Despite all their flaws, zoos wake us up. They invite us to step outside our most basic assumptions. Offered for our contemplation, the animals remind us of natures impossibly varied schemes for survival, all the strategies that species rely upon for courtship and mating and protecting the young and establishing dominance and hunting for something to eat and avoiding being eaten. On a good day, zoos shake people into recognizing the manifold possibilities of existence, what its like to walk across the Earth, or swim in its oceans of fly above its forestseven though most animals on display will never have the chance to do any of those things again, at least not in the wild.
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Themes
- Nature — Appreciation for the natural world and our place within it