Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #359389 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 301 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Many people find zoos saddening: the animals often seem depressed and understimulated in dreary, unnatural settings. Hancocks (Animals and Architecture), an architect and director of the Open Range Zoo in Melbourne, Australia, confirms the accuracy of those impressions. He became concerned about the plight of zoo animals when, as a university student, he looked into a gorilla's intelligent eyes: "I walked away from London Zoo that day... feeling confused and depressed." This brilliantly researched and persuasive book traces the sociology of animal captivity back to Paleolithic times, when "wild animal ownership bestowed prestige and power." Speculating that the first zoo appeared in Sumeria 4,300 years ago, Hancocks explores zoo design, ecology and history worldwide. He praises certain model institutions, including the Bronx Zoo, Emmen Zoo in Holland and Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo. Otherwise, he stridently criticizes many zoo practices, such as "disjointed exhibits," cramped conditions and even bad cafeteria food. "My proposal is to uninvent zoos as we know them and to create a new type of institution, one that... engenders respect for all animals and that interprets a holistic view of Nature." Zoos shouldn't solely provide entertainment, he says, but should educate visitors about animals and encourage preservation of their natural habitats. They should also hold a multitude of species, not just the most popular or beautiful ones. Though the somewhat academic text loses steam midway, Hancocks's passion for creating humane environments for captive animals revives it at the end. Photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The capture and display of wild animals, an ancient and universal phenomenon, embodies a dichotomy, Hancocks explains in this engrossing history of zoos and their role in society: humans revere nature yet seek to dominate and control it, a doomed endeavor that has caused widespread environmental degradation. Working from the premise that zoo design reflects "our attitudes to and relationship with nature," Hancocks, director of the Open Range Zoo at Werribee, Australia, contrasts the horrific massacres of thousands of wild animals in the Colosseum with Montezuma's splendidly humane zoo, then chronicles the first scientifically oriented zoos in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England and Germany and their American offshoots. His critique of the miseries associated with their museumlike warehousing of living creatures is electrifying, the perfect lead-in to his discussion of the slow realization that naturalistic habitats are essential to zoo animals' health and happiness. What zoos must do now, Hancocks concludes, is help educate people about natural systems, biodiversity, and the pressing need for preservation. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Brilliant. Its clear and unpretentious language and Hancocks' evident passion for and knowledge of his subject made it one of the best books I have read in a long while."-Tim Murray, The Age (Melbourne) An "excellent survey."-BBC Wildlife

Customer Reviews

from the Science review
See the excellent review of this book in the journal, Science (Vol. 292, page 1304, 18 May 2001), by Michalel H. Robinson, the former director of the US National Zoo. The role of zoos is normally conceived of as fourfold: to promote recreation, education, research and conservation. He concludes that, in fact, only the very best zoos realize this potential. How many visitors, for example, leave a zoo knowing more about animal needs or their native habitats than when they entered? This reflects a failure of zoological parks to promote "biological literacy." Part of the problem is the frequent catering of zoological parks to show off charismatic vertebrates to humans desiring to see them. Yet it is increasingly recognized that effective conservation must be ecological in scope and based on large-scale "in situ" preservation of habitats. This book calls for a new vision of Zoological Gardens, to help save the world around us.

If You Like Animals Even a Little, Read This Book
David Hancocks has a lot of bad things to say about zoos - but he doesn't come at it from a wing-nut "zoos are evil" perspective. He criticizes them, justifiably and intelligently, for doing a poor job. As he sees it, zoos should be able to help animals and truly educate people about nature (of which fauna are just one part), but most often they don't do so well enough.

He goes through the history of zoos, from ancient menageries to Disney's Animal Kingdom, and shows how that history relates to political, religious and scientific trends. He explains lucidly how zoos should (and sometimes do) interlock zoology with conservation, botany, geology, architecture and other fields. He doles out praise to various institutions when merrited - which is in several cases, but sadly, far outweighed by the times when zoos have failed. It's time to start doing a better job, while there's still time.

This book will give you a lot of food for thought, and make you see animals and nature and zoos in a new light. It will makes you see zoos' flaws, but also their potential.