Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhibit

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jonathan
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Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhibit

Post by jonathan »

I'm sort of flabbergasted that this is happening. In order to "educate" the public about California species that have been lost to habitat destruction, the Oakland Zoo is going to destroy 56 acres of native habitat. The fact that the Alameda Whipsnake, a federally threatened species, is found on that habitat has not stopped the project from going forward. The zoo has other land available for the exhibits, but wants the visuals and nice views of the natural park land for its new project.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/z ... lText=true



Somehow, the zoo is being allowed to set aside already-protected public park land as its "mitigation" for destroyed public park land.

http://bayleafnewsletter.org/wp/knowland-park-update/



Here's a little rundown of the herp species found in the proposed site:

http://www.saveknowland.org/2012/02/10/ ... land-park/
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by jonathan »

I only just learned about the project, so if anyone has additional information that would make it seem like less of an awful idea, please share it.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kyle from Carolina »

"What did the Bay Area look like before there was all this development? ... What did it look like back when the Native Americans were here before the Gold Rush? That's what it's all about." - Parrott, president and CEO of the East Bay Zoological Society

^ Well there's a genius idea, build up some more area to show people what the place looked like before it was built up. It would be funny if it wasn't sad.
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Sam Sweet
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Sam Sweet »

Who could imagine a zoo being a profit-driven business? Get real, the hilltop theme park selling stuffed animals made in Chinese sweatshops is as "zoo" as zoos get. Oh, and the current species of bison never occurred in the Bay Area, but instead entered California only in the far NE corner on the inland side of the Cascades.

Hey, I know! Let's tell them that, then they won't need to swipe your park by eminent domain!
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by jonathan »

Sam, considering my background I think I'm as well aware as anyone of the profit-driven nature of zoos. However, they have to maintain a public image of caring about education and conservation*. That causes them to do some positive things in that direction, and hold their hand back from other things. I would have thought that this project, especially with the presence of the snake, was one of those instances where they would have held their hand back. Since they did not, they need to be called out on it, and hopefully stopped.



* There certainly are many individuals at zoos who care a lot about education and conservation. And there are even entire institutions (Belize Zoo comes to mind as having a fantastic education focus, and St. Louis Zoo is free to the public) where education/conservation really are the primary focus. But generally, in my experience both in the States and abroad, a large majority of zoos really are profit driven.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kelly Mc »

jonathan wrote:Sam, considering my background I think I'm as well aware as anyone of the profit-driven nature of zoos. However, they have to maintain a public image of caring about education and conservation*. That causes them to do some positive things in that direction, and hold their hand back from other things. I would have thought that this project, especially with the presence of the snake, was one of those instances where they would have held their hand back. Since they did not, they need to be called out on it, and hopefully stopped.



* There certainly are many individuals at zoos who care a lot about education and conservation. And there are even entire institutions (Belize Zoo comes to mind as having a fantastic education focus, and St. Louis Zoo is free to the public) where education/conservation really are the primary focus. But generally, in my experience both in the States and abroad, a large majority of zoos really are profit driven.

I hope this project can be stopped, and other people/tourist pleasing oxymoronic dioramas that promote a false impression of the conservatory ideal, but are not truthful.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by luv_the_smellof_musk »

Its 56 acres' my backyard is that big. Surely, there must be larger conservation concerns in the world.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Bryan Hamilton »

In the Bay Area there aren't many backyards that big....
Starting locally is what conservation is all about.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kelly Mc »

Wherever there is a lack of grace or spirit of animal oriented concern in question, Musky is right there to back it up.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by jonathan »

Musk, I honestly hope you can devote your life to those larger conservation concerns and therefore don't have to waste your time commenting on the piddling little issues we post about here.
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kelly Mc »

Its odd and I cant pin it down except to admit that I actually hope luv_smell_ etc.s is just insipid trolling.

If not its way ugly.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Zach_Lim »

What a goddamn shame.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by gbin »

jonathan wrote:Sam, considering my background I think I'm as well aware as anyone of the profit-driven nature of zoos. However, they have to maintain a public image of caring about education and conservation*. That causes them to do some positive things in that direction, and hold their hand back from other things. I would have thought that this project, especially with the presence of the snake, was one of those instances where they would have held their hand back. Since they did not, they need to be called out on it, and hopefully stopped.

* There certainly are many individuals at zoos who care a lot about education and conservation. And there are even entire institutions (Belize Zoo comes to mind as having a fantastic education focus, and St. Louis Zoo is free to the public) where education/conservation really are the primary focus. But generally, in my experience both in the States and abroad, a large majority of zoos really are profit driven.
The above seems to show a lack of awareness of the nature of zoos, rather than the opposite.

Generally speaking, zoos are not for-profit businesses. They don't have extremely high-level executives making obscenely bloated salaries, nor shareholders or others eagerly divvying up and pocketing a big chunk of whatever the executives leave behind. Bringing more people in the gate - the reason zoo administrators are always so eager for new exhibits - doesn't translate into more money in their pockets.

Zoos are, however, predictably dependent on their funding base, and do sometimes chase too hard after securing/enlarging it. Attendance is important to that whether or not a zoo charges an entrance fee; greater attendance translates either directly into more admission fees or indirectly into a larger supporting foundation/more persuasive power with that foundation. The St. Louis Zoo is a stellar zoo, but not because it's free to the public. There are numerous equally stellar zoos that are not free to the public.

Zoos were at the first and will always be recreational facilities, but today they can, should and usually are much more than that; indeed, the zoo association in the U.S. and Canada (and its counterparts elsewhere) has long required that they be much more than that to obtain and hold onto accreditation. And though there are certainly still non-accredited zoos out there (these days, they're pretty much only those small, privately owned and quite often dilapidated roadside zoos you drive by from time to time when touring the country), again, the general situation is otherwise. Accredited zoos are expected to make ongoing tangible contributions not just to recreation but also to education and conservation that are more or less, you guessed it, commensurate with their funding, and there is a process in place for auditing zoos to ensure they comply. The minimum requirements are much smaller than they should be, unfortunately, but many zoos greatly exceed those.

Far more unfortunately, the perspective of a given zoo's leadership matters quite a bit as to the zoo's orientation. There are indeed administrations out there who can't see past their zoos' recreational potential and think that everything else is best just supported at a "window dressing" level. They view their institutions essentially as amusement parks with animals, and don't realize that both the public's goodwill and the wildlife resources that zoos depend upon dictate that they should be much more committed to the modern zoo's full mission. They think for example, that it makes sense to shutter their whole in-house science department and instead just send a few modest annual checks to field biologists in far-flung places (as one major zoo did a few years ago), thereby freeing up much more money for new exhibits while still satisfying accreditation requirements. There's no doubt those requirements should be much more stringent to keep these people from behaving this way. Note, though, that their behavior is still not about profit per se; it's about their misguided ideas about attendance.

And as I said, there are many other zoos that greatly exceed those requirements. Plenty of zoos devote quite a few resources to education and conservation, some zoos go further and devote quite a few resources to science as well, and a few zoos even devote so much to such endeavors that I would have a hard time persuasively arguing that they should do still more in these regards - and folks who know me know that I virtually always argue that people/institutions should do more than they are ;) . Moreover, both the umbrella organization over zoos and the overwhelming majority (as opposed to "many") of the people within them are deeply committed not just to the animals in their collections but also to the conservation of the wildlife and wild lands those animals represent. Too bad zoo administrators come so often from outside the zoo world rather than from within its ranks! (The director of the zoo that closed its science department formerly directed a Six Flags Amusement Park, so should his orientation be a surprise to anyone?)

When I first started in the zoo world about 30 years ago (I've worked directly for a few and with very many in that time), someone told me that there's a pendulum swinging among zoo administrations with respect to their orientation: for a period they're all intensely interested in having scientists on staff, then in building the biggest/best new exhibit, then in getting involved in in situ conservation programs, then again in building the biggest/best new exhibit, etc. I must say my observations over all the time I've been around certainly bear that out. I must say, too, that most recently the pendulum has been swinging pretty hard and for quite a while in the direction of recreation over all. My personal suspicion is that this is based on two things: 1) There has long been a trend toward treating a zoo more as a business and less as a cause, and hiring at the top has tended to reflect that (that same zoo I mentioned also has as another of its top executives a fellow who previously was the business manager of the firm in which he was a lawyer). 2) Most (or all?) zoos not only felt the pinch of the Great Recession, they're still suffering the threat being posed/damage being caused to pretty much all public ventures due to the apparently still-growing sentiment out there for "smaller government! lower taxes!" (Most people don't realize it, but for example, employment in the public sector hasn't recovered as private sector employment has from the Great Recession; indeed, the public sector employment situation has actually continued to worsen over all the time since.) So we're currently suffering a tandem of zoos having to get by with either less funding or at the very least less secure funding, and the leadership at various zoos saying "now more than ever it's important to focus our resources on what's most directly related to attendance - exhibits!" But it's obvious to me that the pendulum will swing back, and each time it does so the umbrella organization and all those individuals in zoos who desperately want to help wildlife/wild lands conservation will use the occasion to push the requirements further in the right direction and thereby curtail the next swing away from such. So it goes.

I agree that the Oakland Zoo deserves considerable criticism for what it's doing. As for the couple of people who consistently chime in to slam zoos in general when opportunities such as this arise, well, I advise readers to recognize that these critics don't necessarily know the zoo world as well/aren't necessarily representing the zoo world as accurately as they claim.

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by jonathan »

I'm sorry, I should have said "revenue-driven nature" rather than "profit-driven nature". But like you said, they run it like a business, and the gate receipts most often take precedence over everything else. And for many in administration there are ways of improving your own financial situation if you've been shown to improve your zoo's revenue base.

I'll assure you that I am well familiar with the inner workings of a few zoos.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by gbin »

jonathan wrote:... like you said, they run it like a business, and the gate receipts most often take precedence over everything else...
That's not actually what I said. To clarify:

- I said there is a tendency toward zoo administrations trying to run their zoos strictly as businesses, i.e. with an eye toward nothing but the bottom line. It's not by any means universal, though, and as I discussed there are substantial forces acting against this tendency (the zoo association, most zoo staff) even in zoos where it applies.

- Attendance and gate receipts aren't the same thing. In the zoos that go astray from the modern zoo mission, it is their heavy focus on and misunderstandings associated with (i.e. thinking that only exhibition relates to) attendance that lead them there. Zoos that charge admission don't by any means all prioritize their recreational potential to the exclusion of their education and conservation potential, and zoos that don't charge admission aren't by any means immune to this problem.
jonathan wrote:... And for many in administration there are ways of improving your own financial situation if you've been shown to improve your zoo's revenue base.
In so far as any business tends to reward more greatly those executives who they perceive as running the business better, sure, but it's not (yet, anyway) anywhere near as it is in so many other kinds of business where the executives are hugely compensated for improving the bottom line a bit. In my experience, when zoo directors are personally motivated to chase after attendance to an unfortunate degree, it's because they mean to fatten their egos (by earning themselves what they see as bragging rights among their colleagues) rather than their wallets.
jonathan wrote:I'll assure you that I am well familiar with the inner workings of a few zoos.
Then you should make an effort to depict zoos in general more accurately and fairly. I posted what I did to set the record straight about them, not to pick a fight with you or anyone else. I'm fine with criticizing specific zoos for wrongheaded actions (as you initiated this thread to do) and even with criticizing zoos in general for their actual shortcomings (heck, I once even coauthored a book chapter doing precisely this), but not with mischaracterizing them in general and then criticizing them based on said mischaracterizations. Let's leave that latter kind of stuff for the folks at PETA and their ilk, OK?

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by gbin »

I meant to include in my post above but forgot: I'm sorry if some think I'm being overly defensive of zoos (and I don't even work for one anymore) or overly harsh toward some of their critics, but I have seen too much nonsense posted about them on these message boards at times in the past. Zoos in general have done and are doing wildlife (including herps) and wild lands a lot of good, and we here at FHF should be aware of that fact even when this or that particular zoo messes up in this or that specific way as the Oakland Zoo is doing in this case.

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kelly Mc »

Zoos are Important!

Zoo Science in its interdisciplinary facets is an epic lens at its best potential!

Great post Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kelly Mc »

I did not note any unfairness in Jonathans post, in my read of it.

I did find a comment made by someone else about sweatshop stuffed animals a most inaccurate fluff of hyperbole however.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by hellihooks »

Kelly Mc wrote: I did find a comment made by someone else about sweatshop stuffed animals a most inaccurate fluff of hyperbole however.
That seems to have been taken from the comments section, (by a lady opposing the expansion), at the end of the article...

The Zoo Board has attempted to sidestep and brush away the many legitimate concerns that clearly point to the fact that expanding the Zoo is not only a financial burden which is not best use of available resources, but more to the point, burgers and fries and stuffed animals made in sweat shops in China on the top of the Knowland ridge is not a sound ecological approach to stewardship of one of the East Bay's few remaining prime hills habitat. What we need to be doing it educating people and continuing to support native plant and animal species by monitoring and removing invasives ( Let's start with the Zoo Board-- get your hooks out of our publicly entrusted open park space here in Oakland)

I almost went to work for the Oakland Zoo in the late 80's, but they wanted me to work with Elephants (the most dangerous job at a Zoo) and I deemed the job too dangerous for me, with a wife and 3 kids to support. Pretty sure the guy who took the job got killed by one of their Elephants, a year later... :shock:
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by gbin »

hellihooks wrote:... they wanted me to work with Elephants (the most dangerous job at a Zoo)...
We certainly agree on this, Jim! I worked with tigers for years and loved it, even after one genuinely close call. Though I've had opportunities to work with elephants, the closest I've been willing to come to doing so is to work with their feces once it's been collected by others. ;)

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by hellihooks »

Far and away more Zoo Keepers are killed by Elephants than any other animal. Oakland was one stop on my Statewide jaunt, to find work at a Zoo... turned down the chance to head up the Reptile House at the Santa Barbara Zoo because their pay scale was to low, and I didn't think I could support my family on what they offered, having at that point in my life never collected unemployment, or heard of food stamps or welfare. 2 years later the Zoo had finished upgrades and raised their pay to the National Average. Should have took the job... :?
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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hellihooks wrote:... turned down the chance to head up the Reptile House at the Santa Barbara Zoo because their pay scale was to low...
I know where you're coming from there, too! One can have all kinds of education and experience, and yet the zoo job one applies for will offer an astonishingly low salary and still draw an even more astonishingly high number of applicants. Aside from the top executives at major zoos (which as I mentioned more often than not come from outside the zoo world), zoo work is definitely something one does for love rather than for money. That's one of the reasons I don't like to see zoos/zoo professionals criticized unfairly; there are an awful lot of very devoted, hardworking people there...

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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I worked in the Oakland Zoo in the 80s when it was still operated by an administration called "The Snow Building" Right out of high school instead of going to college, I started volunteering there full time, from dawn to closing and often later. I did this for months until there was a job opening as a full fledged paid keeper. In those days there wernt intern programs, like there are today. When I got hired it was a lifetime dream come true. My favorite routine was Pools Routine, because that included care of New World Monkeys, capuchins and squirrel monkeys, and some transitory animals like the big woolly named Killer, who didn't like men. He had bit the finger tip off of a guy at a previous institution, but with women he was as sweet as pie, and LOVED to be spoken to in sympathetic tones.

In those days the "Baby Zoo" had some archaic enclosures and it was actually pretty dangerous sometimes. I was trapped in a corner by Muggs - an adolescent Hippo who pushed his snout against my abdomen and I swear I thought I was a goner. I sprayed his tongue with the hose and he let up for an instant and I flipped over the gate.

I was hit by a car in a pedestrian crossing by my home, and by the time my injuries healed I got sidetracted into other pursuits, thinking , like you hear young college folks say "I'll go back later" but by the time I tried they changed to a city thing and required degrees I didn't have.

I still hear and smell the zoo in my most piercing moments of regret, and feel the crunch of leaves and dry pods that were to be hosed off the paths.

Those were the greatest mornings.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kelly Mc »

Oh hey, my comment wasn't in response to that ladies original statement, about the stuffed animals, I hadn't even read that.

It was about what Sam said, about that being as "zoo as zoos get".
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by hellihooks »

I think it's more a case of the Zoo Board being as 'non-profit' as a non-profit can be. From what I've read... a LOT of questionable and problematic dealings gone down.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kelly Mc »

I think the comment came off as a general assessment of zoos.

I don't know how Oaklands Zoo board is run. but this project is poorly founded. And a shame as Zach said.



In my utopian ideal Zoological Gardens would be elevated in value to a high priority and meld with cutting edge science, education and conservational goals.

They would exist transcendent of popcorn park entertainment purposes.

My favorite time at any of the places I have worked with animals are the times when there are no people around, before or after opening, and rare closed to public days and holidays.

There is just a different tone then. Kind of like a library or a church but alive with the best company ever.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by hellihooks »

"That which is Ethical is doing more than is required, but less than is allowed" In my experience 'non-profit' all too often means doing every bit of what is allowed, and often more than is allowed. All 'take' and no 'give'... under the guise of 'philanthropy'
I'd go so far as to say 'non-profit' is oxymoronic, and should be rightfully called 'all-profit'... :roll:
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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hellihooks wrote:Far and away more Zoo Keepers are killed by Elephants than any other animal.
Yeah, my dad always insisted that they were no doubt the most dangerous animals to work with in the zoo, even before he started his stint as an elephant keeper. Did 7 years...at the end of that time a mentally unstable cow named "Hanako" crushed him against a wall and he was nearly killed.

gbin wrote:
hellihooks wrote:... turned down the chance to head up the Reptile House at the Santa Barbara Zoo because their pay scale was to low...
I know where you're coming from there, too! One can have all kinds of education and experience, and yet the zoo job one applies for will offer an astonishingly low salary and still draw an even more astonishingly high number of applicants.
Back when my dad was first looking for a zoo job, he applied to 100 zoos, which I think wasn't far from every institution in the country. (My mom did a lot of typing work back in that era before cut-and-paste.) He got 6 call-backs, 3 interviews, 2 offers. It was a tough world for a college grad.

In the early 90s (I believe) my dad applied for and was offered a job at the Boise Zoo after about a decade of full-time experience as a zookeeper. He went to college in Idaho and did snake research there (and I was born while we lived there), and it had always been a dream to go back. But in the end, my parents had to decide that even with low cost of living, $7/hour wasn't quite enough to support a family.

Kelly Mc wrote:I worked in the Oakland Zoo in the 80s when it was still operated by an administration called "The Snow Building" Right out of high school instead of going to college, I started volunteering there full time, from dawn to closing and often later. I did this for months until there was a job opening as a full fledged paid keeper. In those days there wernt intern programs, like there are today. When I got hired it was a lifetime dream come true.
From what I understand (at least a few years ago) it's still really hard for people starting out. I knew plenty of people with B.S.'s in relevant fields who had to start off as a part-time volunteer, then get one of the full-time volunteer slots, and put in 6-18 months before they finally found a position as a temp or a full-time worker in a lower-end zoo. Then you put in a few years there, and maybe you'll get an opening at the zoo you actually want to work at.

Kelly Mc wrote:My favorite time at any of the places I have worked with animals are the times when there are no people around, before or after opening, and rare closed to public days and holidays.

There is just a different tone then. Kind of like a library or a church but alive with the best company ever.
I've gotten to do a few full nights and it's a bit surreal. However, the down sides are that most of the animals are asleep and you have to do a lot of cleaning. ;)

I've never been a keeper (just hung out behind the scenes with keepers a lot), but I do like it when the visitors are there too, just to get the chance to show them something. Many of the animals, especially the apes, interact much different when there's a keeper around than when they're going about their business the rest of the day.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by hellihooks »

yeah... nowadays it's as much about having an 'in' (who ya know) as 'what ya know' (and you need degrees now, as well) and my understanding is that at many zoo's you start in concessions---> groundskeeping and after several years work your way up to 'turd-herder'... lol
But hey... beats working with people...LOL
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by hellihooks »

jonathan wrote:
hellihooks wrote:Far and away more Zoo Keepers are killed by Elephants than any other animal.
Yeah, my dad always insisted that they were no doubt the most dangerous animals to work with in the zoo, even before he started his stint as an elephant keeper. Did 7 years...at the end of that time a mentally unstable cow named "Hanako" crushed him against a wall and he was nearly killed.
Elephants have something like 40% more hippocampal area (that is involved in memory forming, organizing, and storing) than do humans, so the old adage that 'elephants never forget' is for all intents and purposes true. Which is what makes them so dangerous... they will remember something you did, that they didn't like, TEN years ago, and sooner or later they will get a chance to act upon it... and do. And they can kill you SO easily... :shock:
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Smokey, and Lorne.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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jonathan wrote:Back when my dad was first looking for a zoo job, he applied to 100 zoos, which I think wasn't far from every institution in the country...
I was much more selective when I graduated from college, sending resumes to only 52 zoos across the country. :lol: And I got 0 interviews or offers for my trouble. It was that old bit about them wanting experience before they'll give you a job that allows you to build experience, and the time I'd spent working in a pet shop didn't cut it (and the time I'd spent working with various animals at home, even breeding them and selling them to pet shops, apparently wasn't worth considering at all). So I moved back home to keep my expenses to a minimum, took a full-time temporary grunt job that paid well to enable me to pile up some cash, and then when the temporary position ended I started volunteering at one of my local zoos (which unbeknownst to me at the time was right at the zoo world's cutting edge in a number of ways). They were excited when I told them I wanted to volunteer in research rather than animal care, and I remember when they asked "Which day of the week do you want to volunteer?" and I stunned them by saying "All of them!"

The research biologist at the time was not only stunned; he was downright disbelieving. He totally blew off the first three meetings he scheduled with me. But I kept showing up at his office day after day until he did meet with me, and ignoring his efforts to put me off I continued showing up at his office day after day until he found something for me to work on independently, and then I kept right on showing up day after day to work on it. I worked at a table he set up in a corner of his office, and I think he actually started to think of it as our rather than just his office. I started helping him with a variety of other things, too, and as soon as I could tell that he saw me as being of value to him I told him "You know, the money I stockpiled from the temporary job I had before I started volunteering is running out. I'm going to have to find another job soon, even if it takes me away from here..." So he looked around at the zoo and found me a part-time job there - as the security guard in the gift shop. That didn't last long, though, as he'd already come to really need my help on a variety of things and the gift shop job took too many of my hours away from him. So I became a part-time research assistant (even though I always worked more than full-time, pretty much eating, sleeping and breathing the work), and then a full-time research assistant, and then when he was promoted to one of the zoo's assistant director positions he actually had enough confidence in my abilities to give me his research biologist job in all but name. (Because I didn't yet have a graduate degree and that job required a Ph.D., we came up with a new title and wrote a new job description that effectively allowed me to perform the same function.)

I created my own position at another zoo years later, too, after I had an M.S. and Ph.D. and of course quite a bit of zoo experience. I found it a lot easier to do it that way than to chase after the incredibly few positions that already existed in zoos and appealed to me. (As I said, I was always aiming for research rather than animal care, though my zoo work has included a fair amount of the latter, as well).

Tigers might not have elephants' memory, but they have enough to hold and act on grudges against people who've done them wrong, too. Remember that story some years back about the tiger in a CA zoo (I forget which) that escaped its enclosure and tracked down the teenagers who had been tormenting it earlier in the day?

Y'all are making me nostalgic now. Used to love to take a brief walk around the tropics building in the morning before the gates opened, listening to the gibbons call...

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by jonathan »

gbin wrote:Tigers might not have elephants' memory, but they have enough to hold and act on grudges against people who've done them wrong, too. Remember that story some years back about the tiger in a CA zoo (I forget which) that escaped its enclosure and tracked down the teenagers who had been tormenting it earlier in the day?
Chimps too, of course. There was a famous incident at my dad's zoo where a former director came back after being gone for ten years or so. He visited primates and started playing nonchalantly with a chimp (Charlie) he had been really close to. As he absentmindedly looked away, Charlie bit off his finger. Some people said that Charlie must have forgotten who the director was. My dad suggested that Charlie knew exactly who he was, and was a little upset at him having abandoned him for so long.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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I don't know what if any role grudges play in it, but I do know that chimps are also quite dangerous to work with. When they really go after someone - which they seem to do without warning, as if someone simply flipped a switch inside their heads - they start by biting/tearing into the person's limbs to pull the person in close and then they go for the gonads. (I guess they also treat "enemy" chimps this way in the wild.) Yikes! One of my favorite colleagues from my zoo days, still a general curator in a U.S. zoo, has some truly impressive hand and arm scars from a chimp encounter.

Give me tigers or other carnivores any day. At least they generally provide plenty of warning of their intent.

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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Hippos are something you need to be Very careful around, as well... deceptively fast... :shock:
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Noah M »

Would you guys include aquariums and estuariums in the definition when you refer to zoos? Perhaps this is best suited for a different thread, but at what point do zoos/aquariums do more harm than good? Killer whales, polar bears, elephants, chimpanzees, etc - it seems like these animals are dangerous to keepers largely because we put them in the zoo, not to mention the welfare and conditions of the animal.

I am not opposed to zoos on principle, but it seems like some animals, because of home range sizes, ability to hurt people, etc are better off being out in the wild. What do you think? Where is the line drawn?

And to the OP, is there anything the zoo could do that you would agree with that would justify the expansion? Would you be as opposed if they were expanding their reptile house or putting in an education center for elementary school kids?
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kelly Mc »

Today there is something called protected contact, where tasks and care are always barriered between keepers and animals.

Zoos that create large landscaped and enriched living spaces are striving to re define the captive state.

Animals are better off in the wild. But we need to develop intelligent and ethical alternatives to address the reality of deforestation and other habitat destroying human actions so that we can provide sanctuary for continued existence for other guys that live here.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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Im not able to stomach any of the whales or dolphins, or pinnipeds in closed aquarium settings.

I think that people saying that crowding around them and watching them perform is the only way to "get them to care about their conservation" is bullshit.

People stay dumb if dumbness is catered to.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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I don't differentiate between zoos and aquariums, except that I do recognize we've much further to go with respect to keeping large aquatic organisms (e.g. cetaceans).

If I recall correctly, hippos kill more people in Africa than do any other kind of animal there. Elephants and tigers not too infrequently kill people in the wild, too (except that tigers are getting pretty darn scarce). Chimpanzees not so much, so far as I'm aware. Overall, dangerous animals are dangerous animals, and where there's a risk associated with keeping them in captivity it stems from the fact that 1) they're dangerous animals, and 2) they're not being kept optimally. And, of course, zoos are constantly working on #2, as Kelly pointed out.

That being said, some animals are indeed still problematic to keep. Not so much because of the dangers they pose (that's more an expense than a problem), but because of their particular environmental needs and use. Looking past the large aquatic animals I mentioned, think minutely proper water chemistries for exceptionally sensitive aquatic organisms. Large/complex landscapes for terrestrial animals that normally roam, such as ursids and canids. Behaviorally interesting/challenging environments for, well,... everything, but especially animals with higher intelligence. Even for these species, though, it's really only a matter of time and effort until we figure out how to provide for them in a manner that really suits them. And again, zoos are constantly working on this.

I frankly dismiss the question of where animals are better off, on grounds of both inadequate information and irrelevance.

On inadequate information: Until someone comes up with a reliable "happiness meter" for whatever wild species, I'm going to stick with the metrics that have long been known and are still improving, e.g. neonatal survival, growth, reproduction, lifespan, frequency/type of abnormal behavior, stress hormone level. Virtually every time in my now fairly lengthy career (not to mention life) when I've discussed this question with non-zoo people, it's become evident that when they think zoos aren't doing right by animals (absent some obvious issue with one or more of the metrics I just listed), it's because they project onto the animals what they think would make them happy or unhappy about living in zoos. People are animals, to be sure, but that doesn't mean they can accurately intuit how other kinds of animals experience things. Invent that cross-species happiness meter and I'll take heed of what it says, otherwise I'm not buying it. And I'll mention it for a third time in this post because it deserves enough mentions that it really sinks in: zoos are constantly striving to optimize their care for the animals in their collections, they have made great strides on this in the past and there's every reason to believe they will make more great strides in the future.

On irrelevance: We still send people into coal mines to meet our energy needs. We still raise and slaughter animals to feed ourselves. Countless major etc.s before we ever get to the even more innumerable minor ones. It's simply not possible to live without suffering oneself and causing suffering in others. Free-roaming wild animals suffer all kinds of maladies and injuries, and typically die in quite horrible ways; in captivity they're freed from most of these kinds of suffering, but doubtless still experience other kinds. (I'd argue animals have it better off in captivity, but who's truly qualified to say where the balance lies? Not anyone I've ever met - including myself.) There isn't just one fact of life (death), there are two (suffering and death). Nature's (non-)plan is indeed grand and I'm all for it, but the purposes of the modern zoo - to learn about wildlife, to educate people about and connect them to wildlife, sometimes even to act as a safeguard against wildlife extinction - are in my opinion pretty grand, too. I accept that in order to eat, a lion might disembowel a zebra while the zebra is still alive. I also accept that in order to keep zebras in zoos, a zebra might indulge in stereotypical behavior such as pacing or cribbing because we haven't yet figured out how to keep its life adequately enriched. Whether or not I accept these kinds of things, whether or not animals are kept in captivity, I recognize that they are going to suffer at times and eventually die. So be it.

Kelly, when I first started working in a zoo, I sometimes provided care to Siberian tigers in an out-of-the-way building well off exhibit. There weren't any double barriers or the like to protect me, just me on one side of the bars or a shift door and them on the other. (There was at least a double-door system, so an animal that escaped its enclosure couldn't escape the building and wander the grounds.) I often worked alone, and no one else necessarily even knew where or when I was doing so. Times have changed, eh?

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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I believe if not now then someday we have the potential to provide cultured equation of wild living situ for many animals.

Gerry my comment about better off, meant it would be lovely if the world could remain unchanged and biomes pristine.

The hippo i knew was dangerous. The one i took care of was huge, testy, and mischevious in a way that was always dominating.

When I worked at the zoo distraction and speed took the place of barriers.

A pile of omaline could be the only thing seperating me from Papa-San, a glorious and enormous fully horned Yak. I was frequently bitten by Sarafina the nutty capuchin, and had my fingers and toes crushed by feet and in the marginals of galapagos tortoises as they drew their limbs in, when we had to scoot them in the direction of their night house.

I loved it.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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I miss spending the occasional morning alone in the company of those tigers, too... :| We really got to know each other during my time working with them. I was even blood brother to one of them, having accidentally stuck myself with a syringe full of his blood while transferring it to a red-top tube.

Back then we depended so much more on common sense rather than multiple layers of safety equipment and procedure. Visually inspect a cage to make sure no tiger is in it or has access to it before entering it. Stay farther back from the bars of a cage containing a tiger than the tiger can reach. Etc. But some folks don't have much common sense, and accidents happen even among those who do (witness the phlebotomy incident I mentioned above).
Kelly Mc wrote:Gerry my comment about better off, meant it would be lovely if the world could remain unchanged and biomes pristine.
By my thinking, the ideal world would have both pristine biomes and state-of-the-art zoos. ;)

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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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gbin wrote:I miss spending the occasional morning alone in the company of those tigers, too... :| We really got to know each other during my time working with them. I was even blood brother to one of them, having accidentally stuck myself with a syringe full of his blood while transferring it to a red-top tube.

Back then we depended so much more on common sense rather than multiple layers of safety equipment and procedure. Visually inspect a cage to make sure no tiger is in it or has access to it before entering it. Stay farther back from the bars of a cage containing a tiger than the tiger can reach. Etc. But some folks don't have much common sense, and accidents happen even among those who do (witness the phlebotomy incident I mentioned above).
Kelly Mc wrote:Gerry my comment about better off, meant it would be lovely if the world could remain unchanged and biomes pristine.
By my thinking, the ideal world would have both pristine biomes and state-of-the-art zoos. ;)

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by hellihooks »

SDWAP (San Diego Wild Animal Park) as an offshoot of San Diego Zoo is in fact an example of the on-going 'sea-change' in animal husbandry (and where the founder of Nafha, Jeff Lemm works)
Many animals already (or in the near future) only survive in Zoos, and along with making 'Zoo life' better for the inhabitants, we (as the reason they only exist in zoos) also have a moral obligation to preserve every life form (excepting viruses, of course) we can, either in zoos or by way of 'Noah's Arc' programs.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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I frankly dismiss the question of where animals are better off, on grounds of both inadequate information and irrelevance.
I'm not sure if this was directed at me. I'll openly admit I am a non-zoo person (that is I do not work in zoos or around them), but I do remember from my classes about zoos in college learning about the stereotypies, and how zoos work to eliminate them. Aside from injured (permanently or not) wildlife in rehabilitation clinics, it bothered me that elevated stress hormone levels and abnormal behavior are just part of the system. It came across to me as something zoos coped with, as though it were unavoidable and the best anybody could hope for was minimizing it. It wasn't a problem to be solved, but a problem to be managed. Yes, wild animals may actually experience higher levels of stress hormone, but for a shorter period of time. I thought part of the stress issues with zoos was the persistently elevated levels of stress, even if lower than have been observed in the wild. The example given in class was the polar bear, and Gerry does mention that ursids and others are problematic to keep because of their environmental needs.

This is where I haven't quite made up my mind. On one hand I feel like saying all of these creatures with high environmental needs or higher order intelligence should not be kept captive because while zoos are working to improve their conditions, they haven't figured it out yet and we're merely adding to the suffering. All things do suffer, but Homo sapiens can not only recognize suffering, but work to accentuate or attenuate it. Ethics tells us we should attenuate it, particularly if we're the source of it. Nevermind putting a polar bear back into the wild, never taking it out of the wild may be the best thing for it. (Again, ignoring rehabilitation centers, captive breeding programs, etc.) What if its found that the only way to avoid abnormal behavior and keep stress hormones similar to those found in the wild is to have an enclosure too large to be feasible. You know, something so large people never see the animal (it might as well not be there) or so large no zoo could properly maintain it?

But on the other hand I understand zoos do work to minimize stress and harm. Progress in this area will never happen if we never have these animals captive. And there may come a time when the best thing for an animal, individual or species level, is for it to be in captivity, and we should have the tools and knowledge ready to go to keep it as "happy" as possible.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The other thing that bothers me is the entertainment part of zoos. I look at them as areas of research and education. Entertainment is the necessary evil. I agree with what Kelly wrote,
I think that people saying that crowding around them and watching them perform is the only way to "get them to care about their conservation" is bullshit.
Are there other ways to learn about animals in captive environments and still teach people about conservation? Is there a distinction made between sea creatures with big ranges and/or higher intelligence and land creatures with big ranges and/or higher intelligence? Big tank of water or a big landscaped area - it seems about the same to me.

Does the animal actually need to be present for the entertainment value? Maybe we'll develop 3D holographic animals that are so convincing, people will think they're seeing a bear or dolphin when they are really not. A virtual zoo. Then we can have rehab & research clinics where animals are cared for and learned about, and we can have as many jumping dolphins or bears riding tricycles as we want.

Goodness this got longer than I was expecting....
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

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captainjack0000 wrote:
Does the animal actually need to be present for the entertainment value? Maybe we'll develop 3D holographic animals that are so convincing, people will think they're seeing a bear or dolphin when they are really not. A virtual zoo. Then we can have rehab & research clinics where animals are cared for and learned about, and we can have as many jumping dolphins or bears riding tricycles as we want.
for some reason this makes me think of the movie 'Jurrasic Park'... and we all know how that ended... :lol: If somethings 'virtual' you can view it in your living room... why ever even leave your house? :shock: Time to go for a walk out in nature and reflect, Capt... :lol: :lol:
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by gbin »

captainjack0000 wrote:
I frankly dismiss the question of where animals are better off, on grounds of both inadequate information and irrelevance.
I'm not sure if this was directed at me...
Not personally, cj0000. It's directed at any and all who pose this question about zoo animals, or believe they can answer it.
captainjack0000 wrote:... it bothered me that elevated stress hormone levels and abnormal behavior are just part of the system. It came across to me as something zoos coped with, as though it were unavoidable and the best anybody could hope for was minimizing it...
If that's what you were taught, then I strongly suspect it was non-zoo people who taught it to you. As a long-time insider, I can tell you that zoo people care a great deal about stress hormone levels and abnormal behavior in their animals. More than your typical long-time insider, actually; I created and for some years ran an endocrinology laboratory for one major zoo, and one of the lab's principal focuses was studies conducted to determine the stress levels in animals which commonly displayed stereotypical behavior in the hope that ways could be found to reduce their stress levels and eliminate their abnormal behavior. Because of the small collections individual zoos typically have of any one species, we commonly enlisted the collaboration of other zoos in our studies, and we never suffered for lack of willing participants. Mind you, it's not possible nor desirable to eliminate all stress that animals experience. They (and we) are evolutionarily designed to respond to stressors, a not only good but downright necessary thing because stressors exist everywhere, all the time. But caring as deeply for their animals as zoo people do, they definitely want to eliminate - not just minimize - any problems their animals are experiencing.
captainjack0000 wrote:... Homo sapiens can not only recognize suffering, but work to accentuate or attenuate it. Ethics tells us we should attenuate it, particularly if we're the source of it...
We're all, every one of us, a source of suffering for each other and for other life forms. Some deliberate, some inadvertent, some consciously, some totally unaware. I'd say that we have a clear moral (as opposed to ethical) responsibility not to cause others, be they human or not, to suffer just for the sake of suffering. Going beyond that, though, things become decidedly less clear. We're never going to eliminate suffering no matter what we do; it's a fact of life. We also have no way of knowing what an animal would choose if it had the foresight necessary to make an informed choice: would it choose to live a long, productive life while suffering a higher baseline level of stress in captivity, or would it choose to live a likely shorter, less productive life with a lower baseline level of stress and a violent, very likely extremely stressful death in the wild? (We don't know for sure, but I would bet that being eaten alive - a fairly common end in the wild - is pretty darn stressful.) I don't know, and neither does anyone else. I'd say that we have a moral responsibility to try to minimize the suffering we cause others by our meaningful pursuits (as opposed to the sadism I just mentioned), but not to abandon those pursuits to avoid causing any suffering at all. Suffering will still occur no matter what we do, after all.

And yes, I most definitely consider recreation to be a meaningful pursuit, never mind that the modern zoo is supposed to (and generally does) pursue much more than just its recreational potential.

By the way, I don't buy that it will ever be immutable "that the only way to avoid abnormal behavior and keep stress hormones similar to those found in the wild is to have an enclosure too large to be feasible." What's possible and what's feasible are changing all the time, through concerted effort and invention by dedicated, hardworking zoo/aquarium professionals.

If folks want me to chime in again they'll have to wait for it, as after this post I'll be offline for some days.

Gerry
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by hellihooks »

I think this thread has gotten somewhat derailed from the imeadiate problem of what to do about what Oakland zoo is trying to do. Zoos and Zookeeping in general probably deserves it's own thread. ;)
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Kelly Mc »

If there is a chance they could change their mind everyone concerned should try to communicate to them.

Its such a special snake. Its hard not to see what makes every species special, but man o man it sure is easy to see with that guy.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Noah M »

hellihooks wrote:I think this thread has gotten somewhat derailed from the imeadiate problem of what to do about what Oakland zoo is trying to do. Zoos and Zookeeping in general probably deserves it's own thread. ;)

I did pose a question to the OP, if he can find it I would be curious to know his answer.
All in all good discussion. Seems like we could have easily fallen into less than civil discourse, but we did not, and I am happy for that.
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Re: Zoo destroying Alameda Whipsnake habitat for Bison exhib

Post by Noah M »

hellihooks wrote:
for some reason this makes me think of the movie 'Jurrasic Park'... and we all know how that ended... :lol: If somethings 'virtual' you can view it in your living room... why ever even leave your house? :shock: Time to go for a walk out in nature and reflect, Capt... :lol: :lol:
I didn't say virtual zoos were for me. I actually figured a two class zoo system would emerge where poor folk got the fake zoo and wealthy folk got to see real animals. Personally, I would just take a walk in the woods.
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