Modern zoo exhibits are carefully designed to meet the needs of both the animals on display and of the viewing public.
Some of us may be old enough to recall the days when zoo “exhibits” were simply iron-bar cement-floor prison cells, where bored and neurotic animals paced around all day.
Today, however, modern zoos are completely different, and the emphasis is on exhibiting animals in naturalistic enclosures where they can follow their natural behavioral patterns. The primary aims of every modern zoo are “education” and “conservation”.
In the early 20th century, zoo design underwent a major revolution, led by one man–German animal collector Carl Hagenbeck. In 1907, Hagenbeck founded a zoo in Hamburg that was vastly different from anything else in the world. The iron-bar prison cells were gone–Hagenbeck housed his animals in large open areas that were landscaped to mimic as much as possible the natural habitats they were found in. Walls and fences were replaced by moats and ditches. These enclosures contained a mixture of different species, living together as they would in the wild. Today, virtually every major zoo follows these principles.
One of the first things to be considered in exhibit design is security, for both the animals and the visitors. Some zoo animals, particularly the smaller ones like reptiles, small birds, and nocturnal mammals, are displayed in glass terrariums, and these are usually gathered indoors in climate-controlled aviaries or reptile houses. But large animals like big cats, plains mammals or primates are usually housed outdoors in large open paddocks.
These have to be carefully designed, both to keep the animals in and, perhaps even more vital, to keep irresponsible human visitors out. This is done with a system of moats, ditches, and walls, many of which are inconspicuous and unnoticed. These moats are planned to be deep and wide enough to minimize the possibility of any animals climbing or leaping across, but they are often screened from the view of visitors by rocks, trees or some other naturalistic-appearing obstacle. In some cases, a single large enclosure may actually have a series of hidden internal moats, which maintain a separation of different species which appear to the visitor to be living together as they do in the wild but which in reality are safely separated from each other.
In most cases the entire enclosure or paddock will be surrounded by another barrier, which may be a low stone wall or rail, or a high wire-mesh fence. This would not present much of a barrier to many large animals, but that is not its purpose—its aim is to keep human visitors out of the enclosures. After all, humans do stupid things at random times.
Once the animals (and visitors) are safely secured, the next consideration is viewability. This must balance two different requirements: many animals naturally prefer to be inconspicuous or hidden in order to feel secure, but zoo visitors want to see the animals, and do not want to look at enclosures which appear empty. And, to be honest, most animals are boring to look at most of the time anyway. Many spend most of their day sleeping and lounging around, conserving energy and doing nothing. (Big cats, koalas, sloths, bears—all are famous for sleeping as much as 20 hours a day.) Visitors of course want to see active animals which are doing something interesting, not snoozing lumps of fur laying in the grass, and in terms of health care it is also best for the animals to be active and exercised. In the wild, animals are forced by hunger to move around and hunt in search of food, often for hours: in captivity, though, where all they have to do is sit and wait for their food to be brought to them, they do not need to move around—so they don’t.
To deal with this issue, zoos have come up with a number of strategies to encourage the animals to voluntarily choose to be active in places where they can exercise and where the public can see them. Most zoos offer “enrichment” programs for their animals, which offers them toys or hidden treats or unusual scents or novel objects which the animals can then explore, which encourages them to be active and to display their natural curiosity and foraging behaviors. This can include things like hiding peanut butter treats for the bears, giving playthings for the river otters, or rotating the enclosures for lions or tigers to give them new areas to explore.
Climate-control cues can also be used to encourage animals to voluntarily choose to be more visible. Depending on the local weather, animals can be provided with hidden heaters or fans, which are disguised as artificial rocks, logs or caves and which are thereby inconspicuous to the visitors and look naturalistic. This encourages animals to rest, bask or sometimes sleep in areas in which they feel secure while still being visible to the public. Many zoos also provide food, perhaps in hidden serving containers, for their animals during the day in an open area where they can be seen by visitors. This encourages the animals to move around and be active.
Another method which is being used more often are enclosures made from high stone walls with several glass “viewing windows” located at various places around the perimeter. These allow for large enclosures which can handle more viewers at one time, and also allow for specific “no-view” areas where the animals can retreat from the public at any time. It also entices the visitors to move around and actively search for the animal, more akin to what they would experience if they were actually viewing them in the wild. And if the animal decides to hang around next to the window, it gives people a much closer view than would be safe or even possible with a more open enclosure. The downside is that it also means that the animals will not always be within view at all—which can disappoint some of the human visitors.
More and more zoos are also turning to “animal shows” and “animal encounters” as both a way to allow visitors to see the animals up close and as an enrichment experience for the animals themselves. (And, let’s not forget, these “behind-the-scenes” tours also provide a much-needed new revenue stream for the non-profit zoo.) Although these may remind us of the bad old days when “performing animals” did silly entertaining tricks for bits of food as a reward, they are not. The behaviors which are demonstrated in these shows and talks are in most cases natural behaviors which these particular species would use in the wild to find food or attract a mate and which allow them to be active. Free-flight bird shows, for instance, allow the birds to fly and get exercise to a greater extent than they might by just sitting inside an aviary waiting to be fed. Other behaviors in these shows are those which the animal has been trained to do on cue for purposes of veterinary examinations or medical treatments. And in most cases, the training process and the shows themselves serve as physical and mental enrichment for the animals which participate.
All of these factors are taken together to try to provide the best environment for both animals and human visitors.
Hidden History 