THE IDEAL ZOO
By WILLIAM T. HORNADAY, Director of the New York Zoological Park.
Tperfect Zoo has not yet arrived, but surely there- is is no harm in anticipating its arrival. We must( not, however, merely sit down and wait for it. Mean while we are invited to let " Fancy her magical pinions spread wide." The designing of a new Zoo should be preceded by a season of fasting and prayer. The need is for surpassing wisdom and a divine sense of proportion..
It is much more important to know what not to do than it is to plan the things to be done. And yet, is it not the rule of all nations in Zoo-designing for fools to rush in where wise men fear to tread ? In America it has been the universal rule for twenty years for local newspapers to announce that " the new Zoo " will be either " the; finest Zoo in the world " or " finer than Bronx Park."
The ideal Zoo should look ahead at least a quarter of a century. The New York Zoological Park owes fully one- half of its success, and all of the joy that its founders derived from its development, from its complete Final Plan. I might even call it perfect, because the only changes necessary in the plan were insignificant. Two years spent in a searching study of nearly all the notable Zoological gardens existing in 1896-7 and an expenditure of about $12,000 before ground was broken were well worth while. All the world agrees that every Zoo should be most !carefully designed to fit the size and resources of the city that it is intended to educate and adorn. I think it is 'much more difficult to maintain a Zoo than it is to build ,one. The building is a glorious diversion ; its main- tenance and repairs represent " the cold grey dawn of the orning after." Andinaintenance troubles go on for ever. To the city concerned, the fateful hour is that in which the designer decides just how large the new institution ',shall be, and what it shall cost to maintain it. His task is to give his patrons a well-balanced, well-equipped and perfect Zoo that may justly be regarded as " one of the finest " ; that shall be as large as the traffic will stand, and yet be none too large for comfortable maintenance. ',Quite recently the writer designed for an American city just such a Zoo to cost $1,500,000 for the making (on a free site), and to be carried comfortably by an annual Maintenance fund of $150,000.
At this point it seems desirable to touch upon some of the essential details of the ideal Zoo. In the first place, ',the founders should nobly resolve to keep no animals on exhibition that cannot be made comfortable and reasonably happy. To-day, humane people do not enjoy the sight of unhappy or uncomfortable captive animals, and the most sensitive persons are deeply pained. The ideal Zoo positively must not make the mistake of housing too many species at the expense of individual comfort. Just now, the temptation to take on too many mammals, birds or reptiles is very great. The ideal director or superinten- dent must be a master in the art of refusing.
The captive wild animal (I use the word in its zoolo- gical sense) must be given in its suite of apartments, its ranges and corrals, its aviary, or what not, the greatest possible number of options on heat or cold, sunlight or shade, wetness or dryness, breeze or shelter, company or seclusion. In the daytime, animals are happiest and thrive best when they can see a lot of other animals through the partitions of their cages, or otherwise. On this subject half a book might be written.
The ideal Zoo must shun imposing real solitary confine- ment as we all shun distemper and pneumonia. The best ;Zoo is the one that keeps its captives on the most sociable and cheerful basis that is possible with due regard to their It is the business and the bounden duty of ;intelligent curators and keepers to study the tempera- iments of their animals and to know how many can live Itogether of each species, and just which ones are " mean " in temper, and require to be caged alone. The com- munity idea must be carried out in cage and den and corral to its utmost reasonable limits, even though there may be a little occasional fighting.
The space to be allotted to each cage or compartment (must be enough to save the occupant from feeling crated and in danger of being smothered. Wild animals hate crates, just as men hate strait-jackets. An extra fifty square feet of cage floor may make to the animal a world of difference. Of course it is unnecessary to dwell upon the duty to give every animal in a building an outdoor cage of some sort, be it ever so humble. For tropical hoofed animals that live in buildings the outside yards should be as long as possible, up to 70 feet ; but the larger the animal the more it needs. Keeping elephants, rhinoceroses and tapirs in buildings without open-air !yards deserves to rank as a penal offence.
Every open-air den for bears, wolves, foxes and large ,carnivores should have a wide expanse of smooth and nearly level concrete, to stimulate walking and playing. Uneven floors for such animals are a great mistake. They prevent exercise, instead of stimulating it. And all such enclosures should have steep rocks at the rear, over the sleeping dens, to provoke climbing and also occasional resting on high levels.
It is in the tropical bird houses that the community cage idea becomes a positive delight. About two-thirds of all bird species are sufficiently good-natured to admit of many being kept together in large cages that afford a right good measure of freedom. The way these bird families hop about, and flit, and sing, and at times work and play, makes them a joy to contemplate. The other third of these birds are mean-spirited, and require to be caged singly—at some waste of room.
We have found that parakeets, lories and small parrots actually are happier in small cages than they are in extra large ones, in which they are afraid, and hardly know what to do with themselves. This is true of many small mammals !
The ideal Zoo is one which uses a maximum of wire netting for its deer, sheep, goats, antelopes, musk-ox, all birds, all monkeys save the apes and baboons, and even all lions and tigers. But the ideal Zoo need not go crazy in worship of the Hagenbeck idea of " barless bear dens," and spend a quarter of a million dollars in making four or five moated fortifications of artificial stone —such as wild bears never inhabit when free. This craze is now sweeping like an epidemic through the small new Zoos of America to the sacrifice of much more necessary works.
The cages of the animal buildings must be ventilated from their floors upward, with exhausts at the top, to avoid discharging cage odours in the faces of visitors. The apes need just as much dry, fresh air as the lions and tigers ; and there should be no solid walls of glass in front of them 'to cut it off. It is better for captive animals to have occasionally a little too much fresh air than too little.
Finally, we advocate light olive-green paint on cage walls and bars, light-coloured interiors for buildings, big windows, plenty of skylights over cages, and many 'dowers throughout the grounds. We hold that under no cir- cumstances should visitors be permitted to feed Zoo animals ; that a skilled veterinary surgeon should always be available, and that in surgical operations anaesthetics should diligently and invariably be used. The writer holds that the second highest duty (after humane treat- ment) of the ideal Zoo is to exhibit animals—as many of the important and representative genera as practicable from all over the world, and that in comparison with this the breeding of Zoo animals is of third-rate importance.
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