Zoos and Wildlife Parks

Zoos and wildlife parks are institutions that specialize in the collection and public display of wild animals, or what are described as wild animals. Many zoos and wildlife parks also display domestic animals, and some include aquariums with marine mammals and invertebrates, as well as freshwater and saltwater fish.

The Vienna Zoo, which opened to the public in 1779, is widely regarded as the oldest existing zoo in the world. The oldest “scientific” zoo (i.e., a zoo where animals were both displayed and used for scientific study) is the London Zoo, which was established in 1828 and opened to the public in 1847. The word zoo is a late-nineteenth-century popular abbreviation for the London Zoological Gardens.

It was once the case that zoos and wildlife parks were strikingly different from each other. Zoos tended to be located in urban sites and often had small, completely enclosed displays with little or no landscaping. By contrast, wildlife parks—many of which opened after the 1960s—tended to be located in suburban or rural locations and had larger, more open, and often landscaped displays. Although the differences in the overall size and location frequently remain, many zoos now have naturalistic and immersive displays, and these attenuate the contrast in the displays.

As conceived in the zoo industry's predominant discourse, “naturalistic” exhibits are those that involve more or less elaborate simulations of the zoo animals' original habitats. Examples of the simulations include African savannahs, Amazonian rain forests, and, in the case of aquariums, acrylic tunnels that give visitors a sense of being underwater. Many such exhibits may also be said to be “immersive” insofar as they give visitors a sense of entering the physical space in which the animals are displayed.

Naturalistic displays are often said to provide environmental enrichment for the animals; that is, they provide the environmental stimuli that are thought to be necessary for the animals' psychological and physiological well-being. Although this may be true in certain cases, some zoologists are concerned that the design of contemporary displays is biased in favor of the visitor experience and, thereby, visitor expectations concerning animal welfare.

Many zoos also suggest that displays with environmental enrichment allow them to act as “modern arks” that may enable the reintroduction of endangered species to their original habitats. This perspective has been contested by animal welfare activists, who question both the premises of the idea and zoos' past conservation record (see, e.g., Laidlaw 2001). Zoo educators have also argued that naturalistic displays provide for a more effective form of conservation education. There is, however, still relatively little evidence that this is actually the case. To be sure, a case can be made that the kind of merchandizing found especially in the more commercial zoos contributes to the very consumer culture that, directly or indirectly, has led to the loss of habitat and the endangering of many species.

Despite these issues, it appears that naturalistic and immersive displays have helped zoos to [Page 1556]reverse the decline in visitor numbers that began in the mid- to late 1960s and continued in many cases until the late 1980s—the London Zoo was nearly forced to close in 1991. According to the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, by 2005 several hundred million people were visiting zoos and wildlife parks across the world each year; press releases posted in the early to mid-2000s by several zoos in the United States suggested that their organizations were surpassing the record attendance levels experienced in the early 1960s.

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