Zoo: A history of zoological gardens in the west by Eric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier, Reaktion Books, 拢28, ISBN 1861891113 Reviewed by Adrian Barnett
WHAT鈥橲 the attraction of gazing at captive animals? It鈥檚 a good question and in Zoo, Eric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier give us an in-depth answer. They explain why zoos lodge in the human psyche, their place in society, and how they developed over time. It鈥檚 a richly informative book.
Placing them in their social and cultural context, Zoo traces the development of animal collections from medieval bear fights through the menagerie of the Sun King to modern captive breeding centres. Combining architectural analysis and political history, Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier show that the desire to display our domination over nature has long been a hidden feature of zoos. Only now (some would say) is that changing.
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The text has been translated from the French and in places retains a certain Yoda-like clunkiness. A trained biologist on the translation team might have weeded out egregious zoological errors such as describing the gannet as 鈥渞are and much sought after鈥�. But these are forgivable oversights in a wonderful book that is as acute at tracing themes of modern animal husbandry as it is at following 17th-century garden design鈥檚 influence on it.
Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier also examine the social psychology involved in the founding of zoos. In the late 19th century, a zoo was seen as a statement that a town had 鈥渁rrived鈥�. In the US, 20 zoos opened between 1885 and 1900. Zoos were an essential crossroads, it seems, between the 鈥渞edemptive value of nature鈥� and 鈥渁 Rousseauian pastoralist utopianism鈥�.
While the book neither apologises for nor criticises the modern zoo, the extensive appendices tell a grim story. They contain a wealth of statistics on the death rate in collections, and the success rate of captive breeding. More cheerfully, the main text is complemented by magnificently researched illustrations of zoo posters, book illustrations, engravings and photographs.
An absolute must for those interested in zoo history 鈥� or anyone fascinated by Homo sapiens鈥檚 changing relationship with our fellow creatures.