It's the most wonderful time of the year!
It is, it really is. If you've ever heard the joy in the song "Feliz Navidad" then you know I'm right. It's a true xmas classic that you've probably never heard.
I was thinking today abour how far zoos have come in terms of their purpose. Todays modern zoos are a far cry from when zoo keepers walked tigers around on a lead, and when zoo keepers scrubbed elephants clean with a yard brush and a hosepipe. today it's all about keeping the enclosures as close to the animals natural habitat as possible. The drawbacks? who wants to try spotting a tapir in a bush from a hundred yards away?
I say stick that tapir in a nappy and throw it in with the chimps tea party!
Not really, but it does give you a nice cross-section of how our attitudes towards animals have changed.
When documentaries used to be about the British upper classes travelling to far flung corners of the globe just to tease crocodiles in a river (a man actually disposes of his razor blades in a crocodiles mouth) Now documentaries are about how crazy aussie guys with no sense of fear are rescuing injured crocs and giving them plastic surgery! How a few decades makes a difference.
The reason why I brought this up was because I was in a craft store last week and they have a little section of dried sea creatures, and they had a big bucket full of dried sea horses. I thought how many other stores were in the same chain (about 500) worked out that there were probably at least 250-400 seahorses in this bucket, which meant that if one of these buckets existed at every single store across the country that it would equal between 12,500 and 20,000 dead seahorses for 'craft' purposes. Not meat, hobbies.
How far have we really come?
I was thinking today abour how far zoos have come in terms of their purpose. Todays modern zoos are a far cry from when zoo keepers walked tigers around on a lead, and when zoo keepers scrubbed elephants clean with a yard brush and a hosepipe. today it's all about keeping the enclosures as close to the animals natural habitat as possible. The drawbacks? who wants to try spotting a tapir in a bush from a hundred yards away?
I say stick that tapir in a nappy and throw it in with the chimps tea party!
Not really, but it does give you a nice cross-section of how our attitudes towards animals have changed.
When documentaries used to be about the British upper classes travelling to far flung corners of the globe just to tease crocodiles in a river (a man actually disposes of his razor blades in a crocodiles mouth) Now documentaries are about how crazy aussie guys with no sense of fear are rescuing injured crocs and giving them plastic surgery! How a few decades makes a difference.
The reason why I brought this up was because I was in a craft store last week and they have a little section of dried sea creatures, and they had a big bucket full of dried sea horses. I thought how many other stores were in the same chain (about 500) worked out that there were probably at least 250-400 seahorses in this bucket, which meant that if one of these buckets existed at every single store across the country that it would equal between 12,500 and 20,000 dead seahorses for 'craft' purposes. Not meat, hobbies.
How far have we really come?
posted by Steve at 9:35 AM
1 Comments:
On the whole I like zoo's. Mostly they're good to the amimals and as we rapidly trash the planet captive breeding programs offer the only future for many species. Although three hours at Rome zoo about 15 years ago was up there amongst the most depressing moments of my life. But I think its closed now.
As for dried seahorses, what do people do with them? I mean shells & coral, I don't approve of collecting them but I can see why you would. But dried sea horses?
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