A Trip to the Zoo
The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal’s look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look….
The relation may become clearer by comparing the look of an animal with the look of another man. Between two men the two abysses are, in principle, bridged by language. Even if the encounter is hostile and no words are used (even if the two speak different languages), the existence of language allows that at least one of them, if not mutually, is confirmed by the other. Language allows men to reckon with each other as with themselves. (In the confirmation made possible by language, human ignorance and fear may also be confirmed. Whereas in animals fear is a response to signal, in men it is endemic.) … No animal confirms man, either positively or negatively…The first metaphor was animal, it was because the essential relationship between man and animal was metaphoric. Within that relation what the two terms — man and animal — shared in common revealed what differentiated them. And vice versa.
-John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” About Looking.
So maybe dolphins didn’t really commit mass suicide, and maybe elephants can’t really paint self-portraits, and maybe a parrot never served as key witness in a murder trial, and maybe monkeys don’t have real conversations– animals are a lot smarter than you think. 
To the left is my dog’s favorite toy, to the right is a coffee cup that scares the bejeebus out of her (it’s also a picture of her doppleganger.) Another example of how uncanny valley creeps out animals too.
The other day, I was in a shopping mall and for whatever reason stopped by the pet store. It was a typical mall pet store, the size of a closet, at the far corner where all the cheap and badly maintained stores are located. Seeing a dozen or so puppies in their cages gave me a terrible sense of guilt. Like I should take them all — pay for them — and save them from further torture. But that would only encourage the store to breed more puppies in even worse conditions.
The Sundance Channel’s Big Ideas for a Small Planet “animals” special is the best episode in an already great series. They highlighted an animal shelter in Dallas doing its best to provide safe, friendly, spacious (green) conditions for its inhabitants. The structural changes indirectly raised a practical question: who is going to go to the pound if you are only going to experience that guilty feeling that you need to save them all?
Another segment was on the maintenance of the Bronx zoo, where they emphasize that conservation is their major goal. It got me thinking about how much has changed since John Berger wrote “Why Look at Animals?” in 1977. Berger’s essay talks about the way zoos at once seek the distinction given to museums, although they are taking subjects out of the natural environment in order to display. So what you have is an animal with a “frame around it.”
Visitors visit the zoo to look at animals. They proceed from cage to cage, not unlike the visitors in an art gallery who stop in front of one painting, and then more on to the next or the one after next… When you look at these animals, even if the animal is up against the bars, less than a foot from you, looking outwards in the public direction, you are looking at something that has been rendered absolutely marginal; and the concentration you can muster will never be enough to render it…
The space in which they inhabit is artificial. Hence their tendency to bundle towards the edge of it. (Beyond the edges there may be real space.) In some cages the light is equally artificial. In all cases the environment is illusory.
Now zoo architects are working toward building less artificial environments(and cages are no longer acceptable in metropolitan zoos.) Still, the just open Norman Foster elephant house for the Copenhagen Zoo, and news surrounding it, shows the debate whether a zoo should exist at all never went away.
A design critic at The Guardian says, in an otherwise an enthusiastic post about the zoo addition, “How can any architect even begin to match the subtlety of a spider’s web or recreate the landscapes and forests elephants call home? Zoo architecture is, at best, an art, or beast, of uneasy and uncertain compromise.”
Images by Sarah Moon. Brightcove video and more about the artist.
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