Zoos are amazing places. At their best, the modern forms mix research and spectacle into a melange that has the power to both entertain as well as enlighten. At their worst… well, let us not dwell on that at present. And as to their history; in their previous existence as menageries and indeed, right up into living memory, some have not only been institutions of scientific study, but but also centers of far more social and political influence than we would likely think possible today.
When I was a boy, every Sunday evening after the dinner dishes had been washed and the kitchen tidied up, my parents and I would sit down in front of our wood cabinet console encased (first for our family) color television set and watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Hosted by the eminently calm Marlin […]
A good book should cause one to find a continuous string of further questions arising in the mind while and after reading it. A great one should cause the mind to positively fizz with them. And after only yet reading Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ forward and Marcus Baynes-Rock’s introduction to his Among the Bone Eaters; Encounters with Hyenas in Harar, I have every reason to believe that my brain will be bubbling like a shaken soda bottle by the time my reading of the book is completed.