1. The "stamp collecting" related to Linnaes' method of classifying organisms by prompting zoo keepers and their promoters to acquire full sets of genera in their collections for study, observation, and entertainment. They followed the Linnaes method by arranging organisms into taxonomic groups by dividing them into vertebras and invertebrates, then into classes, then orders, families, genera, and species. The buildings they were housed in came to reflect these classifications so that all big cats were in one building, and all other carnivores were grouped with their own groups in other places.
2. One account signified that public walks through the zoo were a pastime that brought families closer as it was a popular family activity to frequent the zoo with ones family, especially amidst the craze and waves of new species being acquired, and being in the pubic view encouraged individuals to be well-dressed. The zoo also encouraged the public at large to be interested and educated on matters of natural history when it came to their behaviors and classification, as they organized the exhibits early on to reflect Linnaeus' system.
3. The result of the public demand for exotic animals meant that many zoos started breeding programs with little to no regard for the animals' future and how they'd be able to maintain them over the course of their lives. Zoos were responsible for "showboating" in part by trying to amass a vast collection of exotic animals that they couldn't maintain and trading with circuses and other zoos to obtain the number of any given species that they "needed" for display. The care for life in zoos now considers adequate living space, meeting their health and nutritional needs, ethical treatment, and providing the necessary mental stimulation the animals need.
4. Man looked to animal because they are both like and unlike man. Their similarities and differences offer us a different relationship than any we can have with a human and brings us closer to a time when our interactions were not simply for the benefit of travel or food. Now we look at them to see over that abyss of non-comprehension. To bridge the isolation of species almost unique to human kind. Though, as he says, through zoos they have learned indifference, and they no longer look to humans making a sort of connection across the species, but their gaze flickers past.
-guillermo
OK, but so which passage from Berger was most interesting to you and why? I asked and want to know !
ReplyDelete"No animal confirms man, either positively or negatively. The animal can be killed and eaten so that its energy is added to that which the hunter already possesses. The animal can be tamed so that it supplies and works for the peasant. But always its lack of common language, its silence, guarantees its distance, its distinctness, its exclusion, from and of man. Just because of this distinctness, however, an animal's life, never to be confused with a man's, can be seen to run parallel to his. Only in death do the two parallel lines converge and after death, perhaps, cross over to become parallel again; hence the widespread belied in the transmigration of souls. With their parallel lives, animals offer a companionship which is different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species."
ReplyDeleteThis is my favorite passage from the Berger, as I think it explains, or best tries to, at least, why we look at animals, and not just what our fascination with them is, but captures pretty eloquently one aspect of the relationship we have together, that we do not get from other humans.