response questions 3, guillermo

1. Hornaday, Blair, and Osborne all pushed the zoo to start making a greater effort to promote conservation and education, rather than just recreational and entertaining activities. Osborne changed the design of the zoo to become a friendlier and more open environment, by lifting the 40-year ban on cameras, by initiating a series of art shows, installing a road train for visitors, and forming a Department of Insects. Most importantly he took the concept of Hagenbeck's to create a more immersive exhibit and experience for the viewers when he created the new exhibit, Africa Plains. By shaping the vegetation to more closely match that which might be found in the natural habitats of the animals. One of the cons of the Africa Plains exhibit was that it still left the viewer on a further plain of distance away from the animals, and weren't fully immersed, as well as using and modifying their own vegetation, rather than seeking out the natural flora from the habitats they were representing. Hancocks praises the zoo for being a pioneer in developing new ways of exhibiting the animals and running the zoo that would put more emphasis on conservation and creating an environment more suited to the health, happiness, and general well-being of the animals.

2a. Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo made a major innovation to zoos when they constructed their gorilla habitat which included live and lush vegetation immersed fully with the gorillas. Their approach to the design of the habitat was successful in that they didn't try to immerse in the gorilla's habitat just for the sake of appearances, but for the immersion of the animals into a more natural environment, that would bring the gorillas into a more natural state than being in an environment that stays stagnant and in the broad view of the public and of the other gorillas at all times. It was very different from other approaches that came before in that all elements fir seamlessly into the environment, with no elements of obviously fake rocks that shatter the illusion of nature. The gorillas could now interact with elements that are natural to them, such as laying in the grass, grabbing leaves to put into their hammocks, and climbing trees. On top of which they were separated from the public by a safe dry moat that helped immerse visitors, with specifically designed lines of sight so the gorillas can get away from the gaze of viewers or gorillas if they wished and had viewers more actively seeking out the animals in hushed excitement.

2b. The radical departure seems that they realized the purpose of the immersion is for the well-being of the animals and not just for the cosmetics of the zoo visitors. Also leading the zookeepers to focus on the details of using authentic flora to the habitats and getting their terrain right, even focusing on what elements are most important to each region, down to the animals; which had some officials arguing that while people would be more eager to see a jaguar, several species of mice are actually more important contributors to a region, and had them debating whether or not to replace a dead jaguar, or switch the exhibit to be a more honest representation of the habitat they were exhibiting, by choosing the small mice to exhibit. Also leading the design of some zoos, while at first frustrating visitors who couldn't easily see all the animals and in close proximity, to eventually gather more praise from visitors who had gotten unique, almost chance encounters with the animals they were able to witness.

3. I think Wilson makes a strong case for our preferences, which nowadays can be called mostly for their aesthetic benefits, to be rooted more deeply in our instinct from a learned preference stretching far back to our ancestors, and in our genes seeking out a comfort in an environment that should be familiar and beneficial to our survival. The implications that arise from saying that our deep draw to witness animals comes from this biophilia, makes sense to me in a similar way to how the gorillas at the Woodland Park Zoo quickly grew to love their more natural habitat filled with grass and lush vegetation. At first, Kiki, the male gorilla, recoiled at the strangeness of the grass, but soon the new enclosure seemed to resolve even group problems. I think tying our desire to see animals to this biophilia, is natural in that deep down on some instinctual level down to our genes, we are used to coming into contact with more animals and more wildlife than we currently are, in most cases an almost extreme separation of the species. That separation must be unnatural, though we may not fully realize it, like those gorillas that did not know they should be sitting in grass.