Zoo Story

However much they have delighted generations of small children, zoos have always had something of a villainous image among animal lovers. Intentionally or unintentionally, they were in reality prisons--clinical cubicles where hundreds of other species spent their lives pacing behind bars. Zoos might also have been predators of a sort, since they sought rare animals and thus often contributed to the depletion of some species. Now this image is changing. Thanks to the environmentalist concern over vanishing wildlife, many zoos have become latter-day Noah's arks, where rare wild animals are protected and bred against the day they may vanish from their native lands.

A major factor in breeding, zoos have discovered, is to provide the animal with surroundings as close to his own native habitat as possible. In the contrived gloom of The Bronx Zoo's "World of Darkness," badgers ramble into burrows and kit foxes scurry over "desert." In the new Milwaukee Zoo, tigers in craggy caves stare across camouflaged moats at antelope. These are no mere frills. "A bird that needs a vertical twig for a particular part of its courtship, or a reptile that requires cyclical temperature change, is more likely to reproduce when the proper ecological furniture is provided," explains Bronx Zoo Director William Conway.

Providing such furniture is not always easy. The aerial mating dance of the Philippine monkey-eating eagle, for instance, would require a cage as large as the Astrodome. Still, great progress has been made in improving conditions for zoo animals, primarily because zoo officials are now considering animal habits as well as habitats. Take cheetahs. After studying them in the wild, naturalists at the San Diego Zoo discovered why they are particularly difficult to breed in captivity. The animals are usually caged in "big cat" houses near their natural enemies--lions. By separating the felines, zoos find that the cheetahs will be calm enough to breed and raise their offspring.

Simian Sex. Rare Galapagos tortoises were coaxed to mate at the San Diego Zoo after keepers provided enough sand for them to dig their own "nests," the only place they apparently consider suitable for lovemaking. The zoo's gorillas posed another problem. Like most humans, they do not like to be the objects of spectator sex, so zoo officials constructed private rooms at a cost of $7.000. Here, too, they are still hoping for success. Meanwhile the San Francisco Zoo's gorillas have produced two babies.

Breeding has worked superbly at the Phoenix Zoo, which now contains 29 Arabian oryxes, the largest collection of this species of rare antelope outside their native Saudi Arabia. Oryxes are vanishing because the desert Arabs believe their corkscrew horns are an aphrodisiac. The animals will only be returned to Saudi Arabia, says Zoo Curator Wayne Homan, "if and when Saudi Arabia sets up a game preserve and also educates the population not to kill them."

Some men would like to teach predators to hunt and kill--skills blunted in the relative safety of zoos--before returning them to the wilds. But even if this were possible, says London Zoo Director Colin Rawlins, the animals might not be accepted by their fellows. Other captive creatures do not want to go home at all. Of five ravens released from the Portland Zoo in Oregon recently, only one managed to flap out of the cage on his own. The others had to be forcibly evicted.

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