American Zoo

American Zoo PDF Author: David Grazian
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178429
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A close-up look at the contradictions and wonders of the modern zoo Orangutans swing from Kevlar-lined fire hoses. Giraffes feast on celebratory birthday cakes topped with carrots instead of candles. Hi-tech dinosaur robots growl among steel trees, while owls watch animated cartoons on old television sets. In American Zoo, sociologist David Grazian takes us on a safari through the contemporary zoo, alive with its many contradictions and strange wonders. Trading in his tweed jacket for a zoo uniform and a pair of muddy work boots, Grazian introduces us to zookeepers and animal rights activists, parents and toddlers, and the other human primates that make up the zoo's social world. He shows that in a major shift away from their unfortunate pasts, American zoos today emphasize naturalistic exhibits teeming with lush and immersive landscapes, breeding programs for endangered animals, and enrichment activities for their captive creatures. In doing so, zoos blur the imaginary boundaries we regularly use to separate culture from nature, humans from animals, and civilization from the wild. At the same time, zoos manage a wilderness of competing priorities—animal care, education, scientific research, and recreation—all while attempting to serve as centers for conservation in the wake of the current environmental and climate-change crisis. The world of the zoo reflects how we project our own prejudices and desires onto the animal kingdom, and invest nature with meaning and sentiment. A revealing portrayal of comic animals, delighted children, and feisty zookeepers, American Zoo is a remarkable close-up exploration of a classic cultural attraction.

American Zoo

American Zoo PDF Author: David Grazian
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178429
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book

Book Description
A close-up look at the contradictions and wonders of the modern zoo Orangutans swing from Kevlar-lined fire hoses. Giraffes feast on celebratory birthday cakes topped with carrots instead of candles. Hi-tech dinosaur robots growl among steel trees, while owls watch animated cartoons on old television sets. In American Zoo, sociologist David Grazian takes us on a safari through the contemporary zoo, alive with its many contradictions and strange wonders. Trading in his tweed jacket for a zoo uniform and a pair of muddy work boots, Grazian introduces us to zookeepers and animal rights activists, parents and toddlers, and the other human primates that make up the zoo's social world. He shows that in a major shift away from their unfortunate pasts, American zoos today emphasize naturalistic exhibits teeming with lush and immersive landscapes, breeding programs for endangered animals, and enrichment activities for their captive creatures. In doing so, zoos blur the imaginary boundaries we regularly use to separate culture from nature, humans from animals, and civilization from the wild. At the same time, zoos manage a wilderness of competing priorities—animal care, education, scientific research, and recreation—all while attempting to serve as centers for conservation in the wake of the current environmental and climate-change crisis. The world of the zoo reflects how we project our own prejudices and desires onto the animal kingdom, and invest nature with meaning and sentiment. A revealing portrayal of comic animals, delighted children, and feisty zookeepers, American Zoo is a remarkable close-up exploration of a classic cultural attraction.

American Zoos During the Depression

American Zoos During the Depression PDF Author: Jesse C. Donahue
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786461861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
American zoos flourished during the Great Depression, thanks to federal programs that enabled local governments to build new zoological parks, complete finished ones, and remodel outdated facilities. This historical text examines community leaders' successful advocacy for zoo construction in the context of poverty and widespread suffering, arguing that they provided employment, stimulated tourism, and democratized leisure. Of particular interest is the rise of the zoo professional, which paved the way for science and conservation agendas. The text explores the New Deal's profound impact on zoos and animal welfare and the legacy of its programs in zoos today.

America's Best Zoos

America's Best Zoos PDF Author: Allen W. Nyhuis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781887140768
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Provides an overview of some of America's finest zoological parks, discussing exhibits, activities for children, and information about hours, admission and fees, and zoo touring tips.

The Animal Game

The Animal Game PDF Author: Daniel E. Bender
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674972767
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Tracing the global trade and trafficking in animals that supplied U.S. zoos, Daniel Bender shows how Americans learned to view faraway places through the lens of exotic creatures on display. He recounts the public’s conflicted relationship with zoos, decried as prisons by activists even as they remain popular centers of education and preservation.

Danger at the Zoo

Danger at the Zoo PDF Author: Kathleen Ernst
Publisher: American Girl Publishing Incorporated
ISBN: 9781584859970
Category : American girls (Fictitious characters)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
While working as a reporter during her summer vacation in 1935, Kit uncovers a mystery at the Cincinnati Zoo involving suspected break-ins at the monkey house.

Animal Attractions

Animal Attractions PDF Author: Elizabeth Hanson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691186243
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
On a rainy day in May 1988, a lowland gorilla named Willie B. stepped outdoors for the first time in twenty-seven years, into a new landscape immersion exhibit. Born in Africa, Willie B. had been captured by an animal collector and sold to a zoo. During the decades he spent in a cage, zoos stopped collecting animals from the wild and Americans changed the ways they wished to view animals in the zoo. Zoos developed new displays to simulate landscapes like the Amazon River basin and African forests. Exhibits similar to animals' natural habitats began to replace old-fashioned animal houses. But such displays are only the most recent effort of zoos to present their audiences with an authentic experience of nature. Since the first zoological park opened in the United States in Philadelphia in 1874, zoos have promised their visitors a journey into the natural world. And for more than a century they have been popular places for education and recreation: every year more than 130 million Americans go to zoos to look at the animals and enjoy a day outdoors. The first book-length history of American zoos, Animal Attractions examines the meaning of nature in the city by looking at the ways zoos have assembled and displayed their animal collections. Situated literally and culturally in the American middle landscape, zoos are concrete expressions of longstanding tensions between wildness and civilization, science and popular culture, education and entertainment. In their efforts to promote nature appreciation, they reveal much about how our culture envisions the natural world and the human place in it and how these ideas have changed.

Zoo Renewal

Zoo Renewal PDF Author: Lisa Uddin
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452941610
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Why do we feel bad at the zoo? In a fascinating counterhistory of American zoos in the 1960s and 1970s, Lisa Uddin revisits the familiar narrative of zoo reform, from naked cages to more naturalistic enclosures. She argues that reform belongs to the story of cities and feelings toward many of their human inhabitants. In Zoo Renewal, Uddin demonstrates how efforts to make the zoo more natural and a haven for particular species reflected white fears about the American city—and, pointedly, how the shame many visitors felt in observing confined animals drew on broader anxieties about race and urban life. Examining the campaign against cages, renovations at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and the San Diego Zoo, and the cases of a rare female white Bengal tiger and a collection of southern white rhinoceroses, Uddin unpacks episodes that challenge assumptions that zoos are about other worlds and other creatures and expand the history of U.S. urbanism. Uddin shows how the drive to protect endangered species and to ensure larger, safer zoos was shaped by struggles over urban decay, suburban growth, and the dilemmas of postwar American whiteness. In so doing, Zoo Renewal ultimately reveals how feeling bad, or good, at the zoo is connected to our feelings about American cities and their residents.

Zoo Culture

Zoo Culture PDF Author: Bob Mullan
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252067624
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Why do people go to zoos? Is the role of zoos to entertain or to educate? In this provocative book, the authors demonstrate that zoos tell us as much about humans as they do about animals and suggest that while animals may not need zoos, urban societies seem to. A new introduction takes note of dramatic changes in the perceived role of zoos that have occurred since the book's original publication. "Bob Mullan and Garry Marvin delve into the assumptions about animals that are embedded in our culture. . . . A thought-provoking glimpse of our own ideas about the exotic, the foreign." -- Tess Lemmon, BBC Wildlife Magazine "A thoughtful and entertaining guided tour." -- David White, New Society "[An] unusual and intriguing combination of historical survey, psychological enquiry, and compendium of fascinating facts." -- Evening Standard

Life at the Zoo

Life at the Zoo PDF Author: Phillip T. Robinson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231132492
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Based on 15 years of work at the world-famous San Diego Zoo, this charming book is an eminent zoo veterinarians personal account of the challenges, hazards, and rewards of running a modern zoo.

A Rhino Comes to America

A Rhino Comes to America PDF Author: Thane Maynard
Publisher: Franklin Watts
ISBN: 9780531111734
Category : Bagus (Rhinoceros)
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
Describes the status of the Sumatran rhinoceros as one of the most endangered animals in the world and relates the story of Bagus, a specimen who was captured in the wild and sent to the Cincinnati Zoo as part of a new breeding program to save the species from extinction.