well good evening and welcome to my
favorite place in the world the tropical
forest in the Franklin Park Zoo and I
have to say I be in a zoo enthusiast
almost all my life because when I was a
little boy growing up in London lying in
bed in my grandparents apartment I would
at night I would hear the roaring of the
Lions and the barking of the sea lions
in the nearby regions Park London Zoo
and for me the zoo was a magical place
growing up in London which was then a
very dirty foggy rainy depressing City
just after the war bomb sites everywhere
ruined houses air-raid shelters London
Zoo was like a window on the world you
would go to the zoo and you would see
animals from all over the world it was a
place of color and exotic ISM and I well
remember at the zoo the arrival of the
first panda to be seen in the out in the
Western world the only panda to be seen
in of Western Zoo outside China and
Russia
chichi the great excitement that caused
and that in a sense was what zoos were
about when the first sooths were founded
in the 80 late 18th and early 19th
centuries in Paris and in London it was
a time when Europe was encountering the
world when America after the travels of
Lewis and Clark was spreading across the
continent and animals from all over the
world from India and Southeast Asia from
Africa from the Americas were flooding
into Europe and the first sooths was set
up as living encyclopedias as museums of
life to show off all
animals in the world as they said a zoo
must have something of everything the
purpose of the zoo was to introduce new
and curious subjects of the animal
kingdom and Zoo succeeded only too well
the animals they brought in caused
crazes the first giraffes that was seen
at the zoo’s of Vienna and Paris and
London inspired men to wear high long
necked cravat Salahi huff and women to
wear flown see dresses with giraffe
patterns the first hippopotamus to be
seen in Europe since the days of the
Romans inspired a polka it composed in
his honor
so the zoo’s were really places way you
saw animals and through them the world
they were encyclopedias of life they
succeeded however only to well if you
think about it if you think about it the
gorillas which is now such a familiar
animal to us was only discovered and
described for science here in Boston
I’ve got competition now the animals
always intrude when you’re doing live
broadcasts the gorilla was discovered
here in Boston first described from
science from dry bones the gorillas we
know today as so well known because of
the celebrity gorillas that were found
in zoos Seussian Cincinnati bamboo and
Masur in Philadelphia guy in London
Alfred in Bristol Bushman in Chicago
Lincoln Park these gorillas put flesh on
those dry bones which the American
Naturalist first described the gorillas
so zoos succeeded very well because we
now know a whole Noah’s Ark of animals
we know about animals through seeing
them in the zoo or from the literature
and art that the zoo civics have
inspired and zoos indeed were founded as
I say in the late 18th early 19th
century to archive to repertoire all
these animals flooding in they were
founded in an age of Plenty and they
succeeded so much so that everybody
expected their zoo to have a full
complement of a Noah’s Ark of African
and other spectacular animals
charismatic mega Berta braids and every
city wanted a zoo and soon zoos became
in the last quarter of them the 19th
century in America every city wanted a
zoo because the zoo was part of being a
city a zoo was part of a park but a zoo
had essentially become entertainment
they had succeeded in making the
familiar the unfamiliar familiar they
have succeeded in serving up these
animals and making them known to us and
making them expected we expected to see
them in a zoo we expected a city to have
a zoo now in the late 19th and early
20th century zoos realized that they had
to do more to attract the public to
bring people in so they developed the
open-plan zoo the moated Rock exhibit
where there was apparently no barrier
between the humans and the other animals
no barrier between the exhibits this was
adopted by many American zoos Detroit
Brookfield in Chicago st. Louis these
American zoos follow the pattern of the
Hagen Beck zoo outside Hamburg built in
1907 where the public was separated from
the animals by a moat seemingly no
barrier the animals were confined by
rock work and the exhibits were
staggered one upon the other so you had
panoramas you had displays you had a
sense of being in Africa or in India or
a polar landscape but at the very time
that zoos were proliferating over the
world at the very time that zoo exhibits
were changing
to give people sense of the bounty of
the great plains of Africa or America at
that very time the age of abundance the
age of absolute prodigality of animal
life flooding in was giving way to the
age of extinction the late 19th century
in the early 20th century with
colonization of the American prairies
with colonization of South Africa and
Australia was the great beginning of the
great age of extinction the great
charismatic mega butter breeds the
animals verdict people expected to see
in the zoo were fast disappearing in the
wild and four-time zoos were merely
hapless witnesses of extinction the very
last cragger the partially striped zebra
of South Africa the very last cragger
died in the Amsterdam Zoo in 1883 the
very last passenger pigeon named Martha
Washington a bird of a species that had
used to darken the American skies and
calls whole forests to collapse on the
Wonder the weight of their nesting in
their great migrations across the
American West the very last passenger
pigeon of all died in the Cincinnati Zoo
in 1914 just on the eve of the Great
Wall and by a strange and cruel irony of
fate the very last Carolina parakeet
died in the very same cage in the
Cincinnati Zoo in 1918
similarly in 1936 the last phyla seen
these strange animals that have the look
of a wolf but the pouch of a kangaroo
died in the HOH bazoo in Tasmania in
1936 so they were founded in a time of
abundance
they were examples of the prodigality of
nature
they introduced us to animals that we
expected to see but for a time they were
just showing us the last of those
animals I’m glad to say that zoos are
now changing the zoo see they’re the
animals that they have in their
collections like Abby the tapir here and
whose enclosure I’m standing our
ambassadors for their kanji nose in the
wild they are acting as emissaries as
reminders of what we must do to save
animals to be relevant zoos must switch
from mere exhibitions as they were in
the age of abundance to advocates as
they must be in the age of extinction
I’m all in favor of cloning the mammoths
but let us save the gorillas first thank you very much ladies and gentlemen
favorite place in the world the tropical
forest in the Franklin Park Zoo and I
have to say I be in a zoo enthusiast
almost all my life because when I was a
little boy growing up in London lying in
bed in my grandparents apartment I would
at night I would hear the roaring of the
Lions and the barking of the sea lions
in the nearby regions Park London Zoo
and for me the zoo was a magical place
growing up in London which was then a
very dirty foggy rainy depressing City
just after the war bomb sites everywhere
ruined houses air-raid shelters London
Zoo was like a window on the world you
would go to the zoo and you would see
animals from all over the world it was a
place of color and exotic ISM and I well
remember at the zoo the arrival of the
first panda to be seen in the out in the
Western world the only panda to be seen
in of Western Zoo outside China and
Russia
chichi the great excitement that caused
and that in a sense was what zoos were
about when the first sooths were founded
in the 80 late 18th and early 19th
centuries in Paris and in London it was
a time when Europe was encountering the
world when America after the travels of
Lewis and Clark was spreading across the
continent and animals from all over the
world from India and Southeast Asia from
Africa from the Americas were flooding
into Europe and the first sooths was set
up as living encyclopedias as museums of
life to show off all
animals in the world as they said a zoo
must have something of everything the
purpose of the zoo was to introduce new
and curious subjects of the animal
kingdom and Zoo succeeded only too well
the animals they brought in caused
crazes the first giraffes that was seen
at the zoo’s of Vienna and Paris and
London inspired men to wear high long
necked cravat Salahi huff and women to
wear flown see dresses with giraffe
patterns the first hippopotamus to be
seen in Europe since the days of the
Romans inspired a polka it composed in
his honor
so the zoo’s were really places way you
saw animals and through them the world
they were encyclopedias of life they
succeeded however only to well if you
think about it if you think about it the
gorillas which is now such a familiar
animal to us was only discovered and
described for science here in Boston
I’ve got competition now the animals
always intrude when you’re doing live
broadcasts the gorilla was discovered
here in Boston first described from
science from dry bones the gorillas we
know today as so well known because of
the celebrity gorillas that were found
in zoos Seussian Cincinnati bamboo and
Masur in Philadelphia guy in London
Alfred in Bristol Bushman in Chicago
Lincoln Park these gorillas put flesh on
those dry bones which the American
Naturalist first described the gorillas
so zoos succeeded very well because we
now know a whole Noah’s Ark of animals
we know about animals through seeing
them in the zoo or from the literature
and art that the zoo civics have
inspired and zoos indeed were founded as
I say in the late 18th early 19th
century to archive to repertoire all
these animals flooding in they were
founded in an age of Plenty and they
succeeded so much so that everybody
expected their zoo to have a full
complement of a Noah’s Ark of African
and other spectacular animals
charismatic mega Berta braids and every
city wanted a zoo and soon zoos became
in the last quarter of them the 19th
century in America every city wanted a
zoo because the zoo was part of being a
city a zoo was part of a park but a zoo
had essentially become entertainment
they had succeeded in making the
familiar the unfamiliar familiar they
have succeeded in serving up these
animals and making them known to us and
making them expected we expected to see
them in a zoo we expected a city to have
a zoo now in the late 19th and early
20th century zoos realized that they had
to do more to attract the public to
bring people in so they developed the
open-plan zoo the moated Rock exhibit
where there was apparently no barrier
between the humans and the other animals
no barrier between the exhibits this was
adopted by many American zoos Detroit
Brookfield in Chicago st. Louis these
American zoos follow the pattern of the
Hagen Beck zoo outside Hamburg built in
1907 where the public was separated from
the animals by a moat seemingly no
barrier the animals were confined by
rock work and the exhibits were
staggered one upon the other so you had
panoramas you had displays you had a
sense of being in Africa or in India or
a polar landscape but at the very time
that zoos were proliferating over the
world at the very time that zoo exhibits
were changing
to give people sense of the bounty of
the great plains of Africa or America at
that very time the age of abundance the
age of absolute prodigality of animal
life flooding in was giving way to the
age of extinction the late 19th century
in the early 20th century with
colonization of the American prairies
with colonization of South Africa and
Australia was the great beginning of the
great age of extinction the great
charismatic mega butter breeds the
animals verdict people expected to see
in the zoo were fast disappearing in the
wild and four-time zoos were merely
hapless witnesses of extinction the very
last cragger the partially striped zebra
of South Africa the very last cragger
died in the Amsterdam Zoo in 1883 the
very last passenger pigeon named Martha
Washington a bird of a species that had
used to darken the American skies and
calls whole forests to collapse on the
Wonder the weight of their nesting in
their great migrations across the
American West the very last passenger
pigeon of all died in the Cincinnati Zoo
in 1914 just on the eve of the Great
Wall and by a strange and cruel irony of
fate the very last Carolina parakeet
died in the very same cage in the
Cincinnati Zoo in 1918
similarly in 1936 the last phyla seen
these strange animals that have the look
of a wolf but the pouch of a kangaroo
died in the HOH bazoo in Tasmania in
1936 so they were founded in a time of
abundance
they were examples of the prodigality of
nature
they introduced us to animals that we
expected to see but for a time they were
just showing us the last of those
animals I’m glad to say that zoos are
now changing the zoo see they’re the
animals that they have in their
collections like Abby the tapir here and
whose enclosure I’m standing our
ambassadors for their kanji nose in the
wild they are acting as emissaries as
reminders of what we must do to save
animals to be relevant zoos must switch
from mere exhibitions as they were in
the age of abundance to advocates as
they must be in the age of extinction
I’m all in favor of cloning the mammoths
but let us save the gorillas first thank you very much ladies and gentlemen
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