Osaka Zoo







3 Responses to “Osaka Zoo”

  1. 1 Christopher Taylor 05/11/2011 at 10:12 am

    I read a very interesting book on Hagenbeck a couple of years ago (Savages and Beasts by Nigel Rothfels). Other than his work on zoo designs, he was also known for his ‘people shows’, where a group of people from some exotic part of the world would be brought to Germany, where they would be set up in some mock-up of their home country. The public would them come and view them living as they (supposedly) would back home. The book’s author argued that the air of ‘authenticity’ striven for in the people shows was significant in shaping Hagenbeck’s perspective towards animal display.

    Back when I was in high school, I went through a period of reading a lot of Gerald Durrell. He tended to be pretty scathing of the Hagenbeck-style new zoos, which he thought usually emphasised what the public expected of the animal’s environment rather than what was necessarily good for the animals themselves.

    • 2 David Hone 05/11/2011 at 10:23 am

      I’m a huge fan of Durrell’s writing and what he achieved. And certainly he did everything with zoos (worked, collected, designed, ran) and knew his stuff. However, i do think he could be a bit overcritical of things appealing to the public. As an ideal it’s nice, I’m happy that zoos should exist for the sake of protection of species, conservation, education etc. rather than conservation – I’m rarely unhappy that I can’t see an animal becuase it has a nice place to hide.

      Still, we are not in an ideal world and zoos need money to run and that requires appealing to the public. And as there are some animals which won’t be affected by a set-up like this, why not use it. I’d not recommend it for things that need good places to hide or are nervous etc. but when a good African display like this largely requires a large open expanse with some fences or ditches, why not use it to integrate a few other species and make a nice show of it. *If* it’s not detrimental to the harm of any of the animals or their care, then i don’t see the problem. In this case, i think they managed that.

      Hagenbeck was a bit exaggerated in his layers upon layers type designs like this, but he still pioneered the concept and did help bring animals out from the heated concrete and brick boxes and into the air and real space, and I think that’s a pretty good thing overall.


Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Google+ photo


Connecting to %s

@Dave_Hone on Twitter


Join 346 other followers


Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 346 other followers

%d bloggers like this: