I too hate the zoo.

In response to someone making a reference to an animal's confinement in a zoo being much like our own "confinement" in society, I posted this as a comment:

Our lives' doldrums remain far better than the captivity we impose on animals. We chose our monotony and we chose our captivity. We can justify our boredom: we don't rebel against it simply because we need to earn a living and get along with everyone else. Zoo animals were never given a choice of confinement or freedom. They know nothing of what should have been or why they're repressed, and they have no obligations to our society. That's why their detainment is far more depressing than our own, which is a pitiful comparison.

One recollection of my last zoo visit is watching the giant ant eaters pace their enclosure ceaselessly, their noses to the ground in learned habit, searching in futile for ants that weren't there because their Plexiglas cage was built on concrete. They paced so much, in fact, in their pen only a few times larger than both of their bodies combined, they had worn a track around the boundaries of the ground allotted to them, and followed it hastily, almost frantically. Above them, in the same pen, monkey examples of a nameless species clung meaninglessly to faux branches, staring back, blankly, at nameless people. Staring out at people who stopped to stare and laugh and, beyond them, at people who simply passed them by because they were not merely as impressive as gorillas. The monkeys' seemingly mediocre presence seemed to justify their small inclusion, although the few people who paused to stare justified the need for them to be in that pen, no matter how small it was.

I too hate the zoo.

Upon posting this blog entry, I've satisfied the second obligation of a two-part due that I mentioned earlier in my blog.