Different Nature

1. Auflage 2003
ISBN: 978-0-520-23676-9
Verlag: University Of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 301 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 224 mm, Gewicht: 467 g

Humanity has had an enduring desire for close contact with exotic animals—from the Egyptian kings who kept thousands of animals, including monkeys, wild cats, hyenas, giraffes, and oryx, to the enormously popular zoological parks of today. This book, the most extensive history of zoos yet published, is a fascinating look at the origins, evolution, and—most importantly—the future of zoos.

David Hancocks, an architect and zoo director for thirty years, is passionately opposed to the poor standards that have prevailed and still exist in many zoos. He reviews the history of zoos in light of their failures and successes and points the way toward a more humane approach, one that will benefit both the animals and the humans who visit them. This book, replete with illustrations and full of moving stories about wild animals in captivity, shows that we have only just begun to realize zoos' enormous potential for good.

Hancocks singles out and discusses the better zoos, exploring such places as the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the Bronx Zoo with its dedication to worldwide conservation programs, Emmen Zoo in Holland with its astonishingly diverse education programs, Wildscreen in England, and Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, where the concept of "landscape immersion"—exhibits that surround people and animals in carefully replicated natural habitats—was pioneered.

Calling for us to reinvent zoos, Hancocks advocates the creation of a new type of institution: one that reveals the interconnections among all living things and celebrates their beauty, inspires us to develop greater compassion for wild animals great and small, and elicits our support for preserving their wild habitats.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hancocks, David

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltschutz, Umwelterhaltung
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Tierkunde / Zoologie Tierethologie
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Tierkunde / Zoologie Tierpathologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Collections as Status

2. The Eighteenth-Century Concept

3. The Nineteenth-Century Phenomenon

4. Romanticists and Modernists

5. Toward New Frontiers

6. Immersed in the Landscape

7. Agents of Conservation

8. Which Way the Future?

Epilogue

Bibliography

Illustration Credits

Index

Über Autor(innen)

David Hancocks lives in Melbourne, Australia. He is Director of the Open Range Zoo, at Werribee, and Director of Planning for the Zoological Parks and Gardens Board, Victoria, Australia. He is author of Animals and Architecture (1971) and Master Builders of the Animal World (1973).