Today (actually last Friday), taking advantage of the school holidays, we finally paid our visit to the new zoo in town. It is called Bioparc and it's only one year old (almost to the day). It is nice (as much as zoos may be considered nice, seen from the animals' perspective, but that is a different issue altogether), certainly orders of magnitude nicer than its infamous predecessor where animals were either crammed into cages much too small or the quota of open space they could enjoy amounted to a merciless minimum. Before, everytime I visited the zoo, about once a year, I checked the rhino. Constrained, downfallen, alienated, the animal always looked in a pitiful state. I'd go home and it'd stay there in its cage, and I knew that next time I saw it again, one year later, the animal would look pretty much the same, keeping the same defeated pose, as if for it time had stopped running. Undeserved, gratuitous torture. Bioparc is definitely a step forward, as they've put an end to the animal's confinement in cruel, inadequate facilities, yet I keep on having mixed feelings about the real necessity for zoos.
No comments:
Post a Comment