Zoo Day (No 3)

The talk was in the Budongo Trail today, the state-of-the-art monkey enclosure and research unit. They have a huge lecture theatre and the screen comes down over the massive windows looking into one of the chimp enclosures. There was one chimp who wanted to know what was going on, and walked up and down the ledge, banging on the windows. We couldn’t see it, of course, but could see the legs just in a space between the screen and the window ledge. There was also lots of howling and banging and yelling - and I think it was the chimps, but it may have the unruly class of kiddy-winks I came in with.

Our speaker today was Douglas Richardson, who is in charge of the Highland Wildlife Park. He’s a fantastic speaker - full of stories, goes off on (interesting) tangents, slings off at authority, has radical views and speaks out, and is very droll. I could listen to him all day, and we very nearly did - the questions after he had finished the talk led him to tell more stories.

He had a great turn of phrase -
'A chimp could pull your arm off and beat you to death with the wet end...' He was talking of the time some chimps escaped, and how dangerous they can be.

'When Bambi's mum got shot, that was the best thing that could have happened to her...' Old age and/or death in wild animals is long, drawn out, terrifying, horrible, and very painful.

In the first week's talk we learned about the Five Freedoms which were standards drawn up in the 60s/70s about animal welfare in captivity. Freedom from Hunger and thirst; Discomfort, Pain Injury or Disease; Fear and Distress and Freedom to Express Natural Behaviour.

Well, Douglas went through each one, and either contradicted them, or said why they were wrong or indeed, not followed. He gave real life examples to show how wrong the statement could be. I can’t relate them all, though they were SO interesting.

OK then, just one. Freedom to express natural behaviour: Most zoos manage a breeding programme, so females are either on birth control or the males and females are kept completely apart. He was arguing that natural behaviour includes mating seasons and gave an example of a rare goat that was saved in an American Zoo, but had birth control in place, because of space and numbers. When the species was just about extinct in the wild, they decided to let the animals breed again. And they didn’t. It was lost. And he cited many examples of this. He was an advocate of euthanasia. That way, the animals would have gone on breeding naturally, and they could have kept to manageable numbers.

Another one: Freedom from Fear and Distress: He cited an experiment with two groups of tamarin monkeys. One group was brought up in a natural environment, one was brought up in completely man made - poles, plastic branches, concrete floors etc. A snake was put in each cage. Neither group had ever seen one before, so couldn’t know it was dangerous. But the ones in the natural pen ran up the trees. The ones in the man made pen went down to have a look. Nobody knows how they learn these things, but they do. They need to know fear.

I took the truck up to the top of the zoo and walked down it was such a lovely day. I came across this handsome fellow. He was sitting on a long branch about half way into the enclosure. I had my EVF up to my eye, watching him. Suddenly he stared at me, and RAN ALONG THE BRANCH TO WITHIN A FEW INCHES! He just about pressed his nose up to the glass. If I hadn’t had the camera strap round my neck I would have dropped it. As it was, even though I knew there was a thick piece of glass between us, I took several fast steps backwards. I looked around, and saw the object of his attention - not me, but a little toddler just walking by.

I knew some fear today! Douglas would have approved.