First Zoo Visit

My memory of going to a modern zoo in the United States for the first time is one that I clearly remember. My eyes looked in disbelief at a polar bear. It was swimming back and forth during a hot summer day at the Lincoln Park Zoo. A few months back, we had moved from Bogota, Colombia to the United States. I do not have the connection to the zoo as a place we went with my family as a kid. After this first visit, we made it to the Omaha Zoo, but only when other people were in town. Observing animals from around the world, to me, was fascinating. Elephants, giraffes, tigers, penguins, lions, zebras, sharks, turtles, and so on are a few of the animals on view. The animals were not living in concrete cages with metal bars. The animals were in created habitats that mimic their natural habitat.

I don’t remember questioning the captivity of the animals or relating the zoo to a prison as suggested by Bob Mullan in Zoo Cultures. I was struck the most by animals that required specific environment. How do humans keep a polar bear alive during the hot summer days? How much does that cost? Even as a twelve year old I could not help wonder, and I am still in utter admiration for it. Mullan on Chapter 1 writes:

“much of the thrill of the zoo experience turns on being close to what is usually hidden or distant, a thrill which is compounded if the creature is one to which the visitor would not normally dare to set close to.” (page 4)

Looking back, the polar bear is a creature that I never in my life imagined seeing. The North Pole is a distant place that I only know through movies, TV and photo-books. But I have now seen Polar bears! Not only in Chicago, but also Omaha, New York, San Francisco and Milwaukee. Am I lucky?  Would my views on polar bears be any different? Not sure.

I do know that I often forget where an animal is originally from at zoos. As a joke I say: The brownish monkey is from Omaha. However, I find this more of my fault as a visitor who sometimes doesn’t take the initiative to learn while I observe.

Photo: Diana M. Sanchez, 2009