Zoo Quotes

“The seals stupidly dive off rocks into swirling black water, barking mindlessly. The zookeepers feed them dead fish. A crowd gathers around the tank, mostly adults, a few accompanied by children. On the seals' tank a plaque warns: COINS CAN KILL——IF SWALLOWED, COINS CAN LODGE IN AN ANIMAL'S STOMACH AND CAUSE ULCERS, INFECTIONS AND DEATH. DO NOT THROW COINS IN THE POOL. So what do I do? Toss a handful of change into the tank when none of the zookeepers are watching. It's not the seals I hate——it's the audience's enjoyment of them that bothers me.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.”
― Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

“A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be - will be - a human zoo. A high-tech slum.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.”
― Nadine Gordimer, Get a Life

“Much of human behavior can be explained by watching the wild beasts around us. They are constantly teaching us things about ourselves and the way of the universe, but most people are too blind to watch and listen.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“All zoos, even the most enlightened, are built upon the idea both beguiling and repellent—the notion that we can seek out the wildness of the world and behold its beauty, but that we must first contain that wildness. Zoos argue that they are fighting for the conservation of the Earth, that they educate the public and provide refuge and support for vanishing species. And they are right. Animal-rights groups argue that zoos traffic in living creatures, exploiting them for financial gain and amusement. And they are right. Caught inside this contradiction are the animals themselves, and the humans charged with their well-being.”
― Thomas French, Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives

“Zoo: An excellent lace to study the habits of human beings”
― Evan Esar

“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can get.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Taken together, the narratives of how the animals ended up at Lowry Park revealed as much about Homo sapiens as they revealed about the animals themselves. The precise details—how and where each was born, how they were separated from their mothers and taken into custody, all they had witnessed and experienced on their way to becoming the property of this particular zoo—could have filled an encyclopedia with insights into human behavior and psychology, human geopolitics and history and commerce. Lowry Park’s very existence declared our presumption of supremacy, the ancient belief that we have been granted dominion over other creatures and have the right to do with them as we please. The zoo was a living catalogue of our fears and obsessions, the ways we see animals and see ourselves, all the things we prefer not to see at all. Every corner of the grounds revealed our appetite for amusement and diversion, no matter what the cost. Our longing for the wildness we have lost inside ourselves. Our instinct to both exalt nature and control it. Our deepest wish to love and protect other species even as we scorch their forests and poison their rivers and shove them toward oblivion.
All of it was on display in the garden of captives.”
― Thomas French, Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives

“Despite all their flaws, zoos wake us up. They invite us to step outside our most basic assumptions. Offered for our contemplation, the animals remind us of nature’s impossibly varied schemes for survival, all the strategies that species rely upon for courtship and mating and protecting the young and establishing dominance and hunting for something to eat and avoiding being eaten. On a good day, zoos shake people into recognizing the manifold possibilities of existence, what it’s like to walk across the Earth, or swim in its oceans of fly above its forests—even though most animals on display will never have the chance to do any of those things again, at least not in the wild.”
― Thomas French, Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives

“Every time you go to the zoo, you prolong the captivity of the animals there! If no one goes to the zoos, there will be no zoos! Destroying the evil is very simple and it is in your hand!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“There's only so long you can be at the zoo before it gets old.”
― Kat Zhang, What's Left of Me

“I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusion about freedom plague them both.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“They can't expect anyone to actually pay for a shirt that says, 'I (picture of an elephant) the San Diego Zoo.' What does that even mean?”
― Adam Rex, Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

“For several thousand years man has been in contact with animals whose character and habits have been deformed by domestication. He has ended by believing that he understands them. All he means by this is that he is able to rely on certain reflex actions which he himself has implanted in them. He will flatter himself at times on the grasp of animal psychology which has brought him the love of the dog and the purr of the cat; and on the strength of such assumptions he approaches the beasts of the jungle. The old tag about nature being an open book is just not true. What nature offers on a first examination may appear to be simple but it is never as simple as it appears.”
― Hans Brick, Jungle, Be Gentle

“Surely one zoo in the world should have the courage to draw the ultimate conclusion about our ancestry? A cage with Homo Sapiens in all its varying forms, perhaps then we would understand ourselves better. The question of course is whether the other animals would approve of it.
”
― Cees Nooteboom, Nomad's Hotel

“There's a lot of pointing. A festival of pointing and at very close range to other people's eyes, given the width of the space. Also detracting from the exhibit's potential tranquility is the display cabinet of pinned specimens along one wall. I found this disturbing from the start. You don't see a whole lot of stuffed polar bears in the polar bear exhibit at the zoo, for instance. And butterflies have phenomenal vision so it's not like they can't see the mass crucifixion in their midst. I was offended on behalf of the butterflies and thus pleased with my offense. Let the empathizing begin! This volunteering thing was working already. I am a good person, hear me give!”
― Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake: Essays

“Animal Zoo = a place where people go to amuse themselves at the expense of the caged ones.”
― RESHMA CHEKNATH UMESH

“If there are still zoos in the world, it means that humanity has not yet stepped back from this cruelty we define as animality!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Houses: we bring together in a small space what in the wild is spread out.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“The only place i see animals living together peacefully is a zoo”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“Large glass windows had been installed in the exhibit, and the orangutans took to pitching rocks at them. San Diego officials, thinking quickly, instituted an exchange program. One non-thrown stone would get you a banana. But the orangutans were not interested and kept trying to break the windows. The park finally had to bring in a contractor to dig up the entire ground floor of the exhibit in order to remove all of the rocks, as each shattered window cost the zoo $900 to replace. What happened next? The orangutans began to tear the ceramic insulators off of the wall and threw them instead.
Evidently, these animals really wanted out.”
― Jason Hribal, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

“Organization and mutual aid are essential aspects in many animal cultures, including elephants, gorillas, and chimpanzees. Zoos, however, are places wherein that culture is restricted, altered, or even destroyed. This is done, whether intentionally or not, through the removal of autonomy, the break up of the family unit, restrictions on corporeal movement, continuous transfer of animals from one facility to next, and in the alteration of other living patterns. Psychologists call this a process of alienation and institutionalization. Hence, within these species, what we tend to see in zoos is a much more individualistic-based community.”
― Jason Hribal, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

“The World has become a zoo, whereas the world leaders as children; it should be a global society again where peoples can understand the value of humanity.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“All that went, went to the zoo, the cripple bard sings of the truth.”
― Florin-Marian Hera, Ten Loud Rocks

“In the human zoo, it's hard to be human.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“She thought of the animals at the Zoo. She and Bub had gone there one Sunday afternoon. They arrived in time to see the lions and tigers being fed. There was a moment, before the great hunks of red meat were thrust into the cages, when the big cats prowled back and forth, desperate, raging, ravening. They walked in a space even smaller than the confines of the cages made necessary, moving in an area just barely the length of their bodies. A few steps up and turn. A few steps down and turn. They were weaving back and forth, growling, roaring, raging at the bars that kept them from the meat, until the entire building was filled with the sound, until the people watching drew back from the cages, feeling insecure, frightened at the sight and the sound of such uncontrolled savagery. She was becoming something like that.”
― Ann Petry, The Street

“Some people love their animals more than their kids!”
― Steven Magee

“According to zoo historians Éric Baratay and Élizabeth Hardouin-Fugier, 79% of the San Diego zoo animals, for example, are bought on the black market.”
― Charles Danten, Un vétérinaire en colère - Essai sur la condition animale

“Why is it a trap?” Murphy would not let up as his head swiveled from the Gorilla to the Viper and me. It was turning into a zoo.”
― Philip G. Henley, Counter