Reflections on Our Zoo: Animal historian and nature lover in conflict.

As a young historian with an interest in the history of zoological collections and the wild animal trade, I was pleased to hear that the BBC had been working on a new drama series Our Zoo which would look at the creation of Chester Zoo in the 1930s. However, as I sat watching it last night I realised I had mixed emotions about the programme. On the one hand I was somewhat glad that it was exposing this rather new area of historical research to a wider audience, but on the other I found that it somewhat conflicted with my views on animal welfare and the treatment of captive animals. In that moment, it dawned on me that by pursuing the line of research that I am, it becomes difficult not to appear to be glorifying something that was very much of its time and that those actions can actually come into conflict with modern views and expectations.

I was aware that CAPS had begun a petition against the BBC using taxpayers money to fund the use of animals as a sources of entertainment. And actually, it wasn’t until then that I realised (rather stupidly) that companies still exist that ‘own’ animals purely to hire them out for the purposes of entertainment, and that made me feel both sad and angry. When I first started this research I expected things to have been very different in the past to what they are today. I really expected our attitudes and treatments of animals to have changed dramatically, yet while to a certain extent this is true and our knowledge of animal care and biology is vastly improved, the more research and reading that I do, the more I am struck by the striking similarities and how actually, very little has changed. Animals are still seen as sources of entertainment and spectacle, even though renewed emphasis has been placed on conservation and preservation.

Through my research I’ve read a lot about animals having been imported as sources of entertainment and curiosity for the public and I know that this is what it was like at the time, but with a modern mind set, watching a recreation of those attitudes just felt wrong because to recreate them, you have to act them out. For example, witnessing lions performing circus tricks and jumping through hoops in fire and in the trailer for the next episode, bears being caged/chained in a cave, just made me feel really uncomfortable. I disagree with the use of animals in circuses in modern society and don’t ever wish to see animals chained, so the fact that this was done for the TV audiences, in order to tell the history of a zoo, made my heart sink.  I know regulations have improved since the turn of the century and that the animals will have been cared for to a certain degree– but I was actually left wondering if this programme should have been made at all; and for me that would previously have been an inconceivable question.

I am hoping to embark on an academic career looking at the development of the wild animal trade and zoological collections with a public history element and yet, when an opportunity to highlight this aspect of history arose, I recoiled and doubted its suitability. I’m really interested to hear the history of Chester Zoo, yet the presence of the animals in that feature was unsettling. But it’s a catch-22 situation because I don’t know how you’d get around it. This story has animals at its heart and you can’t really tell that story without them, but to have them puts the animals in a compromised position. I kept thinking about the film Water for Elephants where they used digitally composed stampede scenes – yes it was slightly noticeable but would this not have been an alternative?

I need to conduct more research to make more informed conclusions about this programme for these are merely reflections having watched last night’s episode and having studied the topic for two years. I had just expected to sing the praises of the programme for the service it was doing to the blossoming area of historical research and yet I was actually left feeling quite unsettled about it all.