American zoos flourished during the Great Depression, thanks to federal programs that enabled local governments to build new zoological parks, complete finished ones, and remodel outdated facilities. This historical text examines community leaders' successful advocacy for zoo construction in the context of poverty and widespread suffering, arguing that they provided employment, stimulated tourism, and democratized leisure. Of particular interest is the rise of the zoo professional, which paved the way for science and conservation agendas. The text explores the New Deal's profound impact on zoos and animal welfare and the legacy of its programs in zoos today.

The literature on snakes is manifold but overwhelmingly centered on the natural sciences. Little has been published about them in the fields of popular culture or the history of medicine. Focusing primarily on American culture and history from the 1800s, this study draws on a wide range of sources--including newspaper archives, medical journals, and archives from the Smithsonian Institute--to examine the complex relationship between snakes and humans.

"For the first time, a historian of science draws evidence from across the world to show how humans and other animals are astonishingly similar when it comes to their feelings and the ways in which they lose their minds"--

Do both the zoo and the mental hospital induce psychosis, as humans are treated as animals and animals are treated as humans? How have we looked at animals in the past, and how do we look at them today? How have zoos presented themselves, and their purpose, over time? In response to the emergence of environmental and animal studies, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, theorists, literature scholars, and historians around the world have begun to explore the significance of zoological parks, past and present. Zoo Studies considers the modern zoo from a range of approaches and disciplines, united in a desire to blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman animals. The volume begins with an account of the first modern mental hospital, La Salpêtrière, established in 1656, and the first panoptical zoo, the menagerie at Versailles, created in 1662 by the same royal architect; the final chapter presents a choreographic performance that imagines the Toronto Zoo as a place where the human body can be inspired by animal bodies. From beginning to end, through interdisciplinary collaboration, this volume decentres the human subject and offers alternative ways of thinking about zoos and their inhabitants. This collection immerses readers in the lives of animals and their experiences of captivity and asks us to reflect on our own assumptions about both humans and animals. An original and groundbreaking work, Zoo Studies will change the way readers see nonhuman animals and themselves.

Founded amid the urban commotion of Washington, DC, before the dawn of the twentieth century, the National Zoological Park opened to “preserve, teach, and conduct research about the animal world.” Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo is a study of this important cultural landmark from 1887 to 1920. Centered on the animals themselves, each chapter looks from a different angle at the influential science of popular zoology in order to shed new light on the complex, entangled relationships between humans and animals. Daniel Vandersommers’s goal is twofold. First, through narrative, he shows how zoo animals always ran away from the zoo. This is meant literally—animals escaped frequently—but even more so, figuratively. Living, breathing, historical zoo animals ran away from their cultural constructions, and these constructions ran away from the living bodies they were made to represent. The author shows that the resulting gaps produced by runaway animals contain concealed, distorted, and erased histories worthy of uncovering. Second, Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo demonstrates how the popular zoology fostered by the National Zoo shaped every aspect of American science, culture, and conservation during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Between the 1880s and World War I, as intellectuals debated Darwinism and scientists institutionalized the laboratory, zoological parks suddenly appeared at the heart of nearly every major American city, captivating tens of millions of visitors. Vandersommers follows stories previously hidden within the National Zoo in order to help us reconsider the place of zoos and their inhabitants in the twenty-first century.

We are on the precipice of momentous legal changes for animals that may soon give some of them rights of personhood and citizenship. Companion animals in particular are gaining rights to public representation in government, access to housing, inheritance, and increased protection through the criminal justice system. Nonhuman primates used as research subjects are also gaining limited rights of personhood in some countries. This book examines how zoo animals could benefit from that revolution as well. Reviewing zoo law and politics in the United States, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, scholars and zoo directors grapple with how the current law in those regions of the world impacts zoo animals and how it could be changed to serve them better. They discuss the ways in which zoo animals could benefit from some re-worked companion animal law in the United States; the challenges of reintroductions and their legal barriers; how we can extend ideas of human research subject rights to zoo animal research; the stark problems of too few animal welfare laws in South East Asia; the need for a central governing body focused solely on exotic captive animals in New Zealand; and the need for stricter laws preventing the exotic pet problem that is increasingly affecting both zoos and sanctuaries. The book starts a dialogue that moves the scholarship about zoos beyond a general discussion of ethics to a concrete dialogue and set of suggestions about how to extend legal rights to this group of animals.

The spread of empires in the nineteenth century brought more than new territories and populations under Western sway. Animals were also swept up in the net of imperialism, as jungles and veldts became colonial ranches and plantations. A booming trade in animals turned many strange and dangerous species into prized commodities. Tigers from India, pythons from Malaya, and gorillas from the Congo found their way—sometimes by shady means—to the zoos of major U.S. cities, where they created a sensation. Zoos were among the most popular attractions in the United States for much of the twentieth century. Stoking the public’s fascination, savvy zookeepers, animal traders, and zoo directors regaled visitors with stories of the fierce behavior of these creatures in their native habitats, as well as daring tales of their capture. Yet as tropical animals became increasingly familiar to the American public, they became ever more rare in the wild. Tracing the history of U.S. zoos and the global trade and trafficking in animals that supplied them, Daniel Bender examines how Americans learned to view faraway places and peoples through the lens of the exotic creatures on display. Over time, as the zoo’s mission shifted from offering entertainment to providing a refuge for endangered species, conservation parks replaced pens and cages. The Animal Game recounts Americans’ ongoing, often conflicted relationship with zoos, decried as anachronistic prisons by animal rights activists even as they remain popular centers of education and preservation.

A research-based account of what we know about zoos, animals living in zoos, and how they interact with humans.

Well-run modern zoos and aquariums do important research and conservation work and teach visitors about the challenges of animals in the wild and the people striving to save them. They help visitors to consider their impact and think about how they can make a difference. Yet for many there is a sense of disquiet and a lingering question remains – can modern zoos be ethically justified? Zoo Ethics examines the workings of modern zoos and considers the core ethical challenges that face those who choose to hold and display animals in zoos, aquariums or sanctuaries. Using recognised ethical frameworks and case studies of ‘wicked problems’, this book explores the value of animal life and the impacts of modern zoos, including the costs to animals in terms of welfare and the loss of liberty. It also considers the positive welfare and health outcomes of many animals held in zoos, the increased attention and protection for their species in the wild, and the enjoyment and education of the people who visit zoos. A thoughtfully researched work written in a highly readable style, Zoo Ethics will empower students of animal ethics and veterinary sciences, zoo and aquarium professionals and interested zoo visitors to have an informed view of the challenges of compassionate conservation and to develop their own defendable, ethical position.

Have you ever wondered if your dog might be a bit depressed? How about heartbroken or homesick? Animal Madness takes these questions seriously, exploring the topic of mental health and recovery in the animal kingdom.