{"id":63735,"date":"2014-08-18T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T14:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=63735"},"modified":"2014-08-14T03:02:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T08:02:21","slug":"who-are-habitats-for-electrified-nature-in-zoo-exhibits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/08\/18\/who-are-habitats-for-electrified-nature-in-zoo-exhibits\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Are Habitats For? Electrified Nature in Zoo Exhibits"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do you see?<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While it hasn’t always been\u00a0the\u00a0case, most well-funded zoos today feature pleasant-enough looking habitats for their animals. \u00a0They are typically species-appropriate,\u00a0roomy\u00a0enough\u00a0to\u00a0look less-than-totally miserable, and\u00a0include trees and shrubs and other such natural features that make them attractive.<\/p>\n

How, though, a friend of mine recently asked “does that landscaping stay nice? Why don’t [the animals]\u00a0eat it, lie down on it, rip it to shreds for fun, or poop all over it?”<\/p>\n

Because, she told me,\u00a0some of it is hot-wired to give them a shock if they touch it.\u00a0These images are taken from the website Total Habitat<\/a>, a source of electrified grasses and vines. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a> \"2\"<\/a> \"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Laurel Braitman writes about these products\u00a0in her book, Animal Madness<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0When she goes to zoos, she says, she doesn’t “marvel at the gorilla… but instead at\u00a0the mastery of the exhibit itself.” \u00a0She writes:<\/p>\n

The more naturalistic the cages, the more depressing they can be because they are that much more deceptive. To the mandrill\u00a0on\u00a0the other side of the glass, the realistic foliage that frames his favorite perch doesn’t help him one bit if it has been hot-wired so that he doesn’t destroy it… Some of the new natural looking exhibits may be even worse for their inhabitants than the old cement ones, as the new plants and other features can shrink the animals’ usable space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The take-home message is that these attractive, naturalistic environments are more for us than they are for the animal. \u00a0They teach us what the animal’s natural habitat might look like\u00a0and they soothe us emotionally, reassuring us that\u00a0the animal must be living a nice life.<\/p>\n

I don’t know the extent to which zoos use electrified grasses and vines, but next time you\u00a0visit\u00a0one you might be inspired to\u00a0look a little more closely.<\/p>\n

Photo of elephants from wikimedia commons<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do you see? While it hasn’t always been\u00a0the\u00a0case, most well-funded zoos today feature pleasant-enough looking habitats for their animals. \u00a0They are typically species-appropriate,\u00a0roomy\u00a0enough\u00a0to\u00a0look less-than-totally miserable, and\u00a0include trees and shrubs and other such natural features that make them attractive. How, though, a friend of mine recently asked “does that landscaping stay nice? Why don’t [the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":63737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[155,34,329,2123,10514,8118,293,23622],"class_list":["post-63735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-education","tag-emotion","tag-environmentnature","tag-leisure","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-social-construction","tag-social-construction-symbols"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/08\/18.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63735"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63742,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63735\/revisions\/63742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}