The winner of the Man Booker prize 2002 hardly needs any more publicity. However Yann Martel’ s story begins in the fictional Pondicherry zoo, and the narrator offers a very subtle defence of the zoo concept, suggesting a zoo is more like a suburb than a prison. I understand that Mr Martel often explained his support [...]
John Regan Associates Blog
Read “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel
December 7th, 2007Role of zoos in the “century of biology”
December 7th, 2007Professor Freeman Dyon writes tellingly in the New York Review of Books recently (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20370) as to biology being now “more important than physics, as measured by its economic consequences, by its ethical implications, or by its effect on human welfare”. He goes on to suggest that a bio-technological revolution will not be fully successful until [...]
Zoos and entering the world of science
December 5th, 2007“Curious Minds: How a child becomes a scientist” edited by John Brockman. http://www.amazon.com/Curious-Minds-Child-Becomes-Scientist/dp/0375422919 I read this fascinating book a couple of years ago, and was struck that two of the world’s leading thinkers quote the zoo ( …amongst other sources, of course) as their original inspiration to become involved in science: 1. Murray Gell-Man, Nobel Prize winning [...]
‘Fundraising’ versus ‘Development’…?
December 5th, 2007So what’s the difference? What route should a given organisation choose when first resourcing some kind of external funding programme and philosophy..? To my mind, ‘fundraising’ is a function logically tucked inside a larger marketing or communications department, and probably not reporting directly to the CEO. It concerns tactical activities to secure extra resource to [...]
Zoos and regional/local identity
December 5th, 2007Are zoos and aquaria perceived by the outside world as sufficiently different to one another? If not, do we lose ‘out of area’ visitors and funding potential, because we are seen as having little to offer that is part of the particular authentic ‘flavour’ of that part of the world? The fact is, from within [...]
Zoo Beat: forum for zoo enthusiasts
December 3rd, 2007A very lively exchange medium orginating from Australia http://www.zoobeat.com/
“Noone ever told us tigers are real”: zoos as champions of ‘actual reality’ in an increasingly virtual world
December 3rd, 2007Somewhere a few years ago I read a story by, I think, the eminent poet and broadcaster, Ruth Padel, that went something like this: A school group are visiting the Zoo. The class has been prepared for the educational experiencde with video stuff, computers, books, photographs, the works. But when they eventually reach the tiger enclosure, [...]
Why no Darwinian Zoo…?
December 3rd, 2007To the best of my knowledge there is no animal collection in the world that takes the idea of evolution as its overall theme, although we do have a creationist zoo here in the UK, and I am pretty sure several in the USA ( to be clear, I am with Voltaire in defending the right [...]
Zoos and the play agenda
December 2nd, 2007Whatever else good zoos, nature site and aquaria are, they are also fantastic playgrounds. The core, most primitive appeal of the zoo must be to dive into this fantastic, exotic world and explore and exult in the game of the living world. Is there anything more important for the healthy development of humans (…”Homo ludens…?”), adults as well [...]
What should zoos be called? How might an organisation’s titles subtly affect external image and funding potential?
December 1st, 2007The word ‘zoo’ is a great word! It is short, exciting (makes you think of ‘zoom’…), visually and typographically distinct. If an advertising copywriter were tasked to come up with a name for some new product from scratch ( …a kind of shampoo, a new form of insurance policy, a thing for getting stones out [...]
