DUBLIN Zoo has been going since 1830, which is amazing when you think about it. During An Gorta Mor, wasn’t there at least a small temptation to… Okay, okay – let’s banish such unworthy thoughts. The Zoo (RTE ONE) was a repeat but it was still worth a second look.
There was a time when a lot of people said that keeping animals in a zoo was unnatural and cruel, and there certainly was a time when on a visit to the zoo you were met with a moth-eaten stink and caged lions that looked bored and tired as they paced their cage and glowered at the spectators. RTÉ avoided that, if it still exists. All the shots of animals were reasonably close-up, so you couldn’t tell if this creature was confined to this little bit of background you could see or if this little bit was just part of a great outdoors in which the creature rambled freely.
One of the zoo attendants who featured prominently – a young American woman – explained that the two creatures under scrutiny, the sea lion and the penguin, “both hail from across the pond”, but from the opposite side of the US than the place she called home.
As is the way in these programmes, we got little factoids lobbed into the commentary. For example, the fact that penguins mate for life. I found myself thinking more highly of them for being there for their partner, but then I realised it came from their nature, not any active decision or will-power from the animals. They have no choice but to stick with each other.
But there’s only so long you can be impressed into watching as a penguin waddles aimlessly about or a sea lion sits staring at you.
So the documentary makers focused on a huge chimp called Marlon (for God’s sake, Virginia, how should I know if it was Brando they had in mind?). Anyway, they noticed a bit of swelling about Marlon’s face, so they sedated him. Four or more people then lifted the zonked-out Marlon on to the operating table and checked his teeth. They discovered an infection in the gums, which found its way right through one of the teeth. Then they filed down the infected tooth to make it easier to extract, and proudly displayed the big gap at the back into which infection had crept. “Nobody wants to have a pain their face,” said a woman who was a zoo attendant.
Even in the best of zoos, I suspect, given the chance, the animals would make a break for freedom. It’s a fine line between being locked up and kept safe. Born free, many animals hunt down, kill and eat other animals. If kept in a zoo for long enough, this hunter instinct must wither and vanish.
On the upside, an animal with a toothache is going to get sympathy in a zoo that he’d never get in the wild.
