I can easily understand Alex Gross’s complaint with the Seattle zoo where he takes his son in James Patterson’s novel London Bridges since my family and I have faced similar problems during our visits to zoos in Katraj (Pune, India), Cologne and Stuttgart (both in Germany), and Colchester and London (both in the UK). Like these zoos, the one in Seattle uses the natural habitat format where animals are not locked up in cages and can instead roam around in large expanses of wooded lands resembling forests. However, people eager to see animals often return disappointed from their trips to natural habitat zoos since animals who are free to roam around make full use of their freedom and regularly stray away from the viewing areas where visitors wait eagerly – and often in vain – to view them.
This problem is acutely magnified in wildlife sanctuaries. During a trip to Mudumalai wildlife sanctuary located at the border of Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Kerala – three south Indian states, for the uninitiated – last year, we were disappointed at not being able to see a single tiger for which this sanctuary is renowned. Forest officials assured us that there were enough tigers in the sanctuary, only that they were roaming around somewhere beyond the trails covered by the official bus tour.
In sharp contrast, the Mysore Zoo strikes the right balance between the cage and natural habitat formats. Where there are cages, they are large and afford plenty of space for the animals to move around. Whereas dwellings resembling natural habitats are compact enough so that people can still manage to get a glimpse of their favorite animals.
What’s more, people who know the terms “black swan” and “white tiger” only as metaphors for rare events will be pleasantly surprised to spot these rare animals in flesh and blood at the Mysore zoo – the former waddling around peacefully in a compact pond and the latter roaring around friskily in a large cage.