Zoos
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:
The Buenos Aires City Zoo
announced October 28 that it intends to sue
the pregnant mother of a two-year-old, who
claimed a loose monkey scratched and bit the
boy, attacking from behind as zookeepers
fled. The zoo says the boy was hurt after get-
ting past security barriers. Reuters described
the 104-year-old zoo as “poorly maintained.”
Friends of Animals is investigating
a lawsuit to save 30 deer who share natural
habitat at the Mohegan Park Zoo in Norwich,
Connecticut. Norwich public works director
Paul Wadja has proposed killing the deer to
save the cost of complying with federal fenc-
ing and tuberculosis testing requirements.
Back in China after three years of
failing to breed at the London Zoo, the giant
panda Ming Ming, 17, has been paired with
Pan Pan, an eight-year-old father of four.
Language researcher Sue Savage
R u m b a u g h argues in her new book K a n z i :
The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind that
“The moral boundary, artificially erected by
us between ourselves and the other apes, is no
longer defensible.” Rumbaugh, who works at
the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta, holds
that great apes––chimpanzees, bonobos,
gorillas, gibbons, and orangutans––should
not be kept in zoos or be used in laboratories.
Her case was strengthened by Australian
National University geneticist Simon Easteal,
who on November 16 told an international
conference on DNA research that the genetic
likenesses of humans, chimps, and gorillas
are so great, “We should in fact regard chim-
panzees and gorillas as members of the same
genus and call them Homo.”
The Chicago Park District is con-
sidering transferring management responsbili-
ty for the century-old Lincoln Park Zoo to the
Chicago Zoological Society. The Park District
would still provide an annual subsidy, to
insure that the zoo could continue to offer free
admission, but the amount would be cut to $2
million from the current $9 million. Annual
operating costs are circa $18 million.
