Animals at the zoo ... 'The zoo kills the 'wild' in wild animal'

@Bannarghatta - Lion without wildness :(

Trivandrum zoo is suppose to be one of the good ones, we have been here for the last 7 years , but I have not yet visited the Zoo …  … last vacation Esther got chance to visit with her friend and she was impressed and had lots to talk about … Few months back we went to Bannarghatta National Park , we took the Safari (which was so so – it looked more like a staged up safari than the actually seeing animals in their habitat) , and after the Safari, since we had some more time we thought of checking out the Zoo there ….  

To our bad luck, the moment we entered the Zoo premises it started pouring heavy ….

By the time rain got over we did not have much time , but decided to look around as much as we can, … there were no proper sign boards to indicate from where we should start (even though we could see numberings on the cages/enclaves) …first few looks at the caged animals, and I did not want to see too much of it …. They had beautiful birds  , the cage were not as bad  as we see in houses but definitely not the size those magnificent Macaws , Cockatoos deserved … we saw some Giant squirrels, some variety of Apes , but I felt sad seeing those animals there  …..  the most painful scene was when we saw Elephants …. All were chained and the chains were hardly long enough for them to even turn around…. and there were around 6-7 of them …. That was it and I told Anil – ‘Lets go back’  … To be frank now I don’t have the interest (willingness/heart) to visit any zoo ….  

I am an animal lover , I love having pets (but don’t have any),love playing with and caressing  and taking care of them,  love watching animal movies, animations and programs on Animal Planet or NG , even before National Geographic and Animal Planet , I never used to miss any episode of ‘Project Tiger’ which used to come on Doordarshan in 80’s I guess  … The other day ‘Two Brothers’ movie was coming on Star Movies. I have seen bits and pieces of this movie many times and every time I see the movie coming on TV I see how much ever I can see … this time with me Esther and Ezekiel also started watching , after sometime I went to Kitchen and I could hear Esther and Ezekiel screaming ‘no no ..’ when the 2 cubs fought, ‘aiyooo, oh no ….’ when they got separated, and ‘go go jump, pls jump …yay yay :) ’ when thy  got reunited … and then Esther asked me, is this Animation or Real Tigers … I said they are ‘Real’ not ‘Animation/Graphics’ like ‘Richard Parker of Pie’ She could not believe and kept asking how can they make movie with real Tigers ….. Coincidently the next day we were watching Animal Planet and a program on Tiger … and there in the documentary there was a footage were Tigress waiting for an easy bait of a few hour old  baby deer , unexpectedly caressing the baby when the baby deer wanders near Tigress taking it to be her mother … Esther again is surprised and asks …. ‘How can this happen? Tiger is supposed to kill the deer’ …..

Courtesy - Ranthambhore National Park

Couple of weeks after visiting the Bannarghetta Zoo , while surfing channels I happen to see ‘ We bought a Zoo’ movie. Though not very impressive movie but none the less heart warming, something about this movie made me look for more information and then I found out that this movie is based on True story of ‘ Benjamin Mee’ from UK – who decided to buy a Zoo! I know the movie was little too glorified version of reality, but the fact  that   Benjamin and his family made a specific and informed decision to buy a zoo and it took almost two years to buy. Benjamin's first offer to buy the zoo was rejected due to his lack of experience in the zoological world …..  and the more positive (than negative) reviews about the zoo … kind of gave me hope that probably there are zoo’s where animals have better life …… probably there are places where we can see Animals living in natural open and protected areas like that of Ranthambhore National Park  or any of the ‘Project Tiger’ reserves . … probably we would/should get away with the caged zoo concept ….  ..

“Every time you go to the zoo, you prolong the captivity of the animals there! If no one goes to the zoos, there will be no zoos! Destroying the evil is very simple and it is in your hand!” 
― Mehmet Murat ildan