Zoo in the head

Lubbock: a postscript

I realised I ought to share this postcard with the world: Tom Lubbock pasted it together years ago, on a whim, and it's been sitting on my desk or my mantelpiece ever since, because it so closely reflects my own Weltanschauung.  Tom swore he'd found the sentiment in Nietzsche but he couldn't remember where, and all I can find on the web is some complaints about the effect of beer on the German soul, from Twilight of the Idols. Information gratefully received.

Zoo news: Yum

 

The menu at the Bin Feng Tang restaurant at Beijing Zoo now includes a number of species housed at the zoo: hippopotamus toes, kangaroo tail, deer penis, crocodile. Despite an assurance by management that the meat comes from farmed animals, not zoo specimens, the restaurant management has been heavily criticised, both inside and outside China. The Guardian quoted Chang Jiwen at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as saying, "It is very inappropriate and immoral of them to sell such products. It is against the aim of the zoo".

It is heartening to see these concerns raised inside China, where mistreatment of zoo animals has been commonplace (bear in mind that that link is more than 10 years old, though). But as a number of commenters on the Guardian report point out, it isn't obvious what is wrong here, given that the animals are farmed: indeed, being farmed for food is one of the best protections a species can have against extinction. The Guardian also had Ge Rui of the International Fund for Animal Welfare arguing that "by selling the meat of caged beasts, this zoo stimulates consumption and increases pressure on the animals in the wild." How does that work? In the Global Times, Qin Xiaona, president of the Capital Animal Welfare Association, put much the same point in more concrete terms: "It may give people the impression that eating wild animals is legal since legal restaurants are serving them." He added: "The zoo is where we teach our children to be nice to animals. How can we do this after eating them?"

Not that there is necessarily an opposition between being nice to an animal and eating it. John Berger, in "Why Look at Animals?", wrote: "A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but." Then again, in the same essay he writes of the marginalisation of animals in our consciousness, and sees zoos as a symbol of this phenomenon: clearly, the zoo visitor snacking on hippo toes isn't in the same relationship to the hippo that the peasant is to his pig. 

Consumption of zoo animals isn't a new phenomenon. In 1859 the anatomist Richard Owen held an "Eland Dinner" at which a variety of exotic fleshes were served up (this was a sort of sequel to his feast inside a statue of an iguanodon at Sydenham Park in 1853). The guests included the surgeon and naturalist Frank Buckland, son of the late William, geologist Dean of Westminster, who had been famous for his pet hyena and his enthusiasm for exotic foods: "mice on toast", ostrich, crocodile stew and (once, by accident) a small piece of the embalmed heart of Louis XIV. Frank was inspired to establish the Acclimatisation Society to explore more systematically the possibilities of introducing exotic animals to temperate climes, and proceeded to eat his way through a large number of species.

In France, Etienne Geoffroy-St. Hilaire established the Jardin Zoologique d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, opened in 1860 by Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie. This turned out to have a really practical application during the Siege of Paris 10 years later, when the chef Choron at Voisin's restaurant cooked a number of the animals for Christmas - stuffed ass's head, elephant consommé, camel roasted in the English style, kangaroo stew, roast bear, haunch of wolf in a deer sauce, terrine of antelope with truffles: the full menu is at the head of this post. Elephant was a particular hit: there were several elephants at the city's three zoos, and by the time the city was relieved Choron had cooked his way through the lot. Babar au rhum?

The anxiety about the menu in Beijing shows up a sentimental streak in our thinking about conservation. On the one hand, we (this is a western, liberal, environmentally concerned we) want animals taken out of the margins of our lives - and zoos can be a tool for doing this, as well as a symbol of that marginalisation: that may be the best argument for keeping them. At the same time, we don't want to have any of the kinds of relationships with wild animals that we've had in the past, because those generally involve exploiting them - by eating them, or using their body parts to make things. We think we ought to care deeply about the natural world while staying the hell out of its way. In this respect, we're a little bit like the old caricature of a feminist, who wants equality, but also wants dinner paid for and the door held open. Maintaining the balance is hard work. Hell, now I'm hungry: pass the binturong.

Casting modesty aside...

...or possibly caution, I ought to point out that I'm presenting tonight's Archive on 4 on BBC Radio 4, on the theme of pubs and literature, produced by the gifted and fragrant Tim Dee. You should listen, if only to hear W. B. Yeats, little leprechaun of a man that he is (after that you can switch off).

8pm GMT, shortened repeat Monday, 3pm GMT (and I've an uncomfortable feeling the 45-minute version will be pithier and more effective); and of course, you can always listen again via the BBC iPlayer.

UPDATE: Now on iPlayer. As I write, the programme is the top-trending new subject on the Radio 4 messageboard, but it turns out that you only need three messages to do that. Still, two of the messages are quite nice; the other one points out that we didn't include any Hardy, which is true. We did think quite long and hard about putting in the pub scene from Jude the Obscure (in which Jude gets roaring drunk and recites the creed in Latin), and maybe we should have. But my impression is that Hardy's interest is not in pubs qua pubs but in drunkenness. 

UPDATE UPDATED: Another complimentary message on the messageboard, containing this enigmatic sentence:

"For some reason I’d always suspected that I’d detect an element of BSA Bantam (175cc) within Mr. Hanks’s voice; quite the opposite and rather pleasant and generous."

"Pleasant and generous" I'll snap up with glee. But what is "an element of BSA Bantam"? And why the 175cc? Wikipedia lists these differences from earlier 150cc models: "The spark plug sits in line with the cylinder head, front forks are stronger (as they are from the larger capacity C15), slightly lower compression ratio at 9.5, separate headlight with high-beam warning, exposed rear shock springs, strengthened kickstart shaft, revised fixing on crankshaft compression disc plates." I'm glad none of that applies to me.

FINAL UPDATE: I am told by other members of the household that my "self-obsession" is nauseating. I'll shut up now.

You will eat your babies

The Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka, Kansas, channels Cormac McCarthy. More zaniness from Fred Phelps and his fag- and Jew-hating chums here and here:

Remember, Obama’s roots are deeply sunk in Africa, and his heart lies in Africa.  Can you name a single place in the world that needs food more than Africa?  Imagine how Bloody Beast Obama will be licking his chops at the thought of using the billions of dollars of fake money to pay a lot of worthless young white women to bear children, and nurse them for a year or so, in order to ship those freeze-dried plump white babies to Africa to meet their food needs? 

And there's even video.