Z is for Zoo Visits

Yes, this can be a hobby! Some people, like my mom, just love visiting zoos. She has gone to the zoo in Delhi, Chennai, Nainital, Hyderabad and Trivandrum. We happen to live near the Vandalur zoo in Chennai. We’ve been here quite often.

Here are some pics from Vandalur zoo.

Taking young children to zoos is a good idea to enable them to see a variety of animals. The tiger temple in Thailand is famous, too. One does feel sad to see animals outside their habitat and living in bad conditions and in cages in circuses and commercial display like the Dolphin City that once existed in Chennai. All four dolphins apparently died since they were not in a conducive environment. Most zoos, however, are well equipped with facilities and staff who are well-trained zoologists with a good knowledge of animal psychology. They have veterinary doctors affiliated with them to help the animals. Most animals do not breed well in captivity, but it is a joy to behold tiger cubs or other little ones when they are presented to the public.  Most zoos rely on purchases from big game hunters and transfers from other zoos and governments to replenish their varieties of animals. It is easier to capture many animals when they are young cubs as full-grown animals like tigers, apes and reptiles are not easy to catch in the wild.

Big game hunting has been immortalized in several stories told by Rudyard Kipling, Jim Corbett, Kenneth Anderson and Gerald Durrell. In the Life of Pi, the story is about a zoo being transported by sea, getting shipwrecked and with a protagonist stranded on a raft with a full-grown tiger. These animal adventures are always a big draw at the theatres.

The zoo is an encyclopedia of the animal kingdom presented in a congenial environment so that people can get acquainted with the animals not found in their localities. A zoo is a far better way to care for animals in a controlled environment rather than driving them to extinction with pollution, climate change and human greed.

Today’s ‘Z is for Zoo Visits’ is the last of my series of posts on hobbies for the Blogchatter A2Z Challenge. In these times, when multidisciplinary education and careers are the norm, a hobby cultivated alongside a regular job is an opportunity for one to engage with it intensively if necessary.