One zoo to avoid

By Iain Maloney

I am ambivalent towards zoos. Part of me - the inquisitive, endlessly fascinated side - loves zoos. Seeing these creatures up close and personal, watching them move, eat and sleep at a proximity I could never experience in the wild is wondrous. Stop for a second and think about what it means: standing a few meters from a polar bear. Try this on the ice and it’ll be the last thing you ever do. Watching penguins swimming: in the Antarctic you’d need a submarine or some heavy-duty diving gear.

But I, like the animals, can never quite forget the bars, can never escape the feeling that it’s all fake, that although this massive creature is a polar bear, it’s not a ‘real’ polar bear, since it was bred in captivity, has never caught a fleeing seal and has as much experience of Arctic survival as I.

So I leave zoos ambivalent: exhilarated yet disappointed. I want to learn more about these magnificent beings, and I want to unlock all the cages and send them home. If it weren’t for zoos I would never see a cheetah, but I hate that the cheetah is in the zoo.

Higashiyama Dobutsuen in Nagoya is a much simpler proposition. Of all the zoos - nay, of all the tourist places I’ve been in the world - Higashiyama Zoo must rank bottom, last, worst. It exists to act as an example to other zoos.

Some of the animals are kept in appalling conditions. The elephant may be the largest land mammal but its home is no bigger than that of the average unmarried salaryman. The walrus is well known for its blubberous bulk yet it wallows in a few feet of muddy water. A plurality of primates scream rage at the indignity of their cage while greater apes point and laugh. The elephant vents frustration on a chained tyre - his only furniture - surely imagining it to be his captors. As for the polar bear, well ‘cabin fever’ doesn’t cover it. Hours he stands, feet rooted to the spot, head swinging sharply from side to side, for all the world like a tramp in the park, blasted on One Cup, or an extra from a zombie film: “Bear of the Dead.” A few animals seem happy enough, but many look like Guantanamo detainees, particularly the big cats in their battery farm rows.

When I write these articles, I always try to be balanced, to give the objective good and bad, as well as my personal response. What can I say to balance this? It’s conveniently located on the subway system? It’s not too expensive? There are a lot of vending machines? It’s not enough. Quite simply, don’t go there.

There’s talk of the zoo undergoing a dramatic makeover. It’s notorious as the kind of zoo Donald Rumsfeld would create, and achieved international recognition as the only zoo in the world with green polar bears (algae left untreated). However I’m skeptical. I predict any money will be spent on improving facilities for the paying guests, rather than for the residents. Maybe a bigger gift shop and more vending machines. Of course, in this economic climate, I doubt any money will be spent at all. Recessions don’t just affect humans; even penguins get credit-crunched.

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Latest 15 of 43 Total Comments Show All

jinjapan at 08:47 AM JST - 1st July

another zoo to avoid. Fukuoka.
ratpack at 11:46 AM JST - 1st July

I remember going to UENO zoo many moons ago to see the pandas they had at the time. It was in a cement floored cage with no where to roam except sit there and chew on a few bamboo shots. Boy didn't he looked bored!! Even the Japanese people were commenting on how pathetic it was before they squealed how cute he looked and reeled off a dozen photos.
dammit at 01:07 PM JST - 1st July

dano2002 most animals think of two things; food and sex. at a zoo they get both.

I agree with Beaver, unless there's a disaster of some kind affecting humans the animals will get food, but sex? Unless they're part of a breeding programme most species are deliberately kept apart, and even then, as they weren't brought up by their own parents they have no idea how to behave towards their own offspring (cue another Knut).

I've only been to 4 zoos in Japan. Ueno is pretty good, although there'll never be a perfect zoo. Tama is also pretty good, although I can't remember which one of them it is that now has a new elephant enclosure. I know the one with the butterfly house has an Indian elephant that looks bored witless all the time, and while the tiger area is small but pretty reasonable (especially as there's a limit on how many animals will be there) it's still not a patch on the real thing. I went to Zoorasia once, but it was rather badly designed for viewing and I really can't say whether the enclosures were ok or not as I could barely see into them. Nogeyama is the poor cousin, free to enter but few animals. It is horrible to see the big cats in little cages, and the monkeys and all the others, but one thing I'd like to point out about Tokyo zoos is that they move the animals around. If you go to Nogeyama today the tiger/s will be different than the tiger/s that were there a few months ago. Not sure how often they do it, but at least it means not so many of the animals will just stay in a grotty cage until they rot and die. Maybe they do that with other zoos in Japan too, even the one in the article, but elephants are more difficult than the others and normally get left to rot.

Japanese zoos are far from perfect. But do you really think all the zoos in your home country are perfect? And of the bad zoos that closed down rather than revamping, what do you think happened to the animals? Sure some will have gone to other zoos, but not all of them.

One thing I don't understand is the price of entrance, in the UK London zoo adults £16.80 kids £13.30 (that's ¥2675 and ¥2118 at today's exchange rate on yahoo), Ueno zoo adults ¥600, kids free until 12 years when they pay ¥200 until age 15. Perhaps if they increase the fee at Japanese zoos a little they can use the extra cash to pay for some improvements? Of course, I daresay UK zoos get no help from any government body, and here they do. But even so it's a huge difference. And they charge a fortune for snacks and drinks in the UK zoos too I'll bet.

Personally I don't like the fact that zoos exist. I don't believe it's worthwhile keeping an otherwise extinct animal in captivity, they can't bring up their own young, often they're not even capable of mating successfully (or at all) in captivity, plus they're miserable. Why force new generations to suffer? Bring them up by human hand and they think they're related to humans. So why would they want to mate with that furry animal you're introducing them to? But they're interesting and educational for kids (up to a point) so while they do exist I'll occasionally take the little dammits to see the animals.
dano2002 at 01:26 PM JST - 1st July

how do you know they are miserable? are you dr. doolittle?

Let's say you are a lion. You can go hunt every day or get food brought to you each day. I watch quite a bit of the Animal Planet and the big cats often go days without a kill.

Now, on the other hand, let's say you are the prey of a big cat. Are you happy to roam free in the open country only to have to worry about being killed every single second?
Foxie at 01:31 PM JST - 1st July

Zoos should be forbidden worldwide. What fun can it be watching an imprisoned animal, it is far from being educational. Show the kids animals in their natural habitat!
spudman at 02:50 PM JST - 1st July

dano, are you in prison? your logic would suggest that prison is better han reality where folks have to work and can be killed in traffic accidents. safer in prison so why is it a deterrent?
soldave at 03:46 PM JST - 1st July

Is this guy the spokesperson for a rival zoo or safari park in the area?
tlbz72 at 08:25 PM JST - 1st July

I'm totally with you Iain- I was traumatised for weeks by those poor polar bears who I only saw on my way to the botanical gardens. Couldn't bring myself to even look at most of the other animals there. I would add a general warning against Asian zoos and animal parks (with the exception of Singapore Zoo) if you have any sensitivity about seeing badly treated and deeply unhappy animals.
dokachin at 09:25 PM JST - 1st July

Higashiyama zoo is old but my cousin was the head vet there and I know they spent a lot of money on a new extension for the reptile section. Yes zoos and circus are the same when you consider keeping animals under the control of humans but there is a lot of research and cooperation with other zoos world wide to breed and protect the animals there.

London zoo is another example of an old zoo where conditions for animals are poor. So I would consider a lot of places to be unsuitable for keeping animals (not just in Asia)... so don't just name and shame when you have not even asked the zoo for a comment.
Mz at 11:23 PM JST - 1st July

Tobu zoo isn't that bad ...
usaexpat at 12:03 AM JST - 2nd July

Never been there but having grown up in Milwaukee which has an amazing zoo for a smaller city, I find Japanese zoos pretty bad. Think Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, or the Brookfield zoo in Chicago, I've not seen sometghing comparable here.
nandakandamanda at 12:39 AM JST - 2nd July

Okayama Zoo is the pits.
The758 at 11:16 AM JST - 2nd July

The Higashiyama Zoo is as bad as the article says. Probably because it's 99.9% concrete and utterly depressing. The pengiuns are situated in the middle of the park, surrounded by cement, which in Nagoya's heat and humidity can reach 39 degrees. A lot of the caged animals walk around and around and appear depressed or ill.

The polar bear has his moments: years ago when I was there, s/he would wait until a group of people were gathered around. Then s/he'd plop him/herself into the water and drench the on-lookers. That alone was worth the $5 to get in.
andylaurel at 11:02 AM JST - 5th July

The Ebisu Safari park in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture is disgusting. I go there because it has a motor racing facility integrated into the grounds. I always feel sick watching the malnourished white tiger pacing back and fourth in his enclosure, roughly the size of an 8 tatami mat room. I was somewhat impressed with Ueno Zoo, however.
Klein2 at 07:33 AM JST - 8th July

There are great zoos. Two of them in areas that military people might have moved through in their career are in San Diego, CA and Colorado Springs, CO. Excellent conditions, many animals. The one in Colorado has the odd distinction of pumping out giraffes. They love it there so much that they breed like crazy. But they have eagles and polar bears. The whole thing. The population of humans in Colorado Springs, even when it was only 200,000 or so, supported a great zoo. I have not seen a zoo in Japan that comes close to it. What needs to be said about San Diego? A little too commercial? Definitely, but the conditions and the quality of staff are great, and it seems to be a going concern. I do not see any excuse for bad conditions in Asian zoos. If the land is too expensive, shut them down, lease the land, and build the zoo on a mountainside.