Mastery Over Nature and the Exotic Animal Trade Humankind has always had a fascination with nature and specifically animals in nature and even more specifically with conquering the animal or gaining mastery over the animal. The exotic animal has been the focus of great aspiration of humankind to attain mastery over. The reasons for this are varied in nature with some individuals obtaining exotic animals for their own pleasure and as examined in this particular informative study there is desire for obtaining exotic animals so that human beings can experience the animals of nature.

Adelaide Zoo, Adelaide, South Australia

The setting examined in this study is that of the Adelaide Zoo, located Adelaide, South Australia. The work of Kay Anderson entitled "Culture and Nature at the Adelaide Zoo: At the Frontier of Human Geography" reports that in the suburban backyard, people unknowingly "make their more routine interventions in nature by clearing ground and arranging space for 'gardens', they simultaneously create 'habitats' in which some species of bird and animal life thrive while other lose out." (Anderson, 1995)

The suburb is reported by Anderson to have become an ecosystem of its own. However, just as people create habitats for animals, Anderson states that they also "often tend to misrecognize as 'natural' the settings that have been deliberately set aside for human recreation and contemplation." (Anderson, 1995) Included according to Anderson are "the parks and reserves where an ill-defined and unspecified 'nature' has been converted into cultural experience and spiritual commodity. It is the metropolitan space of the western world's zoo-logical gardens, however, that people encounter a nature that has been most complexly and culturally contrived by, and for, humans." (Anderson, 1995) Anderson reports that the zoological gardens are such that are "…an illusion is created from scratch and re-presented back to human audiences in a cultural performance and achievement…" (Anderson, 1995) Nature is stated by Anderson to be while remote and distant from the human cultural society is "in some sense at least, socially constructed." (Anderson, 1995)

II. The Zoo Environment

The zoo is inclusive of a wide range of species of the natural world...

In addition, the display of these animals is stated to "cater to cultural demand and public expectations about animals and the world regions for which exhibits are made to emblematically stand." (Anderson, 1995) This is because zoos attract paying visitors for example the United States is reported to have 154 zoos and aquariums as of 1993 which were accredited by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums and it is reported that more than 100 million individuals visited these parks. (Anderson, 1995, paraphrased)
The work of Tarpy (1993) states that this is more individuals that the combined population attending all football and basketball games in the major league. The following illustration shows the 'Plan of the Zoological Gardens' from 1898.

Figure 1

Plan of the Zoological Gardens (1898)

III. Human Response to Animals in Zoos

Anderson states that some zoos realize higher levels of success than do other zoos and specifically as related to attraction of visitors. The response of human beings to the animals in zoos is reported to be "wide-ranging and profoundly ambiguous." (1995) In fact, according to surveys the reactions of human beings to zoos "typically combine excitement, fear, awe, sadness and nostalgia, with unease about the captivity of animals." (Adams et al. 1991; Townsend 1988 in Anderson, 1995).

Anderson reports that the zoo "…ultimately tell[s] us stories about boundary-making activities on the part of humans." (1995) the metropolitan zoo in the western world is according to Anderson "spaces where humans engage in cultural self-definition against a variably constructed and opposed nature." (1995) Zoos use animals as the medium in providing the inscription of "sense of distance from the loosely defined realm that has come to be called 'nature'." (Anderson, 1995)

IV. Purposes of Animals Prior to Zoos

Anderson reports that before zoos were constructed that animals were kept by humans in captivity for various purposes including for the labor the animals performed and even for purposes of worship. Romans in the third century BC used animals violently in gladiatorial contests and triumphal processes and during the Middle…