The Truth Behind TV - Carl Sagan - Seth Shostak - H L Mencken - Desmond Morris - Michio Kaku - Nadine Gordimer - Thomas French - The League of Gentlemen TV - Peter Singer - Derek TV - Alexander Lukashenko - Cunk & Other Humans TV -
In 2006 at London Zoo a biological phenomenon occurred: a female Komodo Dragon became pregnant despite having no contact with a male Dragon. Amazingly, the female Dragon had given birth to parthenogenetic offspring. The Truth Behind: Loch Ness, History 2011
I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign. Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
Most of the things at the zoo don’t look like us. We’re one design that works. Our chimp pals sort of look like us, so that’s a different take on the same basic design. But fish don’t look like us, and giraffes don’t. They look a little like us, but not too much. And insects certainly don’t look like us, and they work just fine. Seth Shostak
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary or even a state legislature in session is informing, stimulating and ennobling. H L Mencken
The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo. Desmond Morris
We’re in ‘Jurassic Park’ territory. If we go to the zoo in the future, we’ll have zoos for extinct animals. Michio Kaku
The caged eagle becomes a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison. Nadine Gordimer, Get a Life
All zoos, even the most enlightened, are built upon the idea both beguiling and repellent – the notion that we can seek out the wildness of the world and behold its beauty, but that we must first contain that wildness. Zoos argue that they are fighting for the conservation of the Earth, that they educate the public and provide refuge and support for vanishing species. And they are right. Animal-rights groups argue that zoos traffic in living creatures, exploiting them for financial gain and amusement. And they are right. Caught inside this contradiction are the animals themselves, and the humans charged with their well-being. Thomas French, Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives
Royston Vasey Roundabout Zoo Nature’s Wonders In The Heart Of Town. The League of Gentlemen: Nightmare in Royston Vasey s1e3, sign, BBC 1999
It was wrong to capture wild animals and confine them in captivity for people to go and gawk at them. And that’s basically how zoos got started. But once you do that, and once you have animals that have been bred in captivity, you’re really stuck with them in some sense. You can’t return them to the wild. Peter Singer
We’re off to the zoo today. Derek s2e4, Hannah, Channel 4 2014
All animals are my favouritist animals. Except spiders. ibid. Derek
In my view this is not a democracy but a zoo. Alexander Lukashenko, dictator of Belarus
The Lion King: The good thing is now we’ve got backup copies of all these animals, so when the environment goes to shit and all the real ones die, we can still go to the zoo in VR. Literally, the only difference is going to be the bum-holes, and I can live with that. Cunk & Other Humans IV, BBC 2019