Results tagged “Zoos” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Ok, so maybe sleeping in a zoo isn't your thing. Want to camp out in a museum instead? Then head to Copenhagen.

The Kunsthal Charlottenborg museum of contemporary art just opened a new exhibit this weekend featuring a work by artists Bosch & Fjord that is, in essence, a group of beds in a gallery space. Culture Camping is social experiment created to challenge your senses, and asks what happens when eight people are picked to live in a museum (overnight) and see what happens... (We can only guess that the guests will stop being polite, and start getting real.)

Those who are lucky enough to snag a bed will experience vertigo, thanks to the six-meter-long cords that are suspended from the ceiling above them, and there are other "nocturnal surprises" like bedtime stores and lullabies planned for the evening. Guests are able to walk through the exhibit, built art installations, record sounds, and play in an adult-sized sandbox. The following morning, the visitors will have a roundtable discussion over breakfast about their experiences.

I was lucky enough to visit the Houston Zoo on my recent trip to Texas's largest city and boy, was I impressed! Let me start off by admitting my ambivalence about zoos in terms of what's best for the animals kept in them, the prison-like enclosures in some zoos, and all the troubling ethical stuff that goes along with them. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I volunteered at the National Zoo here in D.C. as a docent for two years and have come to see zoos' purpose, and, more importantly, the role of the animals kept within them, as that of ambassadors; the zoo, an embassy to the natural world. With exposure comes education and understanding and from that basis, respect for the natural world and its animals develops, hopefully spurring an impulse to conserve and protect in those who visit zoos, especially children.

That said, the Houston Zoo, all 55 acres of it, knocked my socks off--especially the cheetah exhibit, where I saw two full-grown male cheetahs chase after balls with two keepers, armed only with wooden shepherds' crooks. While one keeper explained to the crowd that the cheetahs haven't yet learned to truly fetch, a cheetah sauntered up to her hand, ball clenched in his mouth, asking for another toss to chase after.

I contacted Brian Hill, director of PR for the zoo, and he informed me the cheetahs are just part of an exhibit that includes Anatolian shepherds (dogs!) who were introduced to the cheetahs when they were young. Hill tells me that the unlikely pairing of cheetahs and shepherds has worked well and that "they enjoy each others' company and allow keepers to tell a unique conservation story, how Anatolian shepherds have saved cheetahs in Namibia" where goat herders and ranchers use the pups to guard their herds from the cheetahs to obviate the need to shoot or poison the cheetahs.