such as the National Zoo, the Lincoln Park Zoo, the San Diego Zoo, Six Flags, and Ringling Brothers, will sell their unwanted animals to licensed auctioneers and dealers. These individuals will then turn around and re-sell them to unlicensed third parties. Alan Greene’s Animal Underworld (1999) can provide more detail on this subject, but suffice it to say that the key facet in this relationship is the absence of a direct connection between the original sellers and the final buyers. Thus, zoos and circuses can deny involvement in such dirty business and hide their avarice. As for the unwanted animals, they will end up in private collections, canned hunting operations, research labs, and exotic-meat slaughtering facilities. Some of the animals, especially tigers, will be killed outright for their organs, fur, and claws. According to Interpol, the international trade in exotics is an eight billion dollar a year industry. And no animal is safe. These flagship institutions will sell endangered and non-endangered species alike: leopards, camels, Bengal tigers, antelopes, gazelles, lions, white rhinos, gorillas, chimps, and orangutans. Perhaps you will remember Knut, the famed polar bear cub. In 2007, a kind of hysteria revolved around him, as visitors by the thousands flocked to Germany to catch a glimpse. Knut’s owner, the Berlin Zoo, licensed his image and placed it everywhere. The zoo made $8.6 million off of the Knut craze. Nevertheless, by December of 2008, Berlin wanted to dump the bear. Knut had grown up, and he was no longer cute or marketable. It was only through a public uprising that the zoo relented and agreed to keep the polar bear—at least, until the fervor dies down.
Step Four in the standard operating procedure is to manage public relations. The American Zoological and Aquarium Association (AZA), governing body of the industry, provides workshops on the successful PR techniques. The central thesis of them is this: control the information. Every institution should have a designated spokesperson. When questioned, and regardless of the question, this person should state repeatedly that the zoo is an important resource for conservation and education. Reassurances must also be made that appropriate changes have been implemented and that the park is safe for the return of visitors. Again, rigorous control is foremost in importance—as damaging information can easily leak out. Such was case in aftermath of Tatiana’s raid.
News came that the tiger was being fed ten pounds less meat per individual feeding in San Francisco then she had been during her confinement in Denver. This led some to speculate that the zoo was trying to get Tatiana to be more active for visitors. If the tiger was continually hungry, the thinking went, she might move around more and thus be more entertaining to paying visitors. Officials were forced to deny the claim. Next came news of a $48 million bond, which the zoo had received earlier, almost all of which was spent on enhancements for visitors. The animals, meanwhile, continued to reside in decrepit and cramped exhibits. Tigers can have a range of over 100 square miles in their habitats of Eurasia. In San Francisco, Tatiana barely had only 1000-square feet to roam around in. Such realities of captivity are known to cause psychological problems: unconscious swaying, incessant pacing, and self-mutilation. Zoo officials, again, had to defend themselves. The tiger, they affirmed, was not suffering from depression and her enclosure was more than adequate in size. The final piece of bad news for the zoo came when it was revealed that there were two near escapes by other animals just a week after Tatiana’s rampage.
During one of them, a female polar bear named Ulu tried to scramble over a wall but was turned back with the stinging spray from a firehose. A keeper quietly confided that Ulu only did this because he and others had been “pelting” the bear with empty tranquilizer darts. In response to this incident, the zoo’s director followed standard procedure. “That doesn’t sound like an escape attempt to me,” he began to explain. The bear was simply being a bear. Yes, the zoo is now planning to raise the walls of Ulu’s exhibit, but not because of what Ulu did. In all seriousness, the zoo’s PR flacks suggested, this kind of scrutiny and questioning is unnecessary if not vindictive. The zoo is the real victim.
There is an African proverb. “Until the lion has his historian, the hunter will always be a hero.” For myself, the meaning behind the adage has long represented a challenge—one which I took up in 1998. I had just recently matriculated to the University of Toledo in order to study with the historian Peter Linebaugh. My purpose was singular: I wanted to understand history from below. That fall, I took a research seminar on the Gilded Age, and the topic I chose to write about was the Toledo Zoo. It could have ended up being a standard history: the zoo and its directors, their curatorial ideas and the evolution in exhibit design, and a list of animals. Yet, my work with Linebaugh led me to see the research material in a new light. Information that I would have previously missed or passed over now became evident. More specifically, I noticed that the captive animals were resisting and that resistance was having an effect. The zoo and the circus no longer remained the hero.
In late 2006, I decided to engage this topic once again, and, through my research, the resistance became ever more evident. Captive animals escaped their cages. They attacked their keepers. They demanded more food. They refused to perform. They refused to reproduce. The resistance itself could be organized. Indeed, not only did the animals have a history, they were making history. For their resistance led directly to historical change. In the case of Tatiana, her eyes were burning bright that Christmas day. She inspired others and brought about larger questions concerning captivity and agency. Concerned citizens, animal advocacy groups, and the City Board of Supervisors all got involved. Even the Wall Street Journal published an article exploring the incident. The San Francisco Zoo, for its part, still has not recovered. Yet, we must never forget from where this struggle begins and ends: with the animals themselves.
A note on the book’s primary and secondary sources. The vast majority of information came directly from newspapers, both national and international. Federal, state and local governmental documents filled in some important details. Lawsuits and their trail of paperwork supplied a scant more. On-line databases were rich with biographical detail—in particular, the Orca Homepage at www.orcahome.de and the Elephants Encyclopedia at www.elephant.se. Writings by the various 19th and early 20th century animal collectors, such as Frank Buck, Carl Hagenbeck, and Charles Mayer, were certainly of use—as were the manuscript collections at the Local History Department at the Toledo/Lucas County Library and the Toledo Zoo. Bandwagon, journal of the Circus Historical Society, assisted with its long-reaching archives. A handful of contemporary books were also helpful: Susan Davis, Spectacular Nature (Berkeley, 1997). Alan Greene, Animal Underworld (NY: 1999). Erich Hoyt, The Performing Orca (Bath, 1992). Eugene Linden, The Parrot’s Lament (New York, 1999). Dale Peterson and Jane Goodall, Visions of Caliban (Athens, 2000). Charles Price, The Day They Hung the Elephant (Johnson City, 1992). Don Reed, Notes from an Underwater Zoo (New York, 1981).
Chapter One: Elephants Exit the Big Top
When he arrived at Regent’s Park in 1865, the elephant was sickly and underweight. Zoo officials were, to say the least, disappointed in their newest acquisition. Sure, he was quite young. But he was a bull-male. Shouldn’t he have been a little bit bigger? In any case, this runt of an elephant needed a name. Park directors set to thinking. The calf was taken, so they thought, from somewhere inside of the French Sudan, and the cultures there were known for worshipping an idol called Mumbo Jumbo. Why not just shorten this and call him “Jumbo.” Indeed, they decided, this would be a fitting name. It would ultimately prove to be a most ironic choice.
In truth, Mumbo Jumbo was anything but a complimentary christening for an elephant or any other creature. For the word was derogatory and demeaning—originating, not from the African lexicon, but from the European imperialist imagination. Mumbo Jumbo was a “grotesque” idol, an object of unintelligent veneration. Today, the title continues to hold onto its negative ethnocentrism: referring to obscure meaningless talk and writing; nonsense; or an ignorant ritual. Yet the abbreviated version of the term, Jumbo, has not. Its history has actually flowed in the opposite direction. Jumbo has come to mean big and enormous. It connotes success and skill. A jumboism is a preference for largeness. Jumbomania is the idolization of largeness. A century ago, the mere whisper of “Jumbo” could bring about smiles and cheers. Its mention could even cause tears, sorrow, and solemn remembrance. Jumbo remains a word of respect. How did this divergence between the longer
