The zoo, the zoo
August 16th, 2004 by boon
I was at the Malaysian National Zoo last weekend, and I haven’t stepped into the place since I was a wee kid. It didn’t bring back memories, though. I hardly remember the place, and it used to be synonymous with KFC, with the ‘let’s go to the zoo, where’s there’s lots of things to do’ jingle that people at my age were accustomed to hearing in the mid 80s.
The fact remains that folks around here don’t think too highly of the zoo, let alone any zoo… so, I’d say that the audience who find it most appealing would be the young’uns, which was true in this particular circumstance of mine.
There were about 30 of us from church… children with their parents, and the bunch of us who were teachers, who taught the Saturday bible classes…. and then some older ones who were kind of on their own but their parents drove cars.
When I got there at 2pm, it was cloudy and indicative of a heavy shower which incurred upon us an hour later. So that kind of got in the way of our plans, which included an animal show and a picnic. But all was not lost. At least they had a Nelson’s food stand, where we got our ice cream and corn.
I’ve been to a few zoos in the U.S., and I’ve been really impressed by them. The one in Chicago was like, a tourist trap, almost. Even the St. Louis one, which folks told me weren’t as good as the Chicago one, was clean and well kept, and the animals looked healthy in their confinements.
So you can see where I’m going here with respect to the Malaysian National Zoo. It’s not yet quite there. I’m sure they’ve made many improvements over the years (I was 9 almost 2 decades ago), but they overlooked a few things:
- un-labelled pens (looks like a lizard, but I don’t know what kind)
- wrongly labelled pens (looks like a lizard, but they called it a snake)
- misguided educative notices on pens (i.e. Asian Brown Tortoise, largest tortoise in Asia. Taken as food and used in traditional herbs… and just in case you think it’s not endangered… click here)
- poorly kept facilities (door to the flying foxes was all rusted)
- lacking in variety (I saw more tortoises than any other animal in the reptile area… and they all looked the same)
Apart than that, we enjoyed our strolls down the walkways and the lush greenery was inviting. My fiance did retort that some of the animals looked sad and malnourished, but we did see some that were quite at home. For example, there was a hippo the size of a small bus, that reared its big behind towards the fence and as he began defecating, he swung his tail left to right, to clean his hole at the same time. Of course, cleaning meant sending stuff flying all over the place. Good thing we weren’t hit. The hippo on the other side didn’t seem fazed. Must be something they do everyday. And the monkeys,… well, were monkeys. I saw a pair of macaques making love in broad daylight. That’s quite common if you go to a zoo, I think. I assume that’s healthy for monkeys. I dunno.
We think we might go back… they have a night zoo thing every Saturdays and that’s when a lot of animals come out, the brochure said. So, maybe we’ll get to see the two mousedeers that were supposed to be there, but weren’t there.
Right now, the zoo is living off sponsorship, and it’s good to know that they are getting funding somewhat. But I fear that the worst part isn’t about funding but about public interest and support. I guess the government, too, plays a big part in all this, and the media too. This zoo has a lot of potential, but like all the National Geographic World magazines have said, we all have a responsibility to make sure we don’t screw things up for these animals.