• discussions >
• Front Room

In their natural habitats, most wild animals do not commit suicide....

Title couldn’t say it all.

“under normal conditions, in their natural habitats, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, masturbate, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, become fetishists, suffer from obesity, form homosexual pair-bonds, or commit murder. Among human city dwellers, needless to say, all of these things occur.
. . .

Other animals do behave in these ways under certain circumstances, namely when they are confined in the unnatural conditions of captivity. The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.”

. . .

There is really no need to escape [our cities]…. But there is a need to transform the urban environment into something more appropriate for its long-suffering inhabitants."

Preface to the book “The Human Zoo”
By British zoologist Desmond Morris