Gorilla Warfare: The Animal-Prison/Industrial Complex | Mickey Z.

Photo credit: Mickey Z.

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

April 13, 2013

“I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.”

- Carl Sagan

The role of the corporate media is to normalize the daily -- hourly -- violence and hierarchy inherent within the dominant culture. For example: speciesism. Corporate news outlets work around the clock to keep the human/non-human privilege alive yet unexamined.

Case in point: On April 1, 2013, N. R. Kleinfield of the New York Times penned a predictably ill-informed and agenda-reinforcing piece called, “A Child Star With a Knack for Publicity,” about the death a western lowland gorilla (a species classified as “critically endangered”) who was born behind bars within the Central Park Zoo.

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Some of what the media purposely omits when reporting on zoos: Zoos serve to reduce genetic diversity and do not contribute to increasing robust animal populations in the wild.

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The gorilla named “Pattycake,” we’re told, “long reigned as one of the city’s more acclaimed tourist attractions.” She died “peacefully, in her sleep.”

Counterpoint: Confined beings, by definition, do not live or die peacefully, but the Times very much wants us to sleep peacefully -- never questioning or even acknowledging what is done in our name.

“Quite a life”
Pattycake, says Kleinfield, “earned a superstar’s distinction and heaps of publicity right at birth, on Sept. 3, 1972, being that she was the first gorilla born in New York City, as opposed to, say, Cameroon or Gabon or Equatorial Guinea. It was an excellent Manhattan address -- the Central Park Zoo.”

Take a second to contemplate the intense and immense amount of denial and conditioning required for anyone to believe a tiny jail on the overcrowded island of Manhattan is an “excellent” address for a western lowland gorilla.

Counterpoint:  Western lowland gorillas are primarily vegetarians -- naturally found in forests and lowland swamps in central Africa (Angola, Cameroon, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon) -- traveling in groups within a home range as large as 18 square miles.

Still, the Times never lets up about how “excellent” zoos are for such primates, assuring us: “For a gorilla, she had had quite a life.”

Counterpoint: For a gorilla, Pattycake had no life.

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More of what the media purposely omits: Animals are obviously not meant to live in captivity and, as a result, often display stress and/or psychological dysfunction and just as often, these animals are abused.

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“Movie star”
Since “back then,” it was “still relatively rare” for gorillas to give birth in captivity, Kleinfield informs us that gorilla babies “were typically raised by humans” but this was not the case with Pattycake.

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More of what the media purposely omits: Zoos are mostly focused on "cute babies" and ultimately create unwanted animals.

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The New York Daily News conducted a contest to name the newborn prisoner and “Pattycake” was chosen from an “estimated 33,000 entries.”

“Zoo attendance soared,” reports Kleinfield, quoting one “devotee” as declaring: Seeing Pattycake was “like seeing a movie star.”

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More of what the media purposely omits: Zoos do little to nothing to seriously address the underlying causes of habitat loss and thereby let the perpetrators off the hook. Captive breeding can create a false sense that the battle to save endangered species and habitats is being won.

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“Caged beast”
So confident is the Times that we readers have fully swallowed the speciesism party line that Kleinfield has no fear of relaying the story of Pattycake’s first birthday “party.” After being told that the gorilla’s parents “celebrated with her,” we learn that more of the banana layer birthday cake “found its way into Pattycake’s fur than into her mouth.”

Why, you wonder? Pattycake’s father, says the Times, behaved like a “caged beast.”

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More of what the media purposely omits: Warehousing endangered species sends the frightening subliminal message that it's acceptable to spend money to view animals in enclosures while, for example, forests are being clear cut to make way for doomed livestock -- depriving many of those same animals the freedom to live in their own habitats.

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“Reside”
As the “obituary” wraps up, Kleinfield explains how when the Central Park Zoo was undergoing renovation in 1983, Pattycake was moved permanently to another penitentiary: the Bronx Zoo.

From there, she sums up: “Pattycake managed to give birth to 10 babies with four mates, including a pair of twins born in 1995. She raised only one of the 10 on her own; one died four days after birth. The others now reside in zoos around the country, including in Omaha, Buffalo, Detroit and Louisville.”

Of course, there’s no questioning of the concept of humans arrogantly deciding if another sentient being should or shouldn’t be “allowed” to raise her own young but most fascinating to me is the brazen use of the word “reside” -- leaving readers with no doubt of the beneficence of zoos and zookeepers.

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More of what the media purposely omits: Encountering animals in a zoo setting teaches the wrong lessons about how our eco-systems work. Wrong lessons only serve to sustain a system that should be dismantled and relegated to the dustbin of history.

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Here’s some of what I hope you’ll consider after reading this article:

• Humans are just one of 8.7 million species sharing (sic) a planet.
• Whether you call it a cage, a cell, a jail, a pen, a ward, a prison, a wildlife center, or an enclosure… captivity is captivity.
• A culture that confines and abuses animals for profit is highly likely to regularly promote and engage in other forms of violence and exploitation.

#shifthappens

NYC Event Notes: To continue conversations like this, come see Mickey Z. in person at Hunter College on April 15 for “Climate Change on Your Plate: Eco-Defense & the Vegan Option.”

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Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.

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