There
was a time when most people in the world would live and die without ever getting to see a lion.Or a giraffe. Or a hippo, rhino, gorilla, zebra, or elephant.
It
is startling to think about people living their entire lives without
ever seeing even one of all the exotic animals we get to
see—on TV and in movies, in books and photos and on the
internet—but also live, “in the flesh,” in zoos and circuses
and other exhibits.
I
just went to the Los Angeles Zoo and had a fantastic time seeing all
the typical (to us! – to we lucky ones who live in modern times!)
zoo animals such as koalas and monkeys and tigers. I had an even
better time seeing some unusual animals I had never seen before, such
as the Chinese giant salamander (a 6-foot-long salamander!) and the
Babirusa (a “pig deer” whose tusks grow up through its snout and
begin to look almost like antlers!).
And
now, today, I am reading that the very first exotic animal ever known
to be exhibited in America was a lion shown in Boston, Massachusetts, on this date in 1716.
So
this exhibit was one exotic animal. Not a zoo.
Five
years later Bostonians got another thrilling creature exhibition: a
camel.
Whoo-oo!
TWO animals!
People
in America had to wait more than a century and a half for an entire
zoo to open; in 1874 the Philadelphia Zoo opened and invited
visitors to view more than 800 animals.
By
the way...
The
African lion exhibited in Boston in 1716 was exotic because it came
from far, far away. But did you know that there used to be an animal
called an American lion?
I'm
not talking about that fearsome modern creature we sometimes call the
mountain lion—but that we more commonly call a puma, panther, or cougar. I'm talking about an animal that lived for thousands of
years in North and South America—a huge member of the cat family
that was 25% larger than the modern African lion—a creature that
went extinct around 10 to 11 thousand years ago: the American lion.
America's second “exotic creature,” the camel, also used to live here and actually first evolved here. For thousands of years various species of camels lived in the Americas. Some migrated over a land bridge to Asia, and all the camels that stayed in the Americas went extinct about 10 to 11 thousand years ago.
Did
you know...?
Some
scientists have suggested “rewilding” America by bringing over
large mammals such as African lions, cheetahs, camels, and elephants
to the North American prairies and allowing them to freely roam in
“ecological history parks” or “Pleistocene parks.” This would
restore some of the ecological balance that humans have disrupted by
removing so many large species—especially predators—and it would
be a second safeguard for today's endangered animals (zoos are the
first safeguard). You can read about rewilding here and here.
Also
on this date:
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