theonlyD800inthehameau
Photography by theonlydeadheadinthehameau
Lens-Artists Challenge: Zoo
This week’s challenge is to choose ‘only one picture’. This is something I usually do anyway, thanks to a combination of parsimony and idleness.
Mostly, I just take photographs of things that strike me as interesting or aesthetically pleasing – like most photographers, I suspect.
However, if there is one image in my library that has stayed in my mind in the (many) years since I took it, it’s this image of a caged young chimpanzee in the Al Ain Zoo in the United Arab Emirates. There’s no suggestion that it was being ill-treated, but it looks pretty traumatised to me, and it does raise fundamental questions about the ethics of zoos.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Only One Picture
theonlyD800inthehameau 
A well chosen picture – thought provoking and sad. I have stopped going to zoos, cannot take it seeing the small cages and hopeless eyes of the animals. In some countries we are trying to make the conditions more like where they came from – but of course it can never be enough. The saddest thing is the big wild cats wandering to and fro along the fences. In Sweden we have a famous wild care center where they take care of wild animals near extinction, and they breed them – just to let them return to where they belong again. It is a joint project for the Nordic countries. I guess you have something like that too?
It does indeed tell a story, and a very sad one. Having been to Africa I will never again be able to support zoos. They do say that seeing the animals makes people care more about them but to me that is a meager excuse. I do see many zoos having large open area for animals that roam widely but still there is no comparison to freedom. Well chosen and thought-provoking
Wow! That is a very strong story in that one photo. Excellent!
Very powerful shot.
I couldn’t agree more with you. Although some zoos have improved considerably in the last decades, they are still zoos, with no freedom. Those eyes say it all.
I hope all zoos keep improving in the years to come…. and love your photo that lets us feel the eyes
VERY thoughtful post. To me, at least, the eyes say ‘I don’t belong in a cage.’