Zoos

Summary

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Radiolab “Zoos” (June 4, 2007) – Episode Summary

Overview

This Radiolab episode, hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, delves into the history, ethics, and science of zoos. The hosts and a range of guests trace humanity’s evolving relationship with captive animals, from ancient times of spectacle and bloodshed, through the development of “naturalistic” zoo enclosures, to contemporary debates on animal welfare and the sometimes-conflicted emotions that zoos evoke—both in visitors and keepers. The episode features vivid stories, cutting-edge neuroscience, and personal testimony, culminating in conservationist Alan Rabinowitz’s moving account of how zoos shaped his life’s work.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. From Colosseum to Zoo: Shifting Human-Animal Relationships

(01:27-03:23)

• Nell Boyce recounts the Roman Colosseum (80 AD), where animals were brutally slaughtered as public spectacle:
  • “On a good day you could watch, no joke. Hundreds of animals slaughtered right in front of your eyes, one after the other.” (Jad Abumrad, 01:43)
• Modern zoos contrast sharply: children press their faces against glass to glimpse animals, seeking connection, not carnage.
• Host Jad frames the show’s central question:
  • “[Now] we want to be their friends, we want to help them. How did that happen? … How exactly do you help an animal when it has to spend its entire life in a cage?” (Jad Abumrad, 03:23)

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2. Revolution in Zoo Design: The Woodland Park Story

(04:00–15:31)

• David Hancocks, an architect-turned-zoo-director, tells how he sought to change caged, sterile habitats by building more “natural” enclosures.
  • “I'd actually for a while toyed with the idea ... do I want to stay outside zoos and work to close them down? And I came to the conclusion that there's no way you're gonna close zoos down.” (David Hancocks, 04:41)
• Influences included primatologist Dian Fossey:
  • Fossey advised Hancock that a Seattle freeway’s green verge resembled gorilla habitat; this inspired their design (07:16–08:34).
• Landscape architect Grant Jones describes the project’s daring new enclosure with mounds, trees, and space (08:41-09:15).
• Zoo world skepticism:
  • “I had zoo directors tell me it was stupid, irresponsible, and it was unnecessary ... the gorillas would fall out of the trees and hurt themselves.” (David Hancocks, 10:10)
• The first gorilla’s emergence—Kiki’s transformative liberation:
  • “He looked up for a long time and took all this in ... all of a sudden, he sees us ... And then he did something that we in a million years hoped he never would, which was to ... pull out this big chunk of broken concrete ... and looked with an angry look at us. ... And then he just dropped it ... and laid down on his back” (Grant Jones, 12:08–14:44)
• Profound change: “The old Kiki never returned. Never filled his body again.” (Grant Jones, 15:20)

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3. Science: How Environment Affects Animal Brains

(15:40–24:16)

• Neuroscience with Jonah Lehrer:
  • Citing Dr. Elizabeth Gould’s research, monkeys in enriched (social, complex) cages have “bushier” brain cells—more dendritic branching.
    • “Between the bottom and the middle is a big difference ... generally between 20% and 40%.” (Jonah Lehrer, 18:40)
  • But between “middle and upper,” little difference—pointing to a threshold effect (“tipping point”) where adequate stimulation triggers brain flourishing.
  • Monkeys moved from impoverished to enriched cages experienced significant brain growth within weeks.
    • “Within four weeks ... the brain itself has changed. It begins to flourish again.” (Jonah Lehrer, 19:37)
• Field study with biologist Fernando Nottebohm: Wild chickadees generate twice as many new neurons as caged ones due to the mental challenge of remembering food caches.
  • “In the wild group? Absolutely. We need your help to remember where we put all those seeds. In the caged group, there's nothing for those neurons to do. ... You don't get a job, you're gone.” (Alan Rabinowitz & Jad Abumrad, 23:10–23:54)

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4. What Zoo Predators Eat—and Human Emotions

(29:47–40:09)

• On predator diets:
  • “They're eating mostly this. This is a little bag of kibble. It's basically like dog food.” (Nell Boyce, 30:08)
• Reporter Nell Boyce documents the Toledo Zoo’s “Big Feed”—feeding whole animal carcasses (including calves) to predators, in view of families:
  • “I have never seen ... a tiger move that fast.” (Nell Boyce, 34:29)
  • Children are fascinated but shocked to learn, “it's actually a baby cow. ... Why is he doing that? That's the kind of food they eat.” (Nell Boyce, 35:21)
  • Survey: 98% of visitors reacted positively or enthusiastically—except opposition around feeding rabbits at Easter.
• At a live-feeding park in China (Jocelyn Ford’s report), tourists buy live chickens to toss to lions:
  • “They had the most intense look I have ever seen anywhere ... [the lion] just took it in its mouth ... and I noticed that its legs were still quivering.” (Jocelyn Ford, 40:45, 42:13)
  • Cultural attitudes: “If you don't eat them first, they're going to eat you. ... That's the lesson of life.” (Chinese grandmother, 44:18)
  • Jocelyn notes contrasts in attitudes toward animal suffering and death between American and Chinese zoo visitors.

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5. Zoos as Vessels for Empathy and Transformation

(48:01–61:34)

• Alan Rabinowitz, renowned conservationist, recounts how as a child with a severe stutter, zoos (especially the Bronx Zoo) were his sanctuary:
  • “The only time he says he could free his tongue to talk was in the dark with his pets.” (Robert Krulwich, 49:47)
  • He saw captive animals, especially a pacing jaguar, as “like me ... I felt strong ... but yet I was trapped inside this cage of my body.” (Alan Rabinowitz, 51:32)
  • Made a vow to “find a place for us.”
• Jaguar Conservation Story:
  • Rabinowitz details harrowing efforts to study and save wild jaguars in Belize—“It's like saying, go catch a dragon” (52:57)
  • “Of everything I have ever done in my life, I still rank that as the absolute hardest.” (Alan Rabinowitz, 53:43)
  • Early failures and a tragic event—losing a colleague to a snakebite—reinforce the difficulty and cost of fieldwork (54:16).
  • Successfully lobbies the Belizean government to create the world’s first jaguar preserve:
    • “If it works, you've got a jaguar preserve. You have the world's first jaguar preserve.” (Alan Rabinowitz, 56:44–57:17)
    • Secures it despite enormous personal challenge: “Two whole decades [he] could barely speak” but “never stuttered” during his cabinet pitch (57:44)
  • Closing: emotional field encounter with a wild jaguar:
    • “There was fire in the jaguar's eyes. The last thing I remember very clearly is looking into its eyes and thinking of seeing the jaguar in the Bronx Zoo as a child. ... But seeing the wildness in this animal's eyes, it didn't look anything like that cat in the cage. It showed strength and freedom. And we had just protected this incredible area.” (Alan Rabinowitz, 60:18–61:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The fascination of wanting to be close to wild animals cuts across every strata of society.” —David Hancocks (04:41)
• “He looked up for a long time and took all this in. ... And then he looked down ... and he just starts looking all around.” —Grant Jones on Kiki the gorilla’s first steps (12:19)
• “You can't exactly ask a monkey ... ‘are you happy?’ But you can look at their brain cells and ask, are they branching? Are they growing?” —Jad Abumrad (17:56)
• “Within four weeks ... the brain itself has changed. It begins to flourish again.” —Jonah Lehrer (19:37)
• “In the wild group? Absolutely. We need your help to remember where we put all those seeds. In the caged group, there's nothing for those neurons to do. ... You don't get a job, you're gone.” —Alan Rabinowitz on neuronal decline in captivity (23:10–23:54)
• “Why is he doing that?” ... “That's the kind of the food that they eat.” —Parent and child at tiger feeding (35:21)
• “If you don't eat them first, they're going to eat you. ... That's the lesson of life.” —Chinese grandmother at live-feeding park (44:16–44:18)
• “I felt this animal is like me because I felt strong ... but yet I was trapped inside this cage of my body.” —Alan Rabinowitz (51:32)
• “There was fire in the jaguar's eyes. ... It showed strength and freedom. ... I remember telling the cat ... that I'd find a place for us.” —Alan Rabinowitz (61:18–61:34)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Ancient animal spectacles vs. modern zoo (01:27–03:23)
• Woodland Park Zoo—Birth of “naturalistic” enclosure (04:00–15:31)
• Neuroscience of enrichment & brain growth (15:40–24:16)
• Predator diets, human reactions—Toledo Zoo and China live-feeding (29:47–44:38)
• Alan Rabinowitz’s personal journey, stutter, promise, conservation (48:01–61:34)

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Tone and Storytelling

The episode balances science, philosophy, and emotional storytelling—ranging from irreverent banter (“I want the animals to not be there ... I'd rather watch them on TV, frankly” —Jad Abumrad, 04:23) to moments of awe and vulnerability. Interspersed are evocative natural sounds, field recordings, and first-person testimony, maintaining Radiolab's signature immersive, curious energy.

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Conclusion

“Zoos” interrogates the paradoxes of captivity—how humans have moved from exploiting animals as spectacle to seeking connection, and how, through deepening scientific and empathetic understanding, we continue to struggle with what it means to care for wild creatures behind glass. The final word is one of hope, transformation, and personal commitment—“I’d find a place for us”—echoed in the lived experience of Alan Rabinowitz and the animals he championed.

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Transcript

[Robert Krulwich]

Limu Emu and Doug. Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Jad Abumrad]

Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Cut the camera.

[Robert Krulwich]

They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty. Savings vary unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's never too early for Lowe's Black Friday deals.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Snag some of our biggest savings of the season right now, like 25% off select pre lit artificial Christmas trees and.

[Jad Abumrad]

Get yourself free select Dewalt Cobalt or.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Craftsman tools when you buy a select.

[Jad Abumrad]

Battery or combo kit before the Black Friday rush.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Because everyone loves free stuff, right? Lowes?

[Jad Abumrad]

We help you save valid through 123.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

While supplies last selection varies by location.

[Jocelyn Ford]

You're listening to Radiolab from New York Public Radio.

[Jad Abumrad]

Public Radio, WNYC and npr. If you want your animals frisky, you start as early as possible. Today's show is about animals and at.

[Nell Boyce]

Six o' clock there would be crowds.

[Jad Abumrad]

Of people flowing, pushing each other out of the way, jostling, laughing, streaming towards the venue about people getting close to animals. You had hundreds of lions and panthers, cheetahs.

[Nell Boyce]

You had a baboon.

[Jad Abumrad]

You had an Indian rhinoceros. About what happens when we bring animals into our world. The slaughter is unimaginable. There is war of the crowd. Musical instruments rolling everybody up. That's Marina Bellarescaia. She's a historian. And what she's describing is Rome, 80 AD. If you were lucky enough to be alive then and get a seat at the Roman Colosseum. On a good day you could watch, no joke. Hundreds of animals slaughtered right in front of your eyes, one after the other. All kinds of exotic creatures.

[Nell Boyce]

The populace never knew what would take place. That was part of the agitation.

[Jad Abumrad]

They wanted the suspense.

[Nell Boyce]

They wanted the tension.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right, so now that you have that picture in your mind, consider this one. Here we are at the Bronx Zoo, the gorilla exhibit. And what you've got are, well, no blood, no cheap thrills, just kids. See the baby on the back?

[Robert Krulwich]

Like a piggyback ride.

[Nell Boyce]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Lots of kids smushing their faces to the glass, trying to get the attention of the gorillas on the other side.

[Nell Boyce]

Mommy, look at the gorilla.

[Jad Abumrad]

Gorillas aren't really noticing. But then, and this is a big moment, one of the adult gorillas turns around, walks to its side of the glass and taps.

[Nell Boyce]

The gorilla, tapped his hands on, on. And the wall.

[Jad Abumrad]

Today on Radiolab, we wonder, how did we get here? I mean, throughout history, even before Rome, our relationship to animals was pretty simple. We brutalized them. That's how it worked. Then in the 19th century, someone created the zoological garden, which wasn't much better. And now we've got the zoo and we still lord over the animals, but now we want to be their friends, we want to help them. How did that happen? And how exactly do you help an animal? This is an honest question, when it has to spend its entire life in a cage. Today on Radiolabs, zoos are our topic. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, you know, I think I can take you to the very moment in modern zoo history when the balance kind of shifted.

[Jad Abumrad]

And who are you?

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulowitz and I love the zoo. Why don't you.

[Jad Abumrad]

I don't know about the zoo. Kind of icky.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why?

[Jad Abumrad]

I just. I want the animals to not be there and engage.

[Robert Krulwich]

Be somebody's what, prettier? Safer?

[Jad Abumrad]

Safer? Prettier? I'd rather watch them on tv, frankly, and let them run around their own.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, the guy. This is interesting. The guy who made the big move in modern zoo history.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Hello.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's him. Hello. His name is David Hancocks. We got him into a studio and he's sort of a little bit like you. He was very ambivalent about zoos.

[David Hancocks]

I'd actually for a while toyed with the idea of do I want to go and work in zoos and try to change them, or do I want to stay outside zoos and work to close them down? And I came to the conclusion that there's no way you're gonna close zoos down. The fascination of wanting to be close to wild animals cuts across every strata of society.

[Robert Krulwich]

You know, this is my case, by the way, I love being close to animals. Anyway, David Hancock's decided if you can't beat him, you join him. And it was in the mid-1970 and David was working actually as an architect. He was between jobs when he got a call. A friend recommended him for a job at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.

[David Hancocks]

Yes, yes.

[Robert Krulwich]

And he gets hired.

[David Hancocks]

I was in an unusually fortunate situation in that just after I was hired and got there, the zoo director left.

[Robert Krulwich]

And so there was nobody to run the place. Well, except for David. So he decided to take a look at the entire philosophy of the zoo and change everything, starting with the gorillas. They lived in awful cages.

[Nell Boyce]

The.

[David Hancocks]

The gorillas were living in a Small concrete building.

[Robert Krulwich]

It was a spare, empty concrete box with a glass window.

[David Hancocks]

The gorillas, of course, were bored and slowly going out of their mind.

[Robert Krulwich]

Occasionally you'd find a gorilla who'd take his feces and smear it on the wall. Yes.

[David Hancocks]

I mean, they had nothing else to interact with. The only natural components in his life that he ever came into contact with would been the food that he ate and the feces that he produced.

[Robert Krulwich]

So cages were the problem, the solution, he decided. Well, he wanted to rip up the cages, yank them out completely and replace them with something. A natural setting of some sort. But when he looked around for a model, no zoo in the world had gorillas in what you would call a natural setting. And he wasn't even sure what is natural for, say, a gorilla.

[David Hancocks]

There was very, very little known about gorillas and their wild behavior. In fact, all the books said that gorillas don't climb.

[Robert Krulwich]

This was early in the 70s, remember? So David invited a person who did know.

[David Hancocks]

I heard about Diane Fossey. Dian Fossey's work was beginning to be carried in National Geographic or Dian Fossey and.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, from that Sigourney Weaver movie. She played Sigourney Weaver Player before she.

[Robert Krulwich]

Was played by Sigourney Weaver. D. Fuzzy was an actual person. She lived with a group of gorillas, wrote down everything she saw, their social interactions and all, and was the gorilla expert at that time.

[David Hancocks]

And I heard that she was coming to the US and she agreed to come to Seattle and spend a couple of days with us. We were trying to get images from her of the sort of environment we could create. And the breakthrough came after the couple of days she'd spent with us. I was driving her back to the airport, and I said, is there anything you seen around here or anywhere in this part of the world that in any way resembles the sort of places where you've seen gorillas in the wild? And she just pointed to this verge on the freeway.

[Robert Krulwich]

I don't know what a verge is. What's a verge?

[David Hancocks]

A verge. Oh, sorry. The landscape on the side of the freeway, the sloping. What would you call it?

[Robert Krulwich]

I would call it. If it were President Kennedy, I would call it a no. What do they call it?

[David Hancocks]

A no.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes, a no. But I wouldn't call that, because only President Kennedy gets that. I would call it the green stuff on the side of the road.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[David Hancocks]

Yeah. It was a banked area that had once been cleared. And then this verdant growth that you get in Seattle was springing Back. And she said that right there, that's where I would expect to see to be observing gorillas in the wild. So I dropped her at the airport, came back, and on the way back, illegally parked on the side of the freeway and took photographs. And then said, here, this is what Dian Fassi said we should be designing.

[Robert Krulwich]

So as you could tell, they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. But they also didn't have a boss. And within a few months, with help from a landscape architect.

[Grant Jones]

Hi, I'm Grant Jones from Seattle, Washington.

[Robert Krulwich]

They drew up a plan. And out came the bulldozers.

[Grant Jones]

Exactly. And we were creating huge mounds and hills about 10 or 15ft high. Some rocky cliffs along one side, a creek, cross trees, shrubs about 3 or 4ft, big herbs and vegetables, tangles of vines, undergrowth, lots of laurel bushes, hawthorn trees, Big comfy leaves that we planted, have long berries and pointed drip tips. Tropical like leaves, fast growing pioneer plants.

[David Hancocks]

We just let it grow wild.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now, nobody was watching you and nobody was watching us.

[David Hancocks]

And that was the critical factor, I think. Yes, because if a traditional zoo director had seen or heard what we were doing, he would have stopped it.

[Jad Abumrad]

And why? Why would a traditional zookeeper have stopped this?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, because they were worried about what would.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like.

[Robert Krulwich]

Suppose you had been a gorilla and you'd spent your whole life living in a cage, in a concrete cage. Now I'm gonna take you, little Chad, my baby gorilla, and stick him into a completely new place with sky and jagged things. I mean, I would be worried that you'd hurt yourself.

[Jad Abumrad]

In the zoo world generally, I think people were very nerv.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's Violet Sunday. She was the gorilla keeper at the Seattle Zoo.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, I was their primary keeper at that time. And the zoo was advised by a lot of zoo experts that it wouldn't work.

[David Hancocks]

I had zoo directors tell me it was stupid, irresponsible, and it was unnecessary.

[Jad Abumrad]

That, you know, the gorillas would fall out of the trees and hurt themselves.

[David Hancocks]

If the gorillas climbed, they would fall and break their necks, fall and break their bones.

[Grant Jones]

Or they'd get.

[David Hancocks]

They were putting their health at risk diseases.

[Jad Abumrad]

They would get sick because it wasn't a sterile environment where you could, you know, disinfect concrete and that they'd get.

[Grant Jones]

Psychologically deranged from all this space.

[David Hancocks]

Yes.

[Grant Jones]

Sometimes I'd go to David Hancock's and say, what are we going to do about these people? He'd say, ignore them.

[Robert Krulwich]

A bold statement. But as the clock ticked down to the day that these five animals would walk from their Iron cage through a door into this field. It was a real open question at the time. What will happen?

[Jad Abumrad]

I think we were all somewhat nervous.

[Jocelyn Ford]

Oh, we were.

[Grant Jones]

We were nervous. Oh, sure. How will they react? What will they do?

[Robert Krulwich]

The truth is, nobody knew. And so, after five years getting ready, after 16,000 square feet of guerrilla display area were prepared, finally it was time.

[David Hancocks]

On this sunny July. I think, as I remember, it was a July morning.

[Grant Jones]

I can't remember the exact year.

[Robert Krulwich]

I think it's 70, actually.

[Jad Abumrad]

I just looked it up. July 31, 1979.

[David Hancocks]

We let them out. Kiki was the first to come to that doorway and look out.

[Robert Krulwich]

Kiki was the dominant gorilla of this group. There were six gorillas. He was the star.

[Jad Abumrad]

Kiki was my favorite, I have to confess. He was so smart, and he was big.

[Robert Krulwich]

He was 6ft tall, 400fe.

[Jad Abumrad]

Kiki came into view first.

[David Hancocks]

And of course, he's never seen anything remotely like this before.

[Robert Krulwich]

So here he is, this huge creature standing at the doorway, just looking at this unknown world.

[Grant Jones]

He stood in the doorway for many minutes. And finally Kiki starts to slowly step forward.

[Robert Krulwich]

First a step, then another.

[Grant Jones]

And he went as far as a creek and sat down. And then he looked up. We noticed he looked up for a long time. And we looked up also. Clouds were blowing by at fairly low altitude. Swallows flying overhead. There were crows in the trees. There was a wind blowing. The trees were rustling. The grass was moving. You could see the hair on his face moving. He looked up for a long time and took all this in. And then he looked down into the. Into the water in a little eddy there. And you could see that he was looking at his face in the water, which he'd never seen. And then he just starts looking all around. And then all of a sudden, he sees us.

[Robert Krulwich]

Grant, Violet and David and a few others were standing behind some glass at an observation point. They were about a hundred yards away from the doorway.

[Grant Jones]

He came right up to the glass.

[Robert Krulwich]

Where we were, and they knew that Kiki had been a pretty angry gorilla before.

[Grant Jones]

And then he did something that we in a million years hoped he never would, which was to reach down into the sand, screwed his arm down deep into the sand, and he pulled out this big chunk of broken concrete about 6, 8 inches wide. And then he held it up over his head. We thought, oh, this is it. He's going to break the windows. We'd spent raking and telling the contractor to remove all debris and begging them to check and recheck to look for such things as this. Piece of concrete, and there it was. So Kiki held it over his head and sort of waved it around a little bit and looked with an angry look at us.

[Robert Krulwich]

And he just held it there.

[Grant Jones]

And then he just dropped it. He almost threw it down. He just sort of dropped it down. We all breathed a sigh of relief. And then he laid down on his back and his mate Nina came over and sat beside him and a little baby came over and laid on his chest. And they just proceeded to enjoy themselves like we weren't there.

[Jad Abumrad]

It was magic. It was just, just. It was magic. They looked like different animals, totally different animals. It felt like we were seeing a gorilla in the wild.

[Grant Jones]

Needless to say, we all cried after he came over.

[David Hancocks]

I. I didn't cry, no, but I had a lump in my throat.

[Jad Abumrad]

I. I felt like finally this is right. This is really what's right for them.

[David Hancocks]

I remember there was this strange feeling afterwards. It's almost like we'd been to a wedding where there was this mixture of happiness and sadness. And I think more than anything else, there was just a great sense of relief.

[Grant Jones]

We thought, well, when will he produce this angry behavior and pound on the glass? And, you know, he never, ever did it. The old Kiki never returned. Never filled his body again.

[Jad Abumrad]

He was never angry anymore.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, I think what he's saying is that the Kiki had really changed. The change in cages truly changed the animal here.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is an interesting science question to. To ask about that. It's like if you do that, if you take an animal and put them into a radically different environment, how exactly does that change the animal?

[Robert Krulwich]

It really makes them feel better.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can you measure that?

[Jonah Lehrer]

I think the closest we've come to an answer to that question is Elizabeth Gould has actually done a test with primates where she's put them in different types of enriched environments.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Joan o'. Leara. He's a science writer in regular radio lab contributor. And what he's talking about is a Princeton experiment. A group of scientists led by Elizabeth Gould took three groups of monkeys and put them into three different kinds of cages. Sort of like classes, social classes. Like she divided them into a lower, a middle and an upper. We can go through each one. Let's start at the top.

[Jonah Lehrer]

One group of primates, Group A was in the Beverly Hills of cages.

[Jad Abumrad]

Describe it.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Lots of different monkeys running around today. Lots of social interaction. They had to forage for all their food. Lots of toys.

[Jad Abumrad]

What kind of toys do you know? Squeezy toys or like balls? It doesn't matter. So they had lots of choices to make, lots of things to be engaged with, lots of conversations to have.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah. Lots of stuff to occupy their mind.

[Jad Abumrad]

What about group B, the middle class?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Group B had, you know, we'll call it like the. Like the standard Suburban setup. Not too fancy. They drove a Chevy.

[Jad Abumrad]

What are we really talking about here?

[Jonah Lehrer]

They just had a bit less of everything. They had a few less toys, a few less monkeys and this grand enclosure.

[Jad Abumrad]

But we can say that they had less.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah, they had less. Then the third group was kind of the standard experimental enclosure, you know, wire cage.

[Jad Abumrad]

So they had a lot less.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right, so you've got these three classes of monkeys, upper, middle, lower. Gould and her team put a bunch of monkeys in each class, let them do their thing for a while, and then they took a few of individuals from each of these groups and looked at their brains.

[Jonah Lehrer]

So. So they looked at the. The amount of proteins you have in your synapses. They looked at the density of your dendritic art arbors, which is.

[Jad Abumrad]

Did you just say dendritic arbors?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah, that's right.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's a great name.

[Jonah Lehrer]

They look botanical, especially when they're happy.

[Robert Krulwich]

You mean, like, each brain cell branches out in all kinds of different directions when it's happy. So you get a kind of a bushy kind of a feel.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, exactly.

[Robert Krulwich]

What does that mean? If I'm an animal? Is that good?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, they think it is. I mean, you can't exactly ask a monkey or a gorilla, are you happy? Are you doing okay in that cage? But you can look at their brain cells and ask, are they branching? Are they growing and making new connections and getting full and bushy? That's what these scientists wanted to know. Which of the class of monkeys had the bushiest brain cells? Because those monkeys would be the ones that are most engaged with their world, most alive. Okay, Jonah. So jumping forward, Elizabeth Gould looks into the brains of individuals from each of the three classes.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

And what did she find?

[Jonah Lehrer]

She found that there's a big difference between the impoverished and the middle class.

[Jad Abumrad]

Big difference between the bottom and the middle.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah, the bottom and the middle is a big difference.

[Jad Abumrad]

How big?

[Jonah Lehrer]

It's very significant. It was generally between 20% and 40%.

[Jad Abumrad]

40% bushier brain.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow. So what about the difference between the upper and the middle? What was the difference there?

[Jonah Lehrer]

There's almost no difference.

[Jad Abumrad]

What?

[Robert Krulwich]

No difference at all.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's the weird thing between the lower and the middle. Huge difference. Huge. But between the middle and the upper.

[Jonah Lehrer]

They really Couldn't find much.

[Jad Abumrad]

Why?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Well, I think the lesson is, at a certain point, a tipping point is reached. And your brain says, okay, we're in a complex world here. We have enough toys, we have enough social interactions. We've hit the tipping point. Let's go full throttle. Invest in new neurons and a nice complex brain.

[Jad Abumrad]

Let me ask you a question. What if you're a zoo animal and you're living in a crappy wire cage and then they move you to a nicer one? What would happen to your brain then? Has she looked into that?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah. And she's found that within four weeks.

[Jad Abumrad]

Four weeks?

[Jonah Lehrer]

About a month. The brain itself has changed. It begins to flourish again.

[Jad Abumrad]

And how long did it take?

[Jonah Lehrer]

You say four weeks. And this is just four weeks. Imagine what it looked like after a year.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Jonah Lehrer]

After just four weeks, they saw significant changes in the basic architecture of their brain.

[Jad Abumrad]

So, Robert, just imagine Kiki, now a gorilla, whose brain has been stunted by eight years living in this little concrete box. Suddenly, Kiki is thrust outside where the weather changes.

[Robert Krulwich]

Birds fly, the rain falls from the.

[Jad Abumrad]

Sky, trees sway when he climbs. Suddenly Kiki has challenges, choices.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right.

[Jad Abumrad]

And to think that after eight years of being stuck, his brain could explode with new activity in just four weeks.

[Jonah Lehrer]

I mean, but that makes sense, you know, Nature has to respond quickly. They don't. You know, most animals don't have four years to sit around and develop a complex brain. Our neurons have to act fast.

[Jad Abumrad]

The message from this research is clear.

[Jonah Lehrer]

From the perspective of the brain. You can easily create a cage which allows the brain to flourish.

[Robert Krulwich]

You see? I told you that if you make the zoo better, you can make the beasts better. This is built in. Zoos are not horrible places.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, no, no, I know, I know. Before we get ahead of ourselves, let me just throw one more category.

[Robert Krulwich]

Keep that in mind.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. Let me just throw one more category into our little class hierarchy here, okay? The category of creatures who live in the wild. No cages. So in a sense, this is like your lab.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

He paid a visit to a guy named Fernando Notbob.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I'm a biologist at Rockefeller University in New York.

[Jad Abumrad]

And that's where we are. We're in the woods outside his lab, which stretch for thousands of acres. And he calls these woods his real lab. That right there. Which one? They're little teeny guys, huh? And in the trees are his subjects.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

What these birds do is in the fall, they start hiding seeds or nuts throughout the forest. And they have to remember where they put them. Winter will come, and at Some point, everything will be under a blanket of snow. So if you remember where you hid those seeds, you'll be the survivor. Because, I mean, in the case of chickadees, which are very small, for them to be alive the next morning, they'll have to go to sleep with a full belly.

[Jad Abumrad]

Is that because their metabolism is so fast?

[Alan Rabinowitz]

They're right, right. I mean, they're small birds, they lose heat like mad. It's a cold night, it's long, it lasts 10 hours. I mean, you go to sleep with an empty stomach, next morning you're dead.

[Jad Abumrad]

Knowing this, Nat Bomb did an experiment. He caught a bunch of wild chickadees, divided them into two groups. First group he put in a cage.

[David Hancocks]

Pretty big cage, 10 by 5 by.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

3 or something like that.

[Jad Abumrad]

Second group set free so they could roam the the woods as they please.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Over this home range of about 30 acres.

[Jad Abumrad]

He did place bird feeders throughout the woods so they'd come back and visit him. Winter time rolls around, the wild chickadees are out there snatching seeds from the bird feeder and hiding them everywhere, like.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Cracks of bark or crack of a stone.

[Jad Abumrad]

How many hiding places are we talking about here?

[Alan Rabinowitz]

We're probably talking about thousands. It's a phenomenal memory task.

[Jad Abumrad]

The caged chickadees, meanwhile, didn't have to remember anything because they could eat as many seeds as they wanted from a little trough in the cage. Not Bomb did a brain comparison, and what he found was that in certain brain regions, the wild chickadees had twice as many new neurons, the free birds.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

As the caged ones were recruiting twice as many new neurons as the old one.

[Jad Abumrad]

Twice. Twice as many.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

You know, that process of replacement was moving at a much brisker pace.

[Jad Abumrad]

His theory is that these new neurons are always showing up every day like day labor. The only question is, is there a job for them in the wild group? Absolutely. We need your help to remember where we put all those seeds. In the caged group, there's nothing for those neurons to do. But here's the sad part. They still show up every single day.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I think it's a period of a few days over which a neuron either gets a job or doesn't, doesn't get a job and he dies.

[Jad Abumrad]

So it just offs himself.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Yeah, you don't get a job, you're gone. You don't have to to kill yourself. You're just not going to get what it takes to stay alive.

[Jad Abumrad]

Which makes it all the more poignant to me. I mean, in the captives you've got all these New cells that are ready to do some work. Come on, give me a job.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Precisely. I'd love to do it, but it's a shrinking economy, guys. What can I do?

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks to Fernando Nutbaum. He's a biologist at Rockefeller University in upstate New York. And also before him to science writer Jonah Lehrer, who is the author of the upcoming book Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

[Robert Krulwich]

And coming up, what does a ferocious meat eating, 500 pound feral cat eat for dinner at the zoo?

[Jad Abumrad]

What?

[Robert Krulwich]

It's such a disappoint. Well, no, I don't want to tell you.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad, you're Robert. And we will continue with our program on Zoo Zoo.

[Robert Krulwich]

If you think of zoo, what an unusual. Don't you wonder, like where it comes from?

[Jad Abumrad]

We have to go to briefly.

[Robert Krulwich]

It used to be zoo. One second. It used to be called the Zoological Gardens and then it got this like, short name. Yeah, where is it a song? Let me introduce you. This is the lovely Miss Lewin 1878 song here. Walking in the Zoo. Walking in the zoo Walking in the zoo. After people heard the song, they just couldn't think of a place in any other way. Walking in the zoo Walking in the zoo.

[Nell Boyce]

Hi, this is Lisa Beck calling from Fort Worth, Texas. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail]. radiolab is supported by BILT. Nobody wants to pay rent, but if you have to, BILT works to make it more worthwhile. By paying rent. Through Bilt, you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and more. But it doesn't stop there. You can dine out at your favorite local restaurants and earn additional points, get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios and enjoy exclusive experiences just for BILT members. Every month, earn points on rent and around your neighborhood, wherever you call home, by going to joinbilt.com Radiolab that's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com Radiolab.

[Radiolab Sponsor Announcer]

Radiolab is supported by rippling finance teams often spend weeks chasing receipts, reconciling spreadsheets and fixing errors across disconnected spend tools. This can be frustrating. And that's not software as a service, that's sad software as a disservice. If you've been thinking about replacing stitched together tech stacks with one platform for all departments. Rippling can Help Rippling is a unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance, helping people replace their mess of cobbled together tools with one system designed to help give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling works to remove the bottlenecks, busywork and silos in business software. With Rippling, you can choose to run hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products that best fill the gaps. Right now you can get 6 months free when you go to rippling.com Radiolab learn more at r I p p l-I n g.com Radiolab terms and conditions apply. Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. The show is hosted by Alex Honnold, who you may recognize from Free Solo, where he climbed El Capitan without ropes. Now he's turning his focus to the biggest challenge of all protecting the only planet we've got. Every episode brings you stories that prove climate optimism isn't naive, it's a strategy. The episodes span the globe, from Arctic scientists and Amazon forest Guardians to entrepreneurs reimagining fashion and food systems. You'll hear from explorers, scientists, activists and storytellers who are working to reshape the future in practical, human ways. In one episode, Alex sits down with wildlife photographer Bertie Gregory to discuss how animals can teach humans resiliency, empathy and hope in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Check out Planet Visionaries Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

One day only Thanksgiving Day deals are coming to Lowes.com/members get early access to online Black Friday doorbuster deals on gifting favorites like the still trending Cobalt Mini toolbox for just 14.98. Don't miss up to 50% off for one day only@lowe's.com we help you save valid 1127 only on lowe's.com Member only Doorbusters and Midnight Eastern loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions. C Loewes.com terms for details subject to.

[Jad Abumrad]

Change while supplies last. Krulwich, I'm just gonna go.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, just go do it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Ready?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

And today our topic is zoos. We're doing a little sort of chronological thing, tracing a line from past to present, starting back at those old nasty concrete enclosures, which I'm sure you love to visit as a little boy. What do you mean? Well, you know, you're a city boy. You don't have much animals here.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, there's nothing to do with New York like Tennessee.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right, right. You're right. Fine. When you talk about, you know, enriching the lives of gorillas, as we did before the break, it's a simple, heartwarming story because gorillas are they. They're vegetarians. Frankly, it gets a lot more complicated when you switch to a predator who.

[Robert Krulwich]

Likes to pounce and chase and bite.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes. If you're going to put those animals in a cage and their whole being is organized around killing things, well, what do you feed them? I asked that question to NPR science reporter Nell Boyce.

[Nell Boyce]

If we're talking like the big carnivores, like the tigers that would normally be out in the wild ripping other animals to shreds.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are they eating?

[Nell Boyce]

They're eating mostly this. This is a little bag of kibble. It's basically like dog food.

[Jad Abumrad]

Here, check it out.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is for a meat eating animal.

[Jad Abumrad]

Uh huh.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, yeah.

[Jocelyn Ford]

Try one.

[Robert Krulwich]

All right. So skinny. It looks like eating chalk.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is what the predators eat, according to Nell. Really?

[Robert Krulwich]

Why don't they just give him meat?

[Jad Abumrad]

That's sort of what she wanted to know.

[Nell Boyce]

Testing the mini disc before heading to the zoo. Testing the mini disc before heading to the zoo.

[Jad Abumrad]

Nell recently took a trip to the Toledo Zoo.

[Nell Boyce]

Good morning, Toledo Zoo. Oh, hi. I'm here to see Andy.

[Jad Abumrad]

She wanted to know what it might look like if a zoo actually gave the predators what they want. In this regard, the Toledo Zoo is pretty radical.

[Nell Boyce]

Once a year they have this event they call the big feed.

[Jad Abumrad]

The Big Feed.

[Nell Boyce]

The Big Feed. And that gate should be opening. Thank you.

[Jad Abumrad]

Nell got there a day early just to check things out.

[Nell Boyce]

Okay, so I duck behind the rhino house. We're gonna go behind the scenes here. I go in the back door, and where I finally end up is this kind of nondescript. Hello, kitchen. This is the kitchen. We have a freezer and refrigerator down here. You don't think about a kitchen being at the zoo. But there's a kitchen here. Yes, yes, there is. So I'm sorry, your name again was Beverly Schoonover. Schoonover.

[Jocelyn Ford]

Yes, Beverly Schoonover.

[Nell Boyce]

And this kitchen is actually the reason I came. This is our freezer. It usually runs about 10 below. These are the rats. And we actually have rats in about four sizes. We have large jumbo monsters, and then we have packs of 50 mice. Packs of 25 mice. And then I. These Are the fuzzies. These are probably about 10 days old. The fuzzies and the pinkies are pretty much newborn. Here's the basic idea. You want to get closer to what the animals actually eat in the wild. So you want to give them some sort of whole animal.

[Jad Abumrad]

Whole as in like all the fur, still.

[Nell Boyce]

Eyeballs, whiskers. So what are things different today? Because the big feed is tomorrow.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hooves. Hooves, yeah.

[Nell Boyce]

The tigers are getting some calves and that's not something that we give out like all the time.

[Jad Abumrad]

Calves.

[Nell Boyce]

Can we look at it?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Nell Boyce]

So they take me into the freezer and in the corner, just sort of on the floor is the.

[Jad Abumrad]

This box.

[Nell Boyce]

And it's got a black garbage bag kind of thing in it, which we open up, you know, and like looking right up at me. It happens to be the head part is the baby cow.

[Jocelyn Ford]

But that's just the head.

[Nell Boyce]

It was like a little baby. Little eyelashes, little ears. It's a baby cow, you know, And I thought, oh, baby cow. And then I thought, oh my God, tomorrow little children are going to be watching this baby cow be ripped apart by a giant wild cat. They're wild animals, you know, they live in a captive situation, but they still have those wild instincts. That's Beth Stark. She's the one who brought carcass feeding to the Toledo Zoo. The time we hear, oh, carnivores are meat eaters, but really they're not just meat eaters, they're flesh eaters. They eat other animals. And one of the challenges there is, you know, how do we provide for the welfare of the animals at the while at the same time providing for the needs of our visitors. So it's about 10 o' clock in the morning and the gates are open now, so visitors are starting to stream in. In about 15 minutes or so, they're going to start the tiger feed. The tiger feeding was the first feeding of the day. A big crowd was beginning to gather. Right now the tigers aren't in the pen.

[Jad Abumrad]

How many people?

[Nell Boyce]

Oh, like maybe 150 people. A lot of little kids.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

So we brought the boy down. Been pumped since my wife told me about it.

[Grant Jones]

So we made sure we got here.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Early to check this out.

[Nell Boyce]

The carcasses were already out. The zookeeper comes out with her microphone and like sort of gives a little description of carcass feeding, why they do it, all of the animals, behavioral needs as well as their psychological needs. And nobody at this point is listening to the interpretive discussion of this because as she's doing this, hey, bud, I.

[Grant Jones]

Think I heard a door.

[Nell Boyce]

They let the tigers into the pen. Oh, look, here come the tigers. Watch, Brian.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Look, the big one's coming down.

[Nell Boyce]

One of the tigers just, like, streaks across the pen and grabs the carcass and, like, you know, starts, like, immediately playing with it. And I have never seen, in all my years of zoo going, I have never seen a tiger move that fast. Like at one point, one of the tigers was, like, carrying one around by the ear. You could see, like, the little calf face, and it was dragging it around.

[Jad Abumrad]

What were people doing? Were they cheering? Were they crying?

[Nell Boyce]

There was nobody there that seemed to be disturbed by it, really. Although here was a conversation that I heard many, many times. The children would say, what is that? What is he eating? And the parent would say, it's actually a baby cow. It's a baby cow. And the kid would say, why is he doing that?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's how they eat, honey.

[Nell Boyce]

Well, that's what he eats.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

That's the kind of the food that they eat.

[Nell Boyce]

And the child would say, well, I don't eat cow, honey. I don't eat cows. Yeah, you do. And the parent would say, what? Of course you eat cow at home. You eat hamburgers. What do you think of hamburger? Burger is. It's made out of cows.

[Grant Jones]

Sure is.

[Nell Boyce]

And there would just be this shocked look on the kid. And I must have heard that conversation, like, five times. Why? Is it dead? It's food, honey. But they're. But they're dead. And now it's food.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow, that's like a birds and the beast kind of moment.

[Nell Boyce]

Yeah, it really was. People are just fascinated by it. They appreciate being so close to it.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Tom, you see them back there, way.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Back in the back.

[Nell Boyce]

They'll say, oh, God, that's really gross. But then move in closer for a better view. What Beth Stark was telling me is that, you know, the whole time that they've been doing this carcass feeding program, they would interview people afterwards and ask them questions. We did survey people. How did you feel? What did you think? And found that more than. And what she found, 98% of them, is that the public is pretty much uniformly very positive in what. What they saw. Enthusiastic. One of the questions we put on the survey is, do you want to see more of this? And which animals would you like to see? And so what do people say? Just about everybody, from what I can remember, circled every animal.

[Jad Abumrad]

We put every animal. Just about every animal.

[Nell Boyce]

Yeah, every animal. You know, like, you know, do you want to see dead rabbits? Do you want to See dead rats? Do you want to see dead calves? Do you want to see dead deers? And do you want them to see them fed to polar bears, tigers, wolves? You know, like a Chinese menu. You know, like, pick your prey animal. Pick your predator. Do you want to see that? And they're like, yes, yes, we want to see this. The only complaints where people didn't want rabbits fed at Easter and around Easter, you know, parents complaining or worrying that.

[Jocelyn Ford]

Their kid was thinking that the Easter bunny was being eaten.

[Nell Boyce]

It just shows you how, like, what the animals eat at the zoo is fraught with sort of human emotions and ideas about right and wrong. Here's another example, okay, so when I was at the tiger pen, there was this woman who came up and was very interested. She didn't seem turned off by the idea that they were eating a dead calf, right? But then she got this very strange look on her face, and she said, I hope that was dead. And I said, well, does it. Does it matter? I mean, because at some point it died, you know, does it matter whether it died at the hands of a human or the hands of a tiger? And it was late in the afternoon, and I'm ready to go, so I turn off my tape recorder. And just at that second, even though she's just expressed sort of relief that the calf was dead when it was put in the tiger's pen, she starts to tell this story that was so diametrically opposed to what she had just expressed that I just had to turn my tape recorder back on and say, like, wait a minute. Okay, wait. Can you start at the whole beginning? So what was happening? What happened?

[Jocelyn Ford]

A squirrel fell through the layers on.

[Nell Boyce]

The snow leopard's cage. She and her daughter had been hanging out by the snow leopard's pen. There's this sort of net kind of above the pen. And there was this squirrel that had been walking on the net, and it fell down. This girl is really dumb. Into the snow leopard's pen. And her daughter described this story to me where the snow leopard, who had just been kind of hanging out, kind of bored, immediately began to stalk the squirrel. The snow leopard was pouncing, and the squirrel started trying to get away. Her mother said it was like this standoff where the snow leopard was matching all of the moves of the squirrel. Yes, he followed him move for move, and the audience was kind of transfixed. Her daughter could not watch. She hid when she thought the squirrel was coming down. Yeah, yeah, she took off. Her daughter couldn't watch, was hiding her face. And in the End the squirrel escaped. The squirrel got away. He was smarter. And I said to the girl, well, how did you feel? Were you rooting for the leopard or the squirrel? Which one? And she said, leopard. I was rooting for the snow leopard.

[Jad Abumrad]

Huh.

[Nell Boyce]

And I said, but you didn't want to see it eat the squirrel. You didn't want to see that. And she said, well, I still wanted to root for the snow leopard because I didn't want to see it, but I sort of wanted to see it because it was cool. But nature, right? Yeah, it's the wild. I think that the reason they felt comfortable watching that and telling me about it was because it seemed like an episode that was not between the animals and the humans. It was between the animals.

[Jad Abumrad]

But what about you? If you were that little girl, how would you watch that whole scene? Would you watch it kind of gleefully or more sheepishly?

[Nell Boyce]

You just watch. It's just happening in front of you. I mean, that has nothing to do with you.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's funny, you know, she never mentioned the possibility of feeding live animals to a predator.

[Jad Abumrad]

By the way, Nell Boyce is a science reporter for npr. Thank you, Nell.

[Robert Krulwich]

Not those frozen ratsicle things, but something that scurries and you can bite down.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, well, live feeding is a line which American zoos will not cross. The only places that do feed out live animals as far as we could find are in China. Lucky for us.

[Jocelyn Ford]

Yeah, I live in Beijing.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's where reporter Jocelyn Ford lives.

[Jocelyn Ford]

It was just over an hour's bus ride outside of Beijing.

[Jad Abumrad]

We asked Jocelyn to go visit one of these live feeding parks.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's what they're called, live feeding parks.

[Jad Abumrad]

You just get on a bus, they drive you right into the lion's den, and they'll even sell you a chicken.

[Jocelyn Ford]

The chickens are about $4 each, and.

[Jad Abumrad]

The tour people sell them right there.

[Jocelyn Ford]

On the bus ride in the bus. So they drive to the lion's den, and one. One of the people on the bus, one of the tourists decided, okay, I'm gonna buy a chicken, and I'm gonna feed the lion. And everyone sort of leaps to that side of the bus. The guy who bought the chicken, he would pick it up and press it against the. Here come the lions. And soon we had four or five lions sitting right under our window, looking at us, circling us. Three lionesses waiting at the window. He looks very intense, I tell you. They had the most intense look I have ever seen anywhere. I mean, they have these very cold amber eyes. Big, angry, hungry eyes. Wow, he looks like he's ready to pounce. And the guy with the chicken just opened the window and dropped the chicken out. In a split second, that lion grabbed.

[Nell Boyce]

The chicken and just took it in its mouth.

[Jocelyn Ford]

It held it in its mouth and I noticed that its legs were still quivering. Now it's working away at it, just sort of ripping it to bits. Now it's a pile of feathers. I asked a grandmother who was on the bus, she was with something like a five year old. And I asked her if she thought this was a healthy thing to have her grandson watching this cruel event. And she said, hey, it'll make him a braver guy. If you don't eat them first, they're going to eat you. And she was just very matter of fact about it. One woman said, we should teach our kids to love animals. But at the same time, if the bigger animal eats the smaller animal, that's the way the world works. So you should understand this survival of the fittest. And you should also understand where you fit into it. If you're weak and you can't run fast, escape or whatever, you'll become somebody's dinner. And that's the lesson of life. I think in the United States that we're often so far removed from the ugly part of the food we eat, we just get squeamish when we see it. Whereas especially the rural people in China, you know, they deal with life and death of animals around them all the time. And I think we're just closing our eyes to it. Having said that, I mean, personally I feel that it does make for a more humane society when you do feel sorry or compassionate about the animals around you. And there was no concern at the safari park here, nothing of that sort. It was all about fun and games. Okay, so at the end of the bus ride, they drop you off at a little circus like place and they had a little fake shooting gallery with all sorts of rinky tink music them. And I went, I went and looked under this dirty old tent thrown up over some, some metal rods and there were rows of cages and tigers pacing back and forth and yowling. Have you ever heard a. A tiger? Y.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Wow.

[Jocelyn Ford]

The cage just the length of his body can turn around, but that's about it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks to reporter Jocelyn Ford. This is Radiolab. I'm Chad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krelwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

And we'll continue in a moment.

[Nell Boyce]

This is Candice, currently calling from her bicycle. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science foundation and by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail]. thank you.

[Radiolab Sponsor Announcer]

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[Alan Rabinowitz]

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[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrab.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

And our topic today on Radiolab is zoos. The saddest places on the planet.

[Robert Krulwich]

What do I have to do? No, they are not the saddest places.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, you know I'm right the point.

[Robert Krulwich]

Look, despite everything we've said up to now about the true wildness of a zoo animal, the fact remains, looking into the eyes of a live animal can be an extraordinarily transformative experience. And don't ask me, ask Alan Rabinowitz. Download.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Okay, I'm Alan Rabinowitz.

[Robert Krulwich]

She's gonna be our last stop on the show.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I'm the head of a program that seeks to explore the Earth's last great wild areas and try to protect them.

[Robert Krulwich]

Alan Rabinowitz is a renowned animal conservationist. He set up wildlife preserves all over the world. And Jed, like you, he's not particularly thrilled by zoos. Although without a zoo, and I'm thinking of the Bronx Zoo in particular, he wouldn't be who he is today. Because when Alan was Very young. Very young. He had a terrible stutter.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Oh, I couldn't talk. My body would spasm.

[Robert Krulwich]

So if you wanted to say, coming, Mom.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

See, coming's a hard context. Coming is the tongue against the upper.

[Robert Krulwich]

Palate, so you couldn't get the word out.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I didn't speak a fluent sentence to another human being until I went to this, finally, this clinic when I was a senior in college.

[Robert Krulwich]

A senior in college?

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Yeah. I never went on a date. I never kissed a girl other than my mom.

[Robert Krulwich]

How do you connect to anybody?

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I didn't connect to anybody. I had no friends.

[Robert Krulwich]

None.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

That's how I.

[Jad Abumrad]

None.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I had little animals that I would take into the closet with me, and I would talk to them fluently.

[Robert Krulwich]

And that's how it was for Alan. For much of his childhood. The only time he says he could free his tongue to talk was in the dark with his pets.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Green turtles, hamsters and gerbils and chameleons, which would all die. I would talk the way we're talking. I could talk fluently to the animals.

[Robert Krulwich]

And his father one time overheard him talking in the dark. Well, maybe we should take this boy to the zoo.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

To the Bronx Zoo.

[Robert Krulwich]

To the Bronx Zoo.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

He used to bring me to the old great cat house. Horrendous. You remember the iron great cat house. Classic old concrete floors. But you'd go in.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'd.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I mean, talk about an experience. You'd walk in and hear growling, roaring. I mean, it sounded incredible. Raw power.

[Robert Krulwich]

And he loved being there. He just loved it.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

All those noises of like 20 cats all together, vocalizing at the same time. Maybe it was the sound which appealed to me as a kid that could speak.

[Robert Krulwich]

And once again, in front of the zoo cats, he was alone. He could talk.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Yes, my father. It's funny, because he knew I talked to the animals. So he would stand back. He knew if he came too close, I'd stop because I would stutter because he was there.

[Robert Krulwich]

But if he wasn't, you could talk more fluently.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I could talk fluently. And there was one. One old jaguar. And I remember as a kid, I would stand there and I would watch that. I'd watch this magnificent, huge, strong beast. This massive, strong animal had blank eyes. It just looked blank. And it was pacing back and forth and back and forth. I felt this animal is like me because I felt strong. I felt good. I felt powerful inside, but yet I was trapped inside this cage of my body.

[Robert Krulwich]

And that's when Alan remembers turning to that cat as a kind of fellow exile and Whispering a promise that I.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Would try to find a place for us. I remember that. I remember saying once, I'll find a place for us. And I didn't mean that particular. I don't know what I. I mean, I can't really look back and know exactly what I meant. But I felt no matter what, I would find a place for us. And that promise, I would find a place for us.

[Robert Krulwich]

He kept that promise in his head for two decades. He went on to visit a speech therapist. He learned how to use his mouth and tongue to get past his stutter. Not completely, but enough to finish college and then go on to graduate school and study wildlife ecology. As it was at his graduation party from graduate school, he got the offer that would change his life.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

At my going away party, my major professor asked me if I wanted to go to Belize and do and study jaguars.

[Robert Krulwich]

Not just study them, count them.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

In an objective survey of how many jaguars are really in the country, Alan.

[Robert Krulwich]

Asked, how do you count jaguars? And that's when the professor said, well, you gotta catch them.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Catch a jaguar?

[Jad Abumrad]

How do I know?

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I had no idea. It's like saying, go catch a dragon.

[Robert Krulwich]

Everybody knew the jaguars are stealthy, almost ghost, like cats in a forest.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Nobody had ever captured jaguars in the range forest, but that was exactly what.

[Robert Krulwich]

The professor was proposing. Go to a little country in Central America, go deep into its jungle. Collar as many jaguars as you can so that we can track them and learn about them. Weeks pass. Picture Alan on the edge of the jungle in Belize with absolutely no idea what to do next.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

We opened a map of Belize. It had one dirt road down the entire country.

[Robert Krulwich]

Alan figures the only way he's gonna catch a jaguar is to talk to people who hunt jaguars. Now they're there. He calls them Mayans and they live in the forest.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

And I went to the hunters and they told me, run them with dogs. And one hunter still had jaguar dogs. And I'll tell you, of everything I have ever done in my life, I still rank that as the absolute hardest. Because when these dogs get on a jaguar scent, it's a bloodlust. You're running full speed through the jungle. The Mayans are in front of us, running and chopping at the same time. And I knew in my mind that there were poisonous snakes, but you can't think of because you don't have time to look where you're running or your feet.

[Robert Krulwich]

And one time, dashing behind dogs and machete waving hunters, disaster struck. They were just about to actually tree a jaguar when one of the crew.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Got bit by a poisonous snake and he died. So everybody quit. Nobody had worked for me. They all thought I was jinxed. So then I had to figure out how to capture jaguars by myself. Nobody worked for me. Finally, one Mayan Indian came to work for me. And we ended up building traps. And I would put live pigs because they didn't want dead meat. They would want live meat, which they could kill themselves. So I'd put live pigs in the back of these traps and I'd have to go feed the pigs every single day. The first trap I built, I built it out of two by fours. I caught a jaguar and the jaguar chewed its way through the two by four door and busted its way out of the the two by fours. I mean, they are powerful animals. And then I built iron rebar. Even then, I made a mistake. One jaguar got so mad, it bit the iron rebar and pulled at the iron rebar and snapped its canines. It snapped its own canines trying to bust the iron rebar. I mean, its roots were hanging out. And I put it down. I tried to do primitive dentistry. I had to cut the roots. And he was lying there dying. And I just felt so bad. I carried the jaguar back to my cabin. I lay next to it, and it died on the floor next to me. I just lost it. I lost it.

[Robert Krulwich]

But one good thing came out of this experience. He learned to build a better trap. And so cat by cat by cat, Alan was able. And he was the first to do this. He was able to count the jaguars in that forest, and there were thousands of them. But he had the sense, and again, this was. He was first, that they were in real danger because around them, people were cutting down their forest. And if the forest went, the jaguars go too. So that's when he began the campaign which eventually led him to the prime minister.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I was given a chance. And not only did the. Did the prime minister agree to meet me, but he invited me to address him in the whole cabinet. But only 15 minutes.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now, remember, this is a guy who for two whole decades could barely speak. His stutter, which is now less of a problem, was still there. And now he's being asked to address a prime minister and a cabinet in a high pressure, make it or break it, 15 minutes or bust situation.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I knew I couldn't stutter. I mean, I only had 15 minutes. I said, look, you will lose nothing by this, this. If you don't protect it, guaranteed, it's going to be gone. Because the citrus people want it for both Timber and citrus. Make it a forest reserve and make it tentative, make it a five year agreement. If I can't prove to you I can bring in, bring in outside money in five years, what do you have to lose? And if it works, you've got a jaguar preserve. You have the world's first jaguar preserve.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now, his pitch was supposed to last 15 minutes, that's the time he was allotted. But he went way over.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I ended up staying in there an hour and a half and the vote.

[Robert Krulwich]

Was a tie in the cabinet. The Prime Minister himself broke the tie.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

In Alan's favor, and by the end, he agreed. The Prime Minister voted in my favor. That made got great press as the world's first jaguar preserve. To this day, it's the world's only area designated specifically as a jaguar prisoner.

[Robert Krulwich]

And by the way, the whole time with the Prime Minister and all that whole time, he never stuttered. So Alan decided his work was more or less done. He could go home now to New York. And just before he left, he decided to go for one last walk in the jungle. A last visit. He wasn't looking for jaguars. He wasn't expecting to see one. This was his goodbye. But when he was looking down at the ground, as he walked along, suddenly he thought, well, hello. Because there on the ground right in front of him was a fresh print of a jaguar, a big one, bigger.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Than any I had seen in that area. And that just got my blood, blood going. So I started following it. You almost never, never see a jaguar when you follow its track because it knows you're there. I mean, I was hoping against hope that maybe I'd see the jaguar, but actually I didn't think I would because they always knew I was coming and they'd always go away. And then it started getting dark, started getting late. And I didn't want to be in the jungle at night. I didn't have a flashlight or anything. So that's when I turned around. There was the Jaguar about 15ft away.

[Robert Krulwich]

Behind you?

[Alan Rabinowitz]

It was behind me. It had been behind me probably quite a ways.

[Robert Krulwich]

So it knew that you were tracking it and it decided to find out who you were.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

It had circled around and it probably cut off into the forest, watched me as I passed, then got back on the trail and just stayed back a good ways.

[Robert Krulwich]

And it was pretty clear this cat had been creeping closer and closer to.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Where by the time I turned around, it had shortened the distance between us. Really small. I mean, that was.

[Robert Krulwich]

So it was in leaping distance.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

I couldn't have gotten away from it. And I knew that. So I did what I thought was the right thing, which is make myself small, make myself sub dominant, just crouch down. And then the jaguar did something which I didn't expect it to do. It sat down, that was strange to me. And then I got scared and I stood up and I stepped back because I felt the distance was too close now, that, that it didn't like. And all this time, I mean, I'm totally aware I have no place to go.

[Robert Krulwich]

And with no place to go, nowhere to run, Alan just stood there frozen in place. And the jaguar rose and it too just stood absolutely silent.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Then it just turned, started walking off into the jungle. And before it disappeared into the brush, it turned back to look at me. Then I really looked it in the eyes. And they were wild eyes. There was fire in the jaguar's eyes. The last thing I remember very clearly is looking into its eyes and thinking of seeing the jaguar in the Bronx Zoo as a child. But seeing the wildness in this animal's eyes, it didn't look anything like that cat in the cage. It showed strength and freedom. And we had just protected this incredible area which now would be its home. And I remember telling the cat at one point that I'd find a place for us.

[Robert Krulwich]

Doctor Alan Rabinowitz is the Director for Science and Exploration at the Wildlife Conservation Society. And if you want to read more about his jaguar adventures in Belize, the book is called One Man's Struggle to Establish the World's First Jaguar Preserve.

[Jad Abumrad]

We should wrap up. For more information on anything that you heard today, check our website, Radiolab.org you got a podcast? We do. You can sign up for it there or at itunes and send us an email. Let us know what you think. Radiolabnyc.or is the address and Radiolab is one word? It is. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

And we'll see you at the zoo.

[Robert Krulwich]

We'll see you at the zoo. At least some of us.

[Nell Boyce]

First message.

[David Hancocks]

Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad, Ellen Horn, Senior Producer Lulu Miller, Assistant Producer, Production Executive Dean Cappello production support by Sarah Pellegrini, Brett Beyer, Scott Goldberg, AK Kieville, Sam Leviander, Davey Imitra, Ryan Scammell and Jacob Weinberg. Also very special thanks to Tamar Lewin and Amy Bush's class at Northstar Academy for their musical contributions.

[Nell Boyce]

Vrbo's last minute deals make chasing fresh mountain powder incredibly easy. With thousands of homes close to the slopes, you can get epic pow freshies, first tracks and more. Find last minute deals with the last minute filter on the app. Book a private vacation rental [e-mail].

[Robert Krulwich]

And Doug here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

[Grant Jones]

Fascinating.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Jad Abumrad]

Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[Alan Rabinowitz]

Cut the camera.

[Nell Boyce]

They see us.

[Robert Krulwich]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Savings very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.