I didn't want to do a zoo show. I didn't want to do a study of someone with mental illness. I just wanted to show someone who was trying to live their life.
I'm in the middle of my sixth book, which is about animals at the Los Angeles Zoo.
The quizzical expression of the monkey at the zoo comes from his wondering whether he is his brother's keeper, or his keeper's brother.
Film is my passion. I had no money, after Human Zoo. I was completely broke. It was horrible. My film was in Berlin on opening night, but I couldn't even get to Berlin.
When I was six years old, my parents took me to this farmers market with a petting zoo. They put me on a pony and, for some reason, it took off at a run and they had to chase it down. They tell me it was kind of traumatic.
I like to do from racing my radio control cars to doing work at the zoo to poems to the TV show. There are a lot of things that I like to involve myself with, but I have a pretty packed schedule nine times out of ten. I have a good sense of working things in at the same time so that I can get all my hobbies in line.
So, not only am I panicking over the weekend if I need to know my lines, but also if can I get the kids to the zoo. Can I even go to church? I was asking for certain things that would allow me to plan my life a little better.
We are facing an enormous crisis in Africa right now in terms of illegal wildlife trafficking, which is decimating animal populations, destroying local economies, and funding armed insurgencies and terrorist syndicates. If we do not find solutions to this crisis now, there will be little habitat left beyond sparse areas of national parks that will serve as glorified zoos to small pockets of remaining animals.
Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.
And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.
Undressing her was an act of recklessness, a kind of vandalism, like releasing a zoo full of animals, or blowing up a dam.
I still haven't gotten over this thing of walking down the street and somebody recognizing you because you've been in a movie. There's this illusion that movie stars only exist in the movies. And to see one live is like seeing a leopard let out of the zoo.
My father never cheated on my mother. He used to cheat on me. He used to pick other kids after school. Take them to the zoo. Take them to play ball. One day he came to me. He says, Look I got to level with you. I met another kid.
We don't understand the power of nature and the world because we don't live with it. Our environment is designed to sustain us. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo called civilization.
I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors. . . All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain.
[I]n Africa I was a member of a family—of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo there were other gorillas—but there was no family. Five severed fingers do not make a hand.
I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second.
Adult gorillas will fight to the death defending their families. This is why poachers who may be seeking only one infant for the zoo trade must often kill all the adults in the family to capture the baby.
[My] excursions provided a unique opportunity for observing [the gorillas' behavior] in their natural habitat. . . Then, all too soon, the infants were demanded for their trip to the zoo. . . . [H]appily the babies did not know they would never see their mountain home again
It does get old to have to always be a monkey in a zoo. I don't know what it's like any more to be anonymous.