Zooland

Author: Irus Braverman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804784396
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
This book takes a unique stance on a controversial topic: zoos. Zoos have their ardent supporters and their vocal detractors. And while we all have opinions on what zoos do, few people consider how they do it. Irus Braverman draws on more than seventy interviews conducted with zoo managers and administrators, as well as animal activists, to offer a glimpse into the otherwise unknown complexities of zooland. Zooland begins and ends with the story of Timmy, the oldest male gorilla in North America, to illustrate the dramatic transformations of zoos since the 1970s. Over these decades, modern zoos have transformed themselves from places created largely for entertainment to globally connected institutions that emphasize care through conservation and education. Zoos naturalize their spaces, classify their animals, and produce spectacular experiences for their human visitors. Zoos name, register, track, and allocate their animals in global databases. Zoos both abide by and create laws and industry standards that govern their captive animals. Finally, zoos intensely govern the reproduction of captive animals, carefully calculating the life and death of these animals, deciding which of them will be sustained and which will expire. Zooland takes readers behind the exhibits into the world of zoo animals and their caretakers. And in so doing, it turns its gaze back on us to make surprising interconnections between our understandings of the human and the nonhuman.

The Alligonkey

Author: Georgia Witkin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780990760207
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
A disillusioned Alligonkey (part Alligator, part monkey) embarks on a dangerous quest... to become human.

Science on the Web

Author: Edward J. Jr. Renehan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475764804
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Book Description
The World Wide Web is loaded with science and science-related material. For everyone who wants to learn more about this amazing resource, Ed Renehan has compiled this fun and informative guide to what's out there, what's interesting, what's new and who's doing it. Whether your interest is in artificial intelligence, Hubble Space Telescope images, or the latest dinosaur findings, the best sources and how to reach them are right here.

Saving Animals

Author: Elan Abrell
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452961921
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
A fascinating and unprecedented ethnography of animal sanctuaries in the United States In the past three decades, animal rights advocates have established everything from elephant sanctuaries in Africa to shelters that rehabilitate animals used in medical testing, to homes for farmed animals, abandoned pets, and entertainment animals that have outlived their “usefulness.” Saving Animals is the first major ethnography to focus on the ethical issues animating the establishment of such places, where animals who have been mistreated or destined for slaughter are allowed to live out their lives simply being animals. Based on fieldwork at animal rescue facilities across the United States, Elan Abrell asks what “saving,” “caring for,” and “sanctuary” actually mean. He considers sanctuaries as laboratories where caregivers conceive and implement new models of caring for and relating to animals. He explores the ethical decision making around sanctuary efforts to unmake property-based human–animal relations by creating spaces in which humans interact with animals as autonomous subjects. Saving Animals illustrates how caregivers and animals respond by cocreating new human–animal ecologies adapted to the material and social conditions of the Anthropocene. Bridging anthropology with animal studies and political philosophy, Saving Animals asks us to imagine less harmful modes of existence in a troubled world where both animals and humans seek sanctuary.

Ethics on the Ark

Author: Bryan G. Norton
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1588343634
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Book Description
Ethics on the Ark presents a passionate, multivocal discussion—among zoo professionals, activists, conservation biologists, and philosophers—about the future of zoos and aquariums, the treatment of animals in captivity, and the question of whether the individual, the species, or the ecosystem is the most important focus in conservation efforts. Contributors represent all sides of the issues. Moving from the fundamental to the practical, from biodiversity to population regulation, from animal research to captive breeding, Ethics on the Ark represents an important gathering of the many fervent and contentious viewpoints shaping the wildlife conservation debate.

Wild Life

Author: Irus Braverman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804794766
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
Wild Life documents a nuanced understanding of the wild versus captive divide in species conservation. It also documents the emerging understanding that all forms of wild nature—both in situ (on-site) and ex situ (in captivity)—may need to be managed in perpetuity. Providing a unique window into the high-stakes world of nature conservation, Irus Braverman describes the heroic efforts by conservationists to save wild life. Yet in the shadows of such dedication and persistence in saving the life of species, Wild Life also finds sacrifice and death. Such life and death stories outline the modern struggle to define what conservation should look like at a time when the long-established definitions of nature have collapsed. Wild Life begins with the plight of a tiny endangered snail, and ends with the rehabilitation of an entire island. Interwoven between its pages are stories about golden lion tamarins in Brazil, black-footed ferrets in the American Plains, Sumatran rhinos in Indonesia, Tasmanian devils in Australia, and many more creatures both human and nonhuman. Braverman draws on interviews with more than one hundred and twenty conservation biologists, zoologists, zoo professionals, government officials, and wildlife managers to explore the various perspectives on in situ and ex situ conservation and the blurring of the lines between them.

Zoo Ethics

Author: Jenny Gray
Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
ISBN: 1486307000
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
Well-run modern zoos and aquariums do important research and conservation work and teach visitors about the challenges of animals in the wild and the people striving to save them. They help visitors to consider their impact and think about how they can make a difference. Yet for many there is a sense of disquiet and a lingering question remains – can modern zoos be ethically justified? Zoo Ethics examines the workings of modern zoos and considers the core ethical challenges that face those who choose to hold and display animals in zoos, aquariums or sanctuaries. Using recognised ethical frameworks and case studies of ‘wicked problems’, this book explores the value of animal life and the impacts of modern zoos, including the costs to animals in terms of welfare and the loss of liberty. It also considers the positive welfare and health outcomes of many animals held in zoos, the increased attention and protection for their species in the wild, and the enjoyment and education of the people who visit zoos. A thoughtfully researched work written in a highly readable style, Zoo Ethics will empower students of animal ethics and veterinary sciences, zoo and aquarium professionals and interested zoo visitors to have an informed view of the challenges of compassionate conservation and to develop their own defendable, ethical position.

Zoo Veterinarians

Author: Irus Braverman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000208915
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 135

Book Description
Despite their centrality to the operation of contemporary accredited zoo and aquarium institutions, the work of zoo veterinarians has rarely been the focus of a critical analysis in the social science and humanities. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations of zoo and aquarium veterinarians, mainly in Europe and North America, this book highlights the recent transformation that has occurred in the zoo veterinarian profession during a time of ecological crisis, and what these changes can teach us about our rapidly changing planet. Zoo vets, Braverman instructs us with a wink, have "gone wild." Originally an individual welfare-centered profession, these experts are increasingly concerned with the sustainability of wild animal populations and with ecological health. The story of zoo vets going wild—in their subjects of care, their motivations, and their ethical standards, as well as in their professional practices and scientific techniques—is also a story about zoo animals gone wild, wild animals encroaching the zoo, and, more generally, a wild world that is becoming "zoo-ified." Such transformations have challenged existing veterinary standards and practices. Exploring the regulatory landscape that governs the work of zoo and aquarium veterinarians, Braverman traverses the gap between the hard and soft sciences and between humans and nonhumans. At the intersection of animal studies, socio-legal studies, and science and technology studies, this book will appeal not only to those interested in zoos and in animal welfare, but also to scholars in the posthumanities.

Panama City Memories

Author: Jd Weeks
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1257928384
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Memories of Panama City, Florida by residents, business owners, vacationers, spring breakers, bands that played there, and beach lovers in general.

Thinking Through Animals

Author: Matthew Calarco
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080479653X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 89

Book Description
The rapidly expanding field of critical animal studies now offers a myriad of theoretical and philosophical positions from which to choose. This timely book provides an overview and analysis of the most influential of these trends. Approachable and concise, it is intended for readers sympathetic to the project of changing our ways of thinking about and interacting with animals yet relatively new to the variety of philosophical ideas and figures in the discipline. It uses three rubrics—identity, difference, and indistinction—to differentiate three major paths of thought about animals. The identity approach aims to establish continuity among human beings and animals so as to grant animals equal access to the ethical and political community. The difference framework views the animal world as containing its own richly complex and differentiated modes of existence in order to allow for a more expansive ethical and political worldview. The indistinction approach argues that we should abandon the notion that humans are unique in order to explore new ways of conceiving human-animal relations. Each approach is interrogated for its relative strengths and weaknesses, with specific emphasis placed on the kinds of transformational potential it contains.