This dissertation tells the story of how a zoo changed the world. Certainly, Charles Darwin shocked scientists with his 1859 publication On the Origin of Species, by showing how all life emerged from a common ancestor through the process of natural selection. Darwin’s classic, though, cannot explain why by the end of the century many people thought critically about the relationship between humans and animals. To understand this phenomenon, historians need to look elsewhere. Between 1870 and 1910, as Darwinism was debated endlessly in intellectual circles, zoological parks appeared suddenly at the heart of every major American city and had (at least) tens of millions of visitors. Darwin’s theory of evolution inspired scientists and philosophers to theorize about humans and animals. Public zoos, though, allowed the multitudes to experience daily the similarities between the human world and the animal kingdom.
Upon entering the zoo, Americans saw the world’s exotic species for the first time—their long necks, sharp teeth, bright colors, gargantuan sizes, ivory extremities, spots, scales, and stripes. Yet, more significantly, Americans listened to these animals too. They learned to take animals seriously as they interacted with them along zoo walkways. In fact, zoo animals led zoogoers in surprising directions— to the halls of Congress, to the halls of museums, to global trade networks, to the birth of the airplane, to the formation of primatology, to tuberculosis outbreaks, to the rise of animal rights, and to the genesis of ecology. Zoos, in turn, ushered animals into the heart of American politics, print culture, science, environmentalism, ethics, and medicine.
Zoological parks encouraged visitors to approach animals on their own terms. In so doing, zoos put Humanism on display, where the limits of anthropocentrism could be scrutinized by a zoogoing world. Zoological parks at the turn of the century prepared the way for later environmental, conservation, and animal rights movements. They prepared the way for later cultural entanglements with the life sciences, like the Scopes Monkey Trial. Zoological parks functioned as theaters that first demonstrated simple lessons about animals that would capture the attention of the ever-expanding and ever-specializing body of scholars devoted to the study of life throughout the twentieth century. And zoological parks functioned as the first public tutorials in post-humanist thinking. This dissertation tells the story of how a zoo transformed the way that Americans thought about humans, animals, and environments.