"That's the way to the zoo..."

The last time I went to London Zoo was when they had Pandas. I was three or four years old. I remember none of it, but I have the photographs that were taken back then.

On a whim I kept walking up the Broad Walk of Regent's Park yesterday and around the corner, following the expected train of young families. There was a short queue - why the insistence on photographs? - and I paid the nearly twenty pounds to enter and I passed through the gate to this odd little relic of a world also represented by natural history museums.

The big difference is these animals and plants are alive. But the rest is very similar.

The purpose of zoos and natural history museums were twofold: show the masses freaky animals and advance scientific knowledge. Both collections of flora and fauna still do those things, but it's the details in the how that differ. Now it's demonstrating - and defending - Darwin's theories and the scientists who have developed their own theories from what he first observed and explained.

Environmental science, ecology and - yes - the theories of climate change - are also shown and explained. Seeing the animals alive help. I wonder, though, how many of the young kids I saw that day will understand that when they are my age the chances are they will be showing their kids or grandkids these creatures stuffed and in the dioramas of natural history museums. I find that horrifying to contemplate. Also, the kids there have no idea about hunting... weird thought, I know, which was all about social evolution. I was thinking about that as I was watching human cultural arrogance at its best: small boys and girls running screaming around the monkey walk-through, some angry they could see no monkeys where the signs said they would be. No adult was telling them to be quiet, to be patient. Nature on demand. Fuck, we are doomed.

It's the zoo keepers who balance that sense of doom. I remember when my brother did a project at Taronga Zoo on Sydney Harbour when he was still at school. It was, at least peripherally, about the changes in the science of zoo keeping. While there always will be an element of the circus about zoos, the science is dominant. Care is taken for both the animals and their audience, and it is in that order. The animals are no longer just in cages, they are in enclosures that imitate as much as possible their natural habitat. Space, if they're the sorts of creatures that need it, is provided in clever ways. Appropriate lighting and temperature control, too. And places where they can hide.

When I compare my family's photographs from 1972 and my experiences on Sunday, I am struck by how many animals are no longer kept in the relatively small grounds of London Zoo. No bears, no mountain goats, no seals, no chimps, no orang-utans and no pandas. Instead, smaller animals like meerkats, and the larger ones that don't need to run around quite so much. But, they still have space.

I liked the attention to detail for the kids to be able to run around in little tunnels and be able to pop up within the enclosures underneath clear plastic bubbles. The animals didn't seem to react to that so I wonder if they were sound proofed. Practical. Fun.

I spent six solid hours there. Took about 200 photographs, of which these are only a very few.