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to show them off as object-lessons to visitors. Of course there are a certain
number of 'hard cases'—creatures such as the British wild cat, the Tasmanian
devil, or the rhinoceros—who are permanent mutineers against any form of
restraint. Broadly speaking, however, discipline is enforced just as much as in
any other place where the inmates are kept against their will, from a school
for small boys, to Dartmoor Prison.
(Mainland 1927:31)
Intriguingly, Mainland also includes in his text detailed notes on how animals were
moved around the zoo when changing cages or enclosures, or simply when needing
to be moved out for a period to allow these spaces to be cleaned and repaired. The
emphasis was very much on how to retain control over the animals in the process,
notably in the discussion of an elaborate system of trenches, tunnels and dens
through which polar bears could be coaxed at such times, although some potential
for the bears to resist the wishes of their keepers—if only by 'taking their time'—
evidently remained (see
Figure 1.2
: see also the discussion of zoo design in
Gruffudd, this volume). What we begin to see here are complex spatial expectations
being imposed upon animals such as these zoo bears, albeit expectations which the
animals themselves do not know or may only know to a limited extent. Although
some animals can be taught which places are 'out of bounds' and which are not,
most animals will wander in and out of the relevant human spatial orderings without
necessarily knowing that they are doing this.
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Any animals absconding from zoos,
or indeed getting themselves into the wrong parts of the zoo (as in the case of the
legless newt), are hence transgressing the zoo's spatial regulations—maybe even
doing so as what might be construed a wilful act—and thereby effecting a
particularly dramatic act of animal 'out of placeness'. The case of Cholmondeley the
chimpanzee has already been mentioned, and other instances could be recorded such
as the frenzy surrounding the escape of an eagle from London Zoo in 1965, with
huge crowds and media activity in and around Regents Park hoping to catch sight
of the bird (Vevers 1976:97). The 'moral panics' which are produced by zoo
escapees, as occasioned by the news of the hunt for Barbara the great female polar
bear ('a thoroughly annoyed bear in a fog within three miles of Charing Cross':
Mainland 1927:81), exemplify the deep unease often spurred by animal
transgressions of human spatial orderings; and they also cannot but suggest a
measure of (resistant) agency on the part of animals (the polar bear, and maybe even
the legless newt) in getting out of their allotted spaces in the zoo order.
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