ABSTRACT
How far can zoos’ contribution to science be regarded as one of their major justifications? Dale Jamieson (1985:112) divides the science done in zoos into two categories. Five or six categories, at least, seem necessary to me to reflect the range of zoos’ scientific activities. Here are eight ways in which zoos help science:
TAXONOMY
Zoos can provide living examples for the study of taxonomy or classification, and this was a major role of zoos in the nineteenth century. It is now performed mainly by museums, whose study collections of items such as vertebrate skins, and dead invertebrates such as insects and crustaceans with their nondecaying exoskeletons, are likely to be far larger than any zoo’s animal collection because of their permanence and ease of storage (compared to living animals). And in some ways museum specimens are no doubt more convenient to study. But it is actually much better, where possible, to have living specimens available, most obviously so that their behaviour patterns, themselves often significant taxonomic factors, can be studied. The Wildfowl Trust collection at Slimbridge is a much better place than a museum for studying the classification of swans, because one can for example observe variations in plumage care behaviour patterns-which are important in the swans’ classification-and one can also weigh and measure the birds very accurately, which obviously requires live swans (Scott and the Wildfowl Trust 1972:24, 277). Study of behaviour patterns is also useful in working out the relationships of mammals-for example, in confirming the close relationship of the so-called Celebes black ape to macaques-and it is convenient to study such patterns in a
captive group, even though one has to be aware of the likelihood that the animals’ behaviour will not be identical to that in the wild state (Dixson 1977:81).
