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11 - Changed Attitudes to Nature Reflected in the Transformation of Menageries to Zoos
- from INTERPRETING NATURE AND LANDSCAPES
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- By Gordon Mcgregor Reid, Liverpool University Veterinary School
- Edited by Ian Convery, Professor of Conservation & Forestry, Centre for Wildlife Conservation, University of Cumbria., Peter Davis, Emeritus Professor of Museology, University of Newcastle
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- Book:
- Changing Perceptions of Nature
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016, pp 119-128
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Summary
‘Nature’ was originally a theological or quasi-spiritual concept (Russell 1945; Thoreau 1854; Reid 2009) but it is now usually interpreted scientifically in terms of wild plants and animals, environment and human natural heritage. One way that people engage with nature is through the keeping of animals in a zoological garden (often abbreviated as ‘zoo’). This is a permanent, mainly exotic live animal collection, typically on display to the public. Zoos in legal terms include terrestrial displays, aquariums, dolphinariums, aviaries, vivariums and insectariums. Some are free-standing, others incorporated in a larger zoo facility, museum, botanical garden or theme park and a few are mobile (Reid 1994b). Zoos can be charities or commercial enterprises and in public or private ownership. This chapter explains their primitive origins, how they diversified in geographical space and over time and how functions, purposes, philosophies, perspectives and public attitudes have changed. A more detailed account of the topics included is in Reid and Moore (2014).
In history and prehistory, live animal collections served diverse purposes. Hunter-gatherers exploited nature, dating from c. 193,000 years ago. To prolong useful life in animals of military, sporting and agricultural importance, rudimentary husbandry developed in Egypt and China from c. 2000 BC and there are records of livestock breeding in Persian (Elam) clay tablets of c. 3500 BC. Small enclosures were needed to protect hoof stock and crops from animal and human marauders. From this sprang the idea of a ‘paradise garden’ or ‘recreational garden’. Turner (2005, 1, following Humphry Repton 1752–1818) considers a garden to be ‘a piece of ground fenced off from cattle, and appropriated to the use and pleasure of man: it is, or ought to be cultivated’. Exclusive spaces for humans were later incorporated in public parks, botanical and zoological gardens. The history, architecture, planting and landscaping of all such spaces and inclusion of live animal collections is intertwined (Reid 1994b; Arnott 2004).
Contemporary licensed zoos may brand and market themselves in popular terms such as bug world, sea world, ocean park, rainforest experience, animal kingdom or bio park. This may be an attempt to distance themselves from inappropriate practices, mainly in the past.
24 - Reproduction in fishes in relation to conservation
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- By Gordon Mcgregor Reid, North of England Zoological Society, Zoological Gardens, Chester, CH21LH, U.K., Heather Hall, Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London NW RY, U.K.
- Edited by William V. Holt, Zoological Society of London, Amanda R. Pickard, Zoological Society of London, John C. Rodger, David E. Wildt, Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Washington DC
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- Book:
- Reproductive Science and Integrated Conservation
- Published online:
- 21 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 05 December 2002, pp 375-394
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Summary
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
Human interest in fishes and their reproduction has long been supremely practical. Archaeological studies from Neolithic ‘kitchen middens’ of Denmark (c. 9000–6000 BC) provide evidence of a marine capture fishery for herring, cod, flounder and eel (Travis Jenkins, 1927). It is likely that such pre-agricultural ‘stone age’ humans trapped fishes inshore and on rivers, including populations migrating for spawning. Such practices continue today, including indigenous communities in West Africa using woven fences to trap migrant fishes (Teugels et al., 1992).
Farming freshwater fishes in ponds for food dates from c. 4500 years ago in Sumeria, ancient Egypt, Assyria and China, with evidence that artificial hatching was practised latterly (Hickling, 1971). Basic fish culture existed in the Roman Empire (Higginbotham, 1997), and holding or ‘stew’ ponds for bream and perch are well known from mediaeval Europe, with proper fish farming established between AD 1400 and 1500 (Hickling, 1971). Carp (Cyprinus carpio) and goldfish (Carrassius auratus) were first bred ornamentally in Korea and China (c. 960 BC) and Japan (c. AD 1500) where artificial selection was used to produce aesthetically pleasing coloured varieties.
The practical benefits of fish reproduction attracted early scholars such as Fan Lai (c. 475 BC) and Aristotle (c. 340 BC). A utilitarian, ethnocentric approach to fish reproduction persists today and dominates scientific studies. The main thrust of modern aquaculture is towards improved utilisation of fish (or their gametes – milt, roe, caviar) for food, products or sport fishing.
Ichthyogeography of the Guinea–Congo rain forest, West Africa
- Gordon McGregor Reid
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- Journal:
- Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Section B: Biological Sciences / Volume 104 / 1996
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 05 December 2011, pp. 285-312
- Print publication:
- 1996
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Ichthyogeography is the section of biogeography which seeks to interpret fish biodiversity in terms of present and past distributions and abundance. It can also have practical applications in fisheries management and conservation. There are thought to be more than one thousand species of fish in the 40 or so major rivers of the Guinea–Congo rain forest region, with correspondingly high levels of endemicity. In the Congo or Zaire river basin alone, the proportion of endemic fish species may exceed 80% (from a total of >690), but many more taxonomic and distributional data remain to be gathered.
Unlike terrestrial vertebrates, the diverse freshwater fishes of Guinea–Congo evidently have distributions which are closely confined by hydrography. Hence, fish distributions may be of particular help in corroborating or refuting postulated geological events, patterns and processes and in explaining associated aspects of rainforest evolution. From the 19th century until now, the ichthyogeography of Guinea–Congo has been diagnosed largely in terms of presumed post-Miocene geological sequences of fish taxa and their past and recent dispersal in relation to particular hydrological conditions: mainly riverine volume discharge, salinity and temperature. From this, the fish fauna is, by convention, divided into ‘provinces’ established on endemism, palaeogeography and supposed physical or ecological barriers to dispersal. However, in this paper it is argued that the traditional ichthyogeographical accounts which highlight endemism and dispersal are generally flawed. It is argued here that historical patterns of fish distribution can only be fully understood if phyletic (cladistic) data are taken into consideration. While Upper and Lower Guinea and the Zaïre basin may be defined in part on the basis of endemism there is a lack of taxonomic and distributional evidence to show that Guinea–Congo is itself a cohesive ichthyogeographical unit.
There is clearly a need for comparisons with fish distributions outside the rain forest zone of Guinea–Congo. African inter-provincial, trans-continental and inter-continental comparisons reveal distribution patterns which may relate more to pre-Miocene rather than post-Miocene geology or present-day rain forest ecology. Continental drift, notably between Africa and South America, probably led to the separation 85 million years ago of previously united fish populations. This may account for recent higher-level phyletic correspondences between the separate rain forest fish faunas of Africa and the neotropics.
Last, the so-called ‘marine intrusive’ fishes – which are normally excluded from zoogeographical consideration – merit a careful re-evaluation. While they may be regarded as an inconvenience in developing scientific hypotheses, such intrusives can comprise a remarkable 30% or more of the riverine fish fauna in Guinea–Congo. It seems that the widely accepted ecological divisions between marine and ‘primary freshwater’ fishes are not as clear-cut as has been supposed. In addition, zoogeographically critical marine, trans-Atlantic, phyletic relationships apparently exist. These are probably best interpreted by using area cladograms in the context of ocean basin development, rather than by referring solely to marine fish dispersal and the traditional continental and provincial ichthyogeography of Guinea–Congo.
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