Entertaining Fake Animals or Boring Live Ones?

The entire article on taxidermy by Desmond was interesting to me, I’ve always found taxidermy to be a peculiar subject and so I was happy to read a bit more about it. I also was intrigued by the prompt to relate this subject to contemporary zoos because that definitely wasn’t my first thought while reading. Desmond describes taxidermy as aiming to “capture and preserve the vitality and living energy of the animal” (160). It seems odd that we would use the death and even purposeful killing of an animal for the means of a lifelike display, especially in light of the fact that we do have zoos which also aim to present a natural animal vivacity. What’s more is that taxidermy tries to depict a “typical,” or rather what we perceive as typical, pose. Near the end of the essay Desmond talks about how our depiction of animals often lies not in natural fact, but in our imagined stereotype of some unseen wild animal. I found this connection to be the most interesting statement in the article because it seems to eradicate any trace of the actual animal in favor of how humans choose to identify the animal.

Animatronics and animal special effects are obviously an offshoot of taxidermist practices; however they relate more closely the modern zoo because they share a goal of entertainment. Curiously, animatronics aims to create realistic animals only to act our unrealistic, animal fictions. I would assume the goal in the strange recreation is to humanize the animal, yet it also seems to me that this practice distances us from the actuality qualities of the animal. Zoos on the other hand, do depict real animals however it is common for zoo spectators to taunt the animals in order for them to be more entertaining. When we see animals on screen or in other fictional displays, we suspend the disbelief that these creatures are somewhat humanized because in our everyday lives we mainly encounter fictionalized animals instead of real ones. Yet I think this is problematic for zoos because when we see animals in real life they are often sleeping or doing other mundane behavior. But humans want to see the animals act out, we are so entertained by these fake animals that we expect real animals to act the same. So the question I arrive at is will fictional representations of animals replace zoos in favor of entertainment? Do we need real animals if we can see convincing, life-like animatronic ones?