Zoos, Big Brains and
Opposable Thumbs
Janet Kuypers
7/1/19, written on
American Zoo Day
we think we understand so much about the world
we think we are masters over it, and in a way we are
our big brains figured out how to put our opposable
thumbs to good use and we started settling, building
and man, that made us hungry, so us and our big brains
figured out how to kill animals for protein, but more
than that, killing was also for a real sense of conquest,
because after all this building we have to protect
what’s ours
and that whole ‘what’s ours’ thing really caught on,
with more and more people with such big brains
we got territorial and wanted to show off all that we
conquered, to show the rest of mankind how not to
mess with us
but as more and more people came around, we
humans all couldn’t hunt for ourselves, we were all
to busy thinking with our big brains to hunt, so
somebody out there got the ingenious idea
to mass-produce and factory-farm animals, all
because we think we need more protein than
what plants provide — and this changed animals
globally, and our big brains now work in one place,
and when the animals became different in different
parts of the world, why don’t we humans do what
we humans do best and capture some animals
you know, to show them off for people, so we
humans can remember what many animals are like
you know, before we took over the world and then
relegated these animals to worthless things in
the human realm, after missing out on big brains and
opposable thumbs
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you know, it’s cool that we keep these animals
caged and contained like this, because I don’t know
if I’d have the time or money to fly on a safari trip
and have the chance to kill these animals myself
since that’s what we do, you know, so it’s good to see
what these animals are like — before we messed with
them so much
besides, it’s fun to bring the kiddies to the zoo
maybe if they’re lucky they can feed some animals
and they can connect with something different,
animals that we adults apparently have forgotten
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