This particular train of thought occurs to me every once in a while and continues to fascinate me, so I thought I’d do some research into it and share it with all of you: So in today’s zoo world, the main objective for most captive breeding programs is to have a sustainable population; that is, one that can be maintained over a long period of time. For SSPs here in the US, the genetic benchmark for a program to be considered sustainable is if it can retain 90% gene diversity over 100 years. You probably don’t think about it often, but a hundred years is a LONG time. Here are some historical facts to give you an idea of what the world was like 100 years ago… - The Titanic sank - WWI is happening - Airplanes have only existed for a few years - The Communist Revolution happens in Russia - Alcohol becomes illegal in the United States - Spanish flu wreaks havoc across the globe - The Panama Canal is completed - Contemporary inventions/discoveries: zippers, stainless steel, toasters, affordable cars, army tanks, general relativity, continental drift, crossword puzzles, and jazz music Meanwhile, gorillas, who have a large captive population with unusually robust genetics, are expected to maintain over 90% GD for 400 years! Here are some historical facts to give you an idea of what the world was like 400 years ago… - Women are being accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake… in Sweden. - The world population is around 500 million, less than 7% of today’s population. - Jamestown is established, the first permanent English settlement in North America. - The first publication of the King James Bible happens. - William Shakespeare dies (and is not famous yet). - The fall of the Aztec Empire was as old then as World War I is today - Japan is early in its 250-year period of isolationism under the Tokugawa Shogunate. - The aurochs goes extinct in Poland, and sloth lemurs die out in Madagascar; thylacines, Steller’s sea cows, quagga, great auks, and dodos are still present. The concept of extinction, incidentally, does not exist yet, nor does the concept of evolution. - Galileo is being attacked by the Catholic Church for his blasphemous defense of heliocentrism. In a decade or two he will be placed under house arrest for it. - Australia has just been discovered by Europeans. - Things that have not been invented/discovered yet: pendulum clocks, bacteria, calculus, Hawaii (by Europeans), electricity, pianos, steampower, rubber (again, by Europeans), and steel - Tiergarten Schonbrunn, currently the oldest zoo in the world, exists as a small private menagerie; it will not be open to the public for a century and a half. The London Zoo, the world’s oldest scientific zoo, will not be open for two centuries. Considering how radically different the world is now than a hundred years ago, or especially compared to 400 years ago, it is mind-blowing to think of a zoo population sustaining itself from now until the 25th century. Will zoos even exist that far down the road? Only time will tell… but at least you can all sleep at night knowing that whatever happens in your lifetime, zoo gorillas are good for the long haul
Interesting piece @Coelacanth18. I guess a major contributing factor to this is the long inter-generational gaps gorillas are capable of, similar to chimpanzee, orangutan, elephants and rhinos. A female gorilla can produce offspring until her early 40s so within the space of 100 years, you could only reach two or three generations, Compare this to the Sumatran tiger, where females are generally not bred past the age of 12, and at best you would get through 8 generations in a centuary (realistically more like 10-14 generations).
Yes, generation time plays a big factor in retaining genetic diversity. This is a boon for long-lived species (apes, elephants, large birds, crocodiles, tortoises) and a detriment to short-lived species (carnivores, amphibians, rodents, small monkeys).
I'm sure zoos will continue to exist, though I'm curious as to what those zoos will be like. Zoos today look a lot different than they did a hundred years ago, things will probably be very different in four hundred years!
I think zoos in 400 years from now, will all (or most) be located outside large cities in a truly wild terrain, as with Bristol's Wild Place. Imagine, Antwerpen, Zoo Berlin, all will be extra-wild zoos, outside cities. There will be less and less wild animals in the wilderness, and more and more restricted areals of distributions/ severe fragmentation of the populations of wild animals. This is, however, just in my opinion.
@TheMightyOrca @Nikola Chavkosk I'm not so sure that there will be zoos that far into the future... I can't imagine that the era of environmental destruction that we're currently in can be sustained for very long without collapse. I feel like by 2400, either most species will no longer be in danger of extinction or most species will be extinct... and in either case, I can't imagine what the justification of keeping animals in captivity would be at that point. Additionally, public zoos didn't exist 400 years ago, so it's not a stretch to think they won't exist the same amount of time into the future.
The likelihood of a systemic civilisational collapse within the next 400 years is quite high. And even if that doesn't happen, the technological path we are on will mean it will be to some extent a post-human society. The 'wild' as we once knew it is already effectively gone, and by 2417 it will be a historical footnote. If big animals are being maintained at all it will be as living museum specimens. Not altogether different to now, though, I guess.
