My Outside Magic

    The visit to the Zoo on Tuesday was a dreamlike experience.  Seeing animals like Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Hippos, and venomous reptiles right in front of me was a surreal experience.  I was having trouble accepting that these animals were even real.  If not for previous knowledge of these animals and having seen videos of them out in the wild, I am sure that I would have believed I was in a dream.

    It pained me to think about how each species population has been dwindling due to human influence.  When talking to the zoo workers they were telling me how the Tiger population for example decreased from around 100,000 in 1900 to a low of 3,200 in 2010.  When just looking at the numbers, a population decline like that conveys the drastic negative influence that humans have caused.  But when seeing these majestic animals in person those numbers no longer just seem like a sad statistic but instead a true tragedy that we need to fix.  Following in suit with the concept of “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone,” the zoo worker explained that for many of the animals on exhibit, their populations had been forced to drastically low numbers, and only under the threat of extinction did government agencies and people begin to care about building these animals numbers back up.

    I feel that a Zoo like the Fort Worth Zoo can provide people with an opportunity to see a number of animals that leave you with your jaw hanging open at their size and beauty. My hope is that these interactions may affect them the same way they affected me, making more people think about how human influence has ravished their populations, and as a result, look for changes we can make to help them and other animals around us.










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