Tao’s 2 Cents

I went with Christine to walk around the Artscape festival here in Baltimore again today. I plan on writing a thorough post about the overall event after it’s all over, but I wanted to talk about one particular thing I saw today.

Christine wanted to go into this trailer that said it was some sort of wildlife refuge. It had the same outward appearance as one of those freak show trailers at the state fair except with a better paint job and it’s sponsor’s name written everywhere. I wasn’t too thrilled but I went ahead.

Instead of having actual animals in the exhibit, they had these freaky animatronic animals, most of which simply turned their head back and forth. Normally I only see animatronics in those freak disney land rides or when there are dinosaurs involved. Then it occurred to me. Is this what zoos will be like in the not too distant future?

The more I thought about it, the more I think I might be right. Especially in the case of the polar bears and penguins which they also had on display. Clearly most, if not all of those animals were heading in the same direction as the dinosaurs. Although I tend to think of dinosaurs as somewhat freaky, so their jerky motions that can scare the crap out of you seem to fit right in. When a panda bear jerks its head back and forth, it’s just plain scary. Not to mention the quality was horrible. They looked more like halloween costumes and the cheap fake rubber snakes you get at gag shops than actual animals.

It made me wonder if kids taking tours of these new zoos would think how creepy these extinct animals were? Will they wonder why we didn’t wipe out these freaky beasts earlier? I would hope that animatronics technology will advance somewhat, but judging by the newly constructed monstrosities I’ve seen today I think the technology is languishing. It’s far easier to hire a couple programmers and animators to pop out some CG graphics than to build an actual animatronic creature for a movie. There hasn’t been a serious animatronic film since the 90’s with movies like the Dark Krystal and Labyrinth.

Anyway, that’s your bleak future forecast for the day. I hope it doesn’t come true, but if I were a betting man…

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Extinction, Environment. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.