Crocodile Pen, Zoological Garden, 1950s

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Crocodile Pen, Zoological Garden, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Crocodile Pen, Zoological Garden, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-100827

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A mid-century zoo official installed a yellow warning sign and called it animal husbandry, confident that a painted concrete wall and a patch of grass constituted a suitable environment for three crocodiles who had evolved over millions of years to inhabit swamps and river systems. The reptiles lie motionless on the lawn in the pose of animals that have accepted confinement as a permanent fact, their bodies arranged like museum specimens that happen to still be alive. The sign reads "DO NOT FEED THESE ANIMALS" in the tone of a zoo superintendent addressing the public as though the problem were carelessness rather than the entire design of the enclosure. A concrete barrier rises behind them, separating the crocodiles from visiting schoolchildren by a distance that in any natural circumstance would be absurdly short. The 1950s operated on the theory that danger and education were compatible if you simply asked people nicely not to do the dangerous thing, and that an animal's contentment could be inferred from its stillness.

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