The Department of Living Animals
William Hornaday, founder of the National Zoo, with a baby bison probably next to the Smithsonian Castle, 1886. (Smithsonian Institution Archives)
The Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, DC is sometimes called “the people’s zoo.” That’s because it’s the only zoo in the country to be created by an act of US Congress, and admission is free.
But why did our federal government create a national zoo in the first place?
Producer Felix Poon has the scoop – from its surprising origins in the near-extinction of bison, to a look at its modern-day mission of conservation, we’re going on a field trip to learn all about the National Zoo.
Featuring Kara Ingraham, Daniel Frank, and Ellie Tahmaseb.
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@nhpublicradio Outside/In podcast producer Felix Poon recently spent a day at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C.! Keep an eye out for this episode in your podcast feeds and at outsideinradio dot org — coming soon! 👀 #zoo #smithsonian #dc #podcast #outsidein #publicradio #fyp ♬ Western Music: Arizona Dreaming - Piero Piccioni
LINKS
William Hornaday founded the National Zoo, but his legacy is complicated, to say the least. Environmental journalist Michelle Nijhuis contemplates whether he’s a “villainous hero or heroic villain” (PBS).
“A Chinese cigarette tin launched D.C.’s 50-year love affair with pandas” tells the origin story of pandas at the National Zoo (The Washington Post).
The story of Ota Benga, the man who was caged by William Hornaday in the Bronx Zoo (The Guardian).
Environmental writer Emma Marris imagines a world without zoos in her opinion essay, “Modern Zoos Are Not Worth the Moral Cost” (NYTimes).
We looked at the court case of Happy the elephant in our 2022 Outside/In episode, “Et Tu, Brute? The Case for Human Rights for Animals.”
CREDITS
Host: Nate Hegyi
Reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon
Editing by Taylor Quimby.
Our staff includes Justine Paradis
Executive producer: Taylor Quimby
Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio
Thanks to Nick Capodice for performing William Hornaday voiceovers.
Music by Bluedot Sessions and Jules Gaia
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio
Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to outsidein@nhpr.org or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/In. I’m Nate Hegyi.
Felix Poon: So this is where all the magic happens
Bill Clements: Yeah, we’re kind of the heartbeat of the operation
Nate Hegyi: Last month producer Felix Poon got a tour of a food prep facility, that’s a lot like any other industrial kitchen.
Bill Clements: Large refrigeration units. All the prep tables. We have six different stations where people will work.
Nate Hegyi: but in a lot of ways, this kitchen was…different…
[MUX IN]
Nate Hegyi: …like, they make special cakes…
Bill Clements: frozen ice cakes, we can make them out of blood and meat.
Nate Hegyi: And they’re conscious about getting enough protein.
Bill Clements: Those are pinky mice.
Felix Poon: Wow, so they’re like, little mice the size of my thumb. Smaller than my thumb.
Bill Clements: Like your pinky tip.
[MUX SWELL]
<<NUTGRAPH>>
Nate Hegyi: You’ve probably guessed it by now – Felix is behind the scenes at the zoo – your zoo, if you’re here in the US.
This is the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, … the only one in the country created by an act of Congress.
Daniel Frank: we have taken those animals in, and bred them, and reintroduced them back into their native environment
Nate Hegyi: I'm Nate Hegyi, and today on Outside/In, producer Felix Poon takes us on a behind the scenes look at our nation’s zoo – from elephant pedicures to the elephant in the room: aka the ethics of keeping animals in captivity.
Stay tuned!
Zoey Knox: Keep a look out for lions and tigers and bears.
Felix Poon: Oh my!
Zoey Knox: Exactly.
<<FIRST HALF>>
Felix Poon: Nate, do you remember when I went to DC last month?
Nate Hegyi: I do remember when you went, I was following breathlessly as NHPR posted Tik Tok videos of you standing…I wouldn’t say awkwardly, I would say actually quite confidently. You were confident in carrying yourself. It was muah. Very good, very good. So yes, I remember.
Felix Poon: People go to zoos to see the animals, but I actually think the people-watching is the best part.
Young man: so what kind of questions you trying to ask us?
Felix Poon: What’s your favorite animal in the zoo?
Young man: My favorite animal in the zoo is her.
Young woman: [laughter]
Young man: She like, like, kind of like, can’t be tamed, but I try, you know. Try to protect her. Stuff like that
Young woman: alright, c’mon, let’s go
Young man: but have a blessed day sir.
Felix Poon: Okay you too.
[CROSSFADE]
Felix Poon: The national zoo is just a 12 minute drive from the White House, but it’s located in Rock Creek Park, more than two-and-a-half square miles of forest. So in a way the zoo feels like this transition space between city-dwelling humans and animals.
Wit: Wit and this is my dad Ethan. And this is Gustavo! Gustavo decir hola!
Felix Poon: Hi Gustavo! What’s your favorite animal Gustavo?
Wit: Gus, are you nervous? It’s just media, you gotta get used to media. You’re in DC.
Nate Hegyi: I still get nervous when a microphone is stuck in my face, so, so I get it.
Felix Poon: So the zoo is quasi-wooded, but you’re sharing the walkway with young couples, families, and school groups, like this middle school from Maryland, where the kids are autistic and non-verbal.
Felix Poon: What was your favorite animal?
Teacher 1: So she talks with her communication device.
Teacher 2: Exactly.
Teacher 1: So, Did you like the elephants?
Student via device: No
Teacher 1: Was they stinky?
Student via device: Yes
Teacher 2: Mmhmm, there you go.
Nate Hegyi: That’s great.
Felix Poon: So anyway, the national Zoo, it’s a pretty diverse cross-section of America – which is pretty fitting, because it’s the National Zoo, it’s funded by our federal tax dollars – in fact 70% of its operating budget comes from federal funds.
Nate Hegyi: Wow.
Felix Poon: It’s the only zoo that would close if there was a government shutdown.
Federal funding means it’s policed by its own federal law enforcement,
Nate Hegyi: Wait, so there’s just National Zoo Park Police, their own law enforcement.
Felix Poon: Yeah.
Nate Hegyi: For some reason I just imagine them wearing like, zebra outfits. Like referees?
Felix Poon: No they look like regular police, but with like, zoo police patches with like a green border around it.
Nate Hegyi: Okay.
Felix Poon: Anyways this is essentially the people’s zoo. It belongs to us just like the Capitol does, just like the White House, and so it’s free to visit.
Nate Hegyi: Is it really free?
Felix Poon: Yeah when was the last time you went to a zoo that was free?
Nate Hegyi: I didn’t realize that.
Felix Poon: Plus international diplomacy gets a stage here.
In 1972 for example, President Nixon visited China, and it was this historic visit that broke decades of isolation between the two countries.
And after the trip, China gave two pandas to the US as a sign of our thawing relationship, and they wound up at the National Zoo.
Pat Nixon: Which all children, whatever age, will enjoy. And I include myself in that category.
First lady Pat Nixon was a huge fan.
Pat Nixon: And, I think panda-monium is going to break out right here at the zoo. Thank you very much.
Nate Hegyi: I bet you she thought she was so clever with that one. Pandemonium.
Felix Poon: Yeah, These pandas were a gift , but future pandas starting in 1984 were loaned from China – at a cost of a million dollars a year for two pandas.
Can you imagine signing a rental agreement for a couple pandas, Nate?
Nate Hegyi: I just didn’t realize we were paying China, two million dollars did you say, or one million?
Felix Poon: A million dollars for two pandas.
Nate Hegyi: I’m just really surprised we’re paying a foreign country a million dollars a year to rent pandas.
Felix Poon: Yeah so that money goes to panda conservation in China, and the fact that it’s a rental means China ultimately owns them and can recall them in case their populations dwindle too low there…
…or if relations between the two countries aren’t so hot which is
Nate Hegyi: Kinda like right now? Yeah.
Felix Poon: probably what played a role in recent decisions not to renew any of our panda leases that expired recently. So when I was there, no pandas at the people’s zoo.
Man 1: China took ‘em. Took ‘em back. No more pandas.
Man 2: Why did we walk down this way? There’s no animals…
Nate Hegyi: We gotta get Antony Blinken on that one. Gotta get those pandas back.
Felix Poon: Well actually there’s news that the San Diego zoo is gonna get a couple pandas back from China. So maybe things are looking up.
Nate Hegyi: Okay. Panda diplomacy?
Felix Poon: Exactly.
[MUX SWELL]
Felix Poon: So why do you think our federal government decided to create a National Zoo to begin with? Any guesses?
Nate Hegyi: Uh, to bring joy to the hearts of millions of American children. Right?
Felix Poon: That’s a great guess, I mean I think it does bring joy to the hearts of millions of children.
Nate Hegyi: it does. That was the only reason, right? Moving along!
Felix Poon: It was actually started for a different reason. And that story starts with a taxidermist named William Temple Hornaday.
William Hornaday Voiceover: Upon opening my eyes one morning I saw a saucy and inquisitive jackal sitting coolly upon the top of the bank, looking down into our boat…
As I reached for my rifle he gracefully retired, and I stole quickly and quietly up the bank…
So Hornaday is one of these over-the-top 19th century characters who spent his youth cavorting across the world killing exotic animals.
He’s got kind of a Colonel Sanders meets Teddy Roosevelt vibe. His first book, “Two Years in the Jungle,” is basically a chronicle of him shooting his way across India.
William Hornaday Voiceover: She was within fifteen paces of me when I fired, but the thundering report, the smoke, and two zinc balls crashing into her skull, close to her brain, stopped her charge
Nate Hegyi: Okay, I don’t think we need that level of detail.
Felix Poon: I mean he’s got books and books of this stuff. Because he actually saw his taxidermy as a form of conservation. Like, lots of species were on the verge of extinction, in some cases because of overhunting. But stuffing them, for him, was his way of preserving them for future generations.
Nate Hegyi: Oh that makes complete sense. You know, just, they’re almost extinct, why not kill a few more?
William Hornaday Voiceover: This specimen was an old female - no doubt the
mother of the two smaller bears. Unfortunately for science…the hair was worn off her back until the skin was quite bare.
She furnished a fine skeleton, however.
Nate Hegyi: Man, Hornaday. I get it, it’s 19th century. But even this guy feels a little bit. I think that’s how he’s justifying going on his multi-country shootin’ spree.
[MUX IN]
Felix Poon: And this brings me to the subject of bison. So throughout the 1800s, bison were systematically slaughtered in the American West.
They were decimated in large part because of a settler strategy against Indigenous tribes.
It’s estimated there were somewhere around 60 million bison in the year 1800 - but by 1886, when Hornaday was out West, he guessed there were only a few hundred left.
William Hornaday Voiceover: “In a few more years, when the whitened bones of the last bleaching skeleton shall have been picked up and shipped East for commercial uses, nothing will remain of him save… a few museum specimens, and regret for his fate.”
So… after killing and stuffing several more – supposedly with a heavy heart – Hornaday wrote a whole book about their extermination.
He argued that the remaining herds should be protected in the newly established Yellowstone National Park.
And he also collected a few not-stuffed, living bison to bring back to Washington D.C.
Those became the first specimens in the Smithsonian National Museum’s “Department of Living Animals.”
Nate Hegyi: That’s a great name. Feels like it should be in a comic book. The department of living animals.
Felix Poon: Right it’s the federal DOLA.
Nate Hegyi: The DOLA.
Felix Poon: Anyways, a few years later, with Hornaday’s help lobbying Congress, was officially turned into The National Zoo.
Felix Poon: Are these considered small or big for bison?
Zoey Knox: I don’t know
Felix Poon: Let’s wait for that loud whatever the heck that is to go by.
[obnoxious trash carts ambi]
Felix Poon: So there’s still a bison exhibit at the National Zoo – which I visited with NHPR’s engagement producer, Zoey Knox, and it turns out it’s right next to an outdoor food court.
Kids: buffalo wings! Buffalo wings! Wanna go to the buffalo wings?
Felix Poon: So these are the animals that started the zoo.
Zoey Knox: These are the animals that started it all…
Nate Hegyi: I hope that food court by the way isn’t like selling buffalo burgers and buffalo wings.
Felix Poon: They don’t, I don’t know that they actually serve buffalo wings. I appreciate the kids’ double entendre there.
Anyways, as for Hornaday…
You know Hornaday’s legacy is that he’s a celebrated hero for wildlife conservation – for the wildlife protection laws he lobbied for and helped pass (for example), but especially for his work with bison, because after starting the National Zoo he went on to become the director the Bronx Zoo where he bred and then successfully reintroduced several herds back to the plains.
Nate Hegyi: Doesn’t this kind of feel like, I don’t know. Hornaday was kind of like, part of the problem. And then, he’s like, alright we’ve a lmost wiped them all out. We’ll save a couple so people can look at ‘em at Yellowstone. And a few more so people can see ‘em them at the zoo.
Felix Poon: Nate you don’t even know the half of it, because there’s a whole another part of his legacy. Which is the fact that Hornaday was racist.
Nate Hegyi: Really? A 19th century white hunter racist?
Felix Poon: Yeah, Hornaday actually exhibited a human being at the Bronx Zoo.
Felix Poon:, a Black, Congolese man by the name of Ota Benga.
Felix Poon: Yeah, basically a missionary named Samuel Verner brought Benga to the zoo, where Hornaday housed him at the Primate House alongside an orangutan.
Nate Hegyi: Jesus. That’s horrible.
Felix Poon: And he was defensive about it. When Black clergymen expressed their outrage, Hornaday accused them of just looking for “newspaper notoriety.”
Felix Poon: So the Bronx Zoo did like officially apologize in 2020, during the racial reckoning that was happening. And other institutions removed his name from things like plaques and awards that they named after Hornaday.
You know I feel like it’s, like. It’s a lot like what our nation’s capital represents. Right? Congress. The Supreme Court. The Smithsonian, the national Zoo. These are all beloved institutions that are important to our nation’s democracy. And yet, they’re steeped, they’re rooted in racist colonialism so we’re kind of left in present day to try to disentangle it all.
[MUX]
Nate Hegyi: Alright, in the second half of the episode, we’re moving on from Hornaday to look at how zoos have changed, and how they’ve stayed the same.
We’ll be right back.
<<Midroll>>
Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/In, I’m Nate Hegyi - here with producer Felix Poon, who has been giving us the inside scoop on the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, ie: the National Zoo.
Felix Poon: So Zoos have come a long way. They used to be called menageries – basically exotic wildlife prisons that were the personal collections of royalty or rich people.
Nate Hegyi: Did you just call it a wildlife prison?
Felix Poon: I mean literally, animals were held in small jail cells with very little space to move.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, I guess that’s pretty accurate.
Felix Poon: And then fast forward to today, and there are still some private zoos that are pretty horrendous.
Like, do you remember Tiger King Nate?
Nate Hegyi: Oh yeah, of course, who doesn’t?
Felix Poon: But the big accredited zoos most people are familiar with have much higher standards of care and treatment.
Trainer: Bosie, foot. Good girl!
Felix Poon: Is she getting a pedicure right now?
Felix Poon: We’re at the elephant enclosure at the National Zoo, and a big Asian elephant has lifted her hind foot up through an opening in the fence for a couple zookeepers.
Elephant manager: This would lead to an actual pedicure. We check their feet everyday and if they need their nails trimmed or that callus on the bottom of their foot cleaned out that’s exactly what we would do.
Bosie had one the other day so this is just following up with that care she got.
Nate Hegyi: Is she clicker training?
Felix Poon: Yeah yeah, that was a clicker. They use that to–
Nate Hegyi: they do clicker training, I use the same with my dog.
Felix Poon: Yeah anyways, nowadays there are accreditation standards for animal welfare set by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, or the A-Z-A.
To get accredited, zoos have to prove that their animals are getting proper vet care, that their enclosures give them some variety, and that they’re thinking about the social lives of social animals. For example elephants, AZA-accredited zoos have to have at least three females, or two males, or three elephants of mixed gender.
You know, elephants need friends, otherwise they’re not happy.
Kara: They do a lot of swatting at it with their feet or biting at it. I’m not gonna award that. I’m just gonna wait for calm behavior and for them to just touch their nose to the target.
Felix Poon: This is Kara Ingraham. She’s one of the zookeepers in the small mammal house, and she’s showing us how she trains the meerkats with food, kind of like how you’d train a dog. In this case she’s teaching them to recognize their names by using this small plastic pole with a ball on it. She wants the meerkat whose name she calls to touch their nose to it for food.
Archie, target. Good.
So each one of them has a cup of meat. Oscar, target.
So after they do the correct behavior, they each get a little meatball.
Louie, target. Good boy.
Nate Hegyi: Is this a public show?
Felix Poon: No they usually do meerkat training behind the scenes where visitors can’t really see.
Nate Hegyi: So it’s not like a song and dance thing, it’s actual training.
Felix Poon: When do they get the worms?
KI: So we tend to use the worms more for kind of hide in the sand, or put inside puzzle feeders. Kind of encourage those natural kind of digging and foraging and hunting behaviors.
If you guys wanna get some audio of the worm crunching, I’ll probably put a bunch of worms down.
[meerkats eating worms ambi]
Nate Hegyi: Oh man Felix this is making me hungry. Meatballs and worms for lunch today.
[MUX IN]
Felix Poon: Okay so I wanna talk about the elephant in the room now.
Nate Hegyi: Before you even wrote this script you were like, I’m definitely using “elephant in the room.”
Felix Poon: Alright, do you think zoos are good for animals as a whole? Or bad? What do you think?
Nate Hegyi: It’s complicated. We did an episode a couple of years ago about Happy the elephant,and if my memory serves me correctly, Happy was not very happy. And there was an argument about animal consciousness and what rights do animals have. Should animals have the same rights as humans.
I think it’s incredibly complicated. And it’s probably based on the intelligence of the animal? Feels really weird to say that. But that’s what I’m going with.
Felix Poon: So let’s put that aside for now. Let’s start with the pro-zoo camp.
So aside from trying to take good care of their animals, the National Zoo also does conservation work. In fact, conservation is a requirement for AZA accreditation. And zoos have literally helped save species from extinction.
Like, here’s Daniel Frank, an animal keeper with the National Zoo.
Daniel Frank: So as recently as less than 30 years ago black footed ferrets were believed to be fully extinct.
Felix Poon: And the Smithsonian National Zoo played a part along with other conservation agencies to try to save these animals.
Daniel Frank: And what we have done is we have taken those animals in, and bred them, and reintroduced them back into their native environment, where there’s now I believe over a thousand animals we’ve reintroduced into the wild.
And AZA-accredited zoos do research work too. Here at the National Zoo, Public Affairs Specialist Ellie Tahmaseb showed me these big collars.
Ellie Tahmaseb: So this is a radio-tracking collar for an elephant.
It’s quite large. It’s a little smaller than a tractor tire I would say.
Their scientists did tracking studies in Myanmar and their research uncovered elephant poaching, which they’re hoping might lead to law enforcement to crack down on this.
In other cases, zoos are taking in animals that probably wouldn't’ survive in the wild.
Daniel Frank: Polar bears typically historically would be able to raise two cubs at a time. That’s a species normative thing for them to do. Because food is harder to find for them, and the sea ice melts sooner they’re not able to hunt and meet the needs of two cubs at a time. More often than not they have to abandon one cub.
Daniel Frank told me about a polar bear cub that was rescued and rehabilitated by the Alaska Zoo.
Daniel Frank: Because of the time she had with humans and because she never had enough time with her mother she was not a candidate for rerelease. But what she now serves the purpose of just like any ambassador species here that’s a rescue, is that they each tell an individual story.
Nate Hegyi: You know, the same thing actually just happened a couple of weeks ago here in Montana. Um, someone shot and killed a grizzly bear, a sow and her cubs went to a zoo. So zoos strike me as, like, part rehabilitation center for animals that can't survive in the wild. Part conservation helper. Um, is that is that about it? If you're going to be in, like, the pro zoo camp?
Felix Poon: Also that zoos expose the public to wildlife, especially for city dwellers who might not otherwise see animals. Right. Like some people say, that exposure can inspire people to care about or to be more involved in the natural world.
Nate Hegyi: I'll tell you what, Felix. Uh, I fall squarely in the inspired by zoo camp. Uh, we went to a zoo growing up a lot. This was the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin, which also has a pretty sordid history. Um, uh, specifically in the way they treated their elephants. They used to have their elephants in small compounds with, uh, chains around their legs.
Felix Poon: That's depressing.
Nate Hegyi: Yes. And at the same time, I can point to that zoo as being one of the reasons why I'm an environmental reporter.
Felix Poon: Now, there you go.
Nate Hegyi: Because it was my first exposure to wild animals. So I see why they can inspire. And at the same time, I think we're about to get into some of the negatives of zoos.
Felix Poon: We are. We sure are. Uh, you know, zoos aren’t exactly spending most of their money on conservation.
Like the amount that AZA accredited zoos and aquariums spend on conservation, it's just 5% of the amount they spend on operations and construction.
So, you know, to put things in perspective. Plus, there's evidence that some zoo animals are not very excited to be there. Big cats pacing back and forth, giraffes licking their lips nonstop. Yeah. Researchers have documented these compulsive behaviors in zoo animals that seem to be coping mechanisms against boredom, especially in some of the bigger, more charismatic animals that so many people go there to see.
Nate Hegyi: Well, yeah, because some of these animals are used to migrating, you know, uh, hundreds of miles in a year between wintering grounds and summering grounds. And, yeah, it goes back to kind of my argument earlier of like, maybe not all animals should be in a zoo
Felix Poon: And then the other thing some people say is that just like in some animal shelters, zoo animals do sometimes get euthanized for a number of reasons.
Nate Hegyi: What do they get euthanized for, like old age or, there was that one gorilla that was shot. Do you know what I'm talking about? And became a meme? Yeah.
Felix Poon: You're thinking of Harambe.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Felix Poon: So basically for those who don’t know, a little boy fell into Harambe’s enclosure and a zoo worker shot and killed Harambe to protect the boy’s life
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, but then became, like, this huge controversy. And like, there were internet memes and, like, songs
Singer: I want you to come back, is that so much to ask? Harambe.
Nate Hegyi: I mean it became like a whole thing.
Felix Poon: The other uses of euthanasia are, uh, you know, animals are bred at zoos, and apparently sometimes there's too many of them. So zoos will then euthanize their surplus stock, quote unquote.
It happens a lot more in Europe, but sometimes it happens here in the US too.
Nate Hegyi: Did not know that.
[MUX]
Felix Poon: So I think the answer is that as much as we may want to frame zoos as being good for animals, which they are definitely a lot better than they used to be, at the end of the day, they're still really about us, about our entertainment and education, right?
Like a lot of us are willing to accept these as trade offs because without zoos, most animals would just exist in our heads as these abstract concepts from what we see in books and movies.
Kids: Oh oh! Ah ah!
Parent: Okay, alright alright
Kid: Its diet is fruit from–
Nate Hegyi: that brought up some memories. I remember doing that in front of the, uh, in, like, these are like, embarrassing memories that they're bringing up. I remember, like, watching little kids, like, slam their hands on the glass. One of the chimps got so angry that it ended up breaking the glass,
The question I'd have to ask myself is if I if I ever had a child, would I take them to the zoo? And, I don't know
Felix Poon: You know, I think as much as people like the idea of being exposed to pure wilderness or seeing wildlife in their natural habitat. Truth is, institutions play a big role in mediating our relationship with nature.
Nate Hegyi: Which Isn't necessarily a bad thing. You know, like state wildlife agencies, uh, have rules about animals so that we don't hunt them to extinction. And national parks have rules about how you can behave there so you don't end up, you know, climbing on top of a bison and getting killed. So, like, there's there's a good reason why we have agencies mediating our relationship with with animals.
Felix Poon: Maybe the National Zoo is is a good example, right. A taxpayer funded zoo in Washington DC where anybody can come in for free, see some of the most incredible animals on our planet, and then go grab some cow's milk that's been mixed with sugar and then flash frozen with liquid nitrogen.
Zoey Knox: It’s better than I remembered
Felix Poon: Yeah? Maybe they made some improvements. They figured out the dippin’ dots.
Zoey Knox: It lives up to the memory, it’s actually quite good.
[MUX]
Nate Hegyi: That’s it for the show, we’d love to hear about your experiences with the zoo. Have you been to the national zoo?
Shoot us an email or send us a voice memo to outsidein@nhpr.org. We’d love to hear from you.
And speaking of animals, you should know that our second ever Outside/In mug just dropped. It features an original illustration of an almost magical species… the Mexican salamander, also known as the axolotl.
Because here at Outside/In, we like to axolotl questions.
If you want one – and you want to support journalism and public radio while you’re at it – head to outsideinradio.org/donate.
<<CREDITS>>
Nate Hegyi: This episode was reported and produced by Felix Poon. It was edited by Taylor Quimby. I'm your host, Nate Hegyi.
Our team also includes Justine Paradise.
Rebecca Lavoie is Director of On-Demand Audio. Taylor Quimby is our Executive Producer.
Felix Poon: Thanks to Nick Capodice for doing the William Hornaday voiceovers.
Also we’ve got links to read more about the history of the Smithsonian zoo, videos from my visit there, and an opinion piece from Emma Marris about why she thinks zoos are unethical. Those are all at outside in radio dot org.
Music in this episode was by Blue Dot sessions, and Jules Gaia.
Theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Nate Hegyi: Outside/In is a production of NHPR