For captive gorillas, trees should be available to climb and material such as straw, branches, or bamboo supplied for nest building.
The child can only develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experience 'work'.
If a child finds no stimuli for the activities which would contribute to his development, he is attracted simply to 'things' and desires to posses them.
The whole idea of being in captivity in such limited space, especially in a zoo, causes elephants to suffer. They develop all kinds of foot diseases. They die. They get cysts. Not only is it painful, it eventually kills them.
Beavers bred in captivity, inhabiting a concrete pool, will, if given the timber, fatuously go through all the motions of damming an ancestral stream.
In the Children's Zoo, Enrichment meant presenting the goats with a trash can smeared with peanut butter or dangling keys at the end of a broomstick in front of the cow. The goats would knock their heads around the inside of the can and emerge giddy, peanut butter drunk.
... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.
As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.
There is about as much educational benefit to be gained in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary confinement.
Your children's genes reflect only their potential, not their destiny. It is up to you to provide the environment that allows them to develop to their highest potential.
