IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB204651103

Animal Feeding, Animal Experiments, and the Zoo as a Laboratory: Paris Ménagerie and London Zoo, ca. 1793–1939: The Zoo as a Laboratory (2022)

Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Volume: 64
Issue: 3
Pages: 705-728

URI: https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/J.CNT.5.132106

DOI: 10.1484/J.CNT.5.132106

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Animal welfare Life sciences Knowledge circulation Knowledge production (modes) Laboratories Animal experimentation 20th century, early 19th century 18th century Paris (France) London (England) Zoological Gardens (London, England) Paris. Jardin Royal des Plantes

This article elaborates a local history of zoo feeding practices in order to shed light on the construction of knowledge at the zoo, its intersection with laboratory developments in life sciences, and the nature of zoo sciences. It relies on the case studies of two of the oldest zoological gardens in the world-the Jardin des Plantes Ménagerie in Paris (1793) and the London Zoological Gardens (1828)-both of which formed parts of major scientific institutions, thereby facilitating research on the dialogue between zoo knowledge and life sciences.The article argues that zoos developed around an experimental paradigm that consisted of testing on animals the (nutritional) variables of their survival within a highly constrained institutional framework. From the interwar period, the empirical nature of the zoo feeding economy was marked by slow and uneven changes, associated with the development of nutritional sciences as well as internal hygiene, pathology, and veterinary programmes. Despite transfers and networks of people, methods, experiments, concepts, and animals between zoos and life sciences laboratories, the former remained too impure as a research site to act as an extension of the latter. Zoos, however, needed external laboratories to support themselves with the scientific legitimacy that their “biopolitical modernisation” (Chrulew) required. In addressing programmatic changes as well as their impact upon the animals, this paper argues that trial-and-error experiments are constitutive of the zoo, contributing towards the definition of the nature of both zoo management and zoo sciences.

...More

Included in

Article Oliver Hochadel (2022) Science at the Zoo: An Introduction. Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (pp. 561-590). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB204651103/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Christian Reiß; (2022)
From Existential Knowledge to Experimental Practice: The Mexican Axolotl, the Paris Ménagerie, and the Epistemic Benefits of Keeping Unknown Animals, 1850–1876 (/isis/citation/CBB494648500/)

Article Hall, James R.; (2015)
Encountering Snakes in Early Victorian London: The First Reptile House at the Zoological Gardens (/isis/citation/CBB001553626/)

Article Mónica Bolufer; Elena Serrano; (2022)
Maritime crossroads: the knowledge pursuits of María de Betancourt (Tenerife, 1758–1824) and Joana de Vigo (Menorca, 1779–1855) (/isis/citation/CBB606779498/)

Article Anna Maerker; Elena Serrano; Simon Werrett; (2022)
Enlightened female networks: gendered ways of producing knowledge (1720–1830) (/isis/citation/CBB578642078/)

Article Francesca Antonelli; (2022)
Madame Lavoisier and the others: women in Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier's network (1771–1836) (/isis/citation/CBB704688080/)

Article Lisner, Wiebke; (2009)
Experimente am lebendigen Leib: Zur Frage der Vivisektion in deutschen und britischen medizinischen Wochenschriften 1919--1939 (/isis/citation/CBB001220576/)

Article Laurence Lippi; (2022)
Un parmi les invisibles du Jardin du roi: Jean-Nicolas Collignon (1762 – v. 1788), premier jardinier voyageur du roi (/isis/citation/CBB462808981/)

Book Harré, Rom; (2009)
Pavlov's Dogs and Schrödinger's Cat: Scenes From the Living Laboratory (/isis/citation/CBB001032978/)

Article Finn, Michael A.; Stark, James F.; (2015)
Medical Science and the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876: A Re-Examination of Anti-Vivisectionism in Provincial Britain (/isis/citation/CBB001422111/)

Article Robert G. W. Kirk; Dmitriy Myelnikov; (2022)
Governance, expertise, and the ‘culture of care’: The changing constitutions of laboratory animal research in Britain, 1876–2000 (/isis/citation/CBB621498687/)

Article Paola Govoni; (2022)
Feminist networks beyond the science wars: the ‘female brain’ in the 1790s and the 1990s (/isis/citation/CBB875771419/)

Book Markus Friedrich; (2023)
The Maker of Pedigrees: Jakob Wilhelm Imhoff and the Meanings of Genealogy in Early Modern Europe (/isis/citation/CBB550229357/)

Book Chris Pearson; (2021)
Dogopolis: How Dogs and Humans Made Modern New York, London, and Paris (/isis/citation/CBB526868753/)

Book Cohen, William A.; Johnson, Ryan; (2005)
Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life (/isis/citation/CBB000830265/)

Article Oliver Hochadel; (2022)
Science at the Zoo: An Introduction (/isis/citation/CBB059184580/)

Article Joan Schwartz; (2022)
Photography: Science, Technology, and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Canada (/isis/citation/CBB200682099/)

Chapter S. Jeyaseela Stephen; (2016)
The Circulation of Medical Knowledge through Tamil Manuscripts in Early Modern Paris, Halle, Copenhagen, and London (/isis/citation/CBB973803100/)

Thesis Kirsten James; (2019)
The Science of Scent and Business of Perfume in Paris and London, 1650–1815 (/isis/citation/CBB140299766/)

Article Marion Thomas; (2016)
Between biomedical and psychological experiments: The unexpected connections between the Pasteur Institutes and the study of animal mind in the second quarter of twentieth-century France (/isis/citation/CBB003898443/)

Article Mayer, Jed; (2008)
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Laboratory Animals (/isis/citation/CBB001030099/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}