Evolutionary psychologist David Barash considers one reason why people enjoy observing animals:
One of my earliest research projects as a graduate student in zoology at the University of Wisconsin was titled “Who Watches Who at the Zoo?” I sat in front of a naturalistic exhibit of a family group of lion-tailed macaque monkeys (adult male, adult female, a juvenile and an infant) and pretended to watch them while, in fact, recording the conversations among zoo visitors about the monkeys. The results were quite clear: men focused on the ‘other’ adult macaque male (“Look at that big guy!”), women paid particular attention to the adult female, as well as the infant (“Look, honey, there’s the mommy and her baby!”), while children looked especially at their simian counterpart (“How cute, there’s a tiny little monkey!”). One plausible explanation is that people, at least some of the time, look at animals – non-human primates in particular – as reflections, albeit distorted, of themselves.
Recent Dish on zoos here and here.
(Macaque portrait from the “Behind Glass” series by Anne Berry)
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