Wattana: An Orangutan in Paris by Chris Herzfeld (review)

Herzfeld attempts to transcend the generic anonymity of captive zoo animals by teasing out the title figure’s biography in Wattana: An Orangutan in Paris. A philosopher of science and founder of the Great Apes Enrichment Project, Herzfeld looks at this particular Bornean orangutan (whose wild kin approach extinction) from a perspective she means to be more insightful than that of run-of-the-mill zoogoers. She renders problematic, but I think insufficiently, the constructs that allow her, or anyone else, to ogle captive animals at will. While the book is full of important information about orangutans and their history in zoos, I found it ultimately frustrating. If stories like this are useful, they are not fun to read, and we do not finally learn nearly as much about Wattana as we do about the narcissistic captors, trainers, and voyeurs: ourselves.

Born in the Stuttgart Zoo (and transferred twice before ending up at Paris’s Jardin des Plantes), Wattana was rejected by her mother, just as she would later reject her own daughter; captive animals often lose parenting instincts. Raised by zookeepers, Wattana was “perfectly integrated” into the mixed community of humans and apes at Stuttgart, Herzfeld suggests (though I am not convinced). We are told that Wattana liked Coke, which she swilled around in her mouth to accentuate the fizz: who wouldn’t love that? Can we atone for captivity by prettifying the cages—providing soda, toys, and iPads (which feature “apps for apes”)? Wattana likes to tie knots: the “lyric qualities” of her handiwork are fascinating to Herzfeld, although not so much to me.

Herzfeld sometimes appears to present an apologia for the theft of animals’ independence. While she acknowledges that imprisonment is “arrogant” and that “everything that makes up an ape’s world is lost forever” in zoos, she also believes that “captive great apes have done much more than consent to enter our worlds: they have shown extreme goodwill in creating an existence for themselves within them. They do not even seem to hold it against us that we have obliged them to do so.” I find this viewpoint naive, counterintuitive. I am pretty sure Wattana hates what people have done to her.