Inhumane housing

Over the last few years I've volunteered at a couple of zoos and have learned that much thought and effort is applied to designing habitats for animals. Zoos try to make habitats that are safe for the animals, look like the animals' native habitat as much as possible, and which make the animal feel comfortable. A stressed animal is either sick or dead.

Habitats differ for each species. A habitat for kangaroos is usually a large open space with trees for shade, but few enough trees that the kangaroos' vision and running ability is not obstructed. One enclosure normally has have 5-20 individuals; never just one and never hundreds in such a small area. Food is provided at ground level because most kangaroos don't climb well. Conversely, a habitat for a possum is a cage with lots of branches. The nocturnal animal needs an elevated hiding-hole (such as a hollow log) where it sleeps during the day. Food for the possum is left high up in the branches since possums don't like being on the ground. A cage can only house one or two possums or they get stressed. The two habitats are very different. A kangaroo would not do well in a possum's habitat, and putting twenty possums in a kangaroo's habitat would likewise cause problems.

What about humans? How would a zoologist design a habitat for humans?

They'd first ask where humans typically live and how they spend their time. That's easy. We all know the answer to that. We spend ten hours a day working, come home and watch television, and go to sleep.

Let me make the problem a bit more difficult: How did our ancestors live? Look back about a million years ago to pre-humans. What did they do?

Our pre-historic ancestors probably lived on the plains and savannas in Africa. Some archeologists think they lived right on the edge of densly wooded areas. Using the trees for safety, they would venture out into the plains to hunt and scavenge. Pre-humans stood upright (as opposed to chimps and other great apes) so they could see long distances, looking for prey and predators. If a tree were around they probably would have climbed it to get a better view.

Living in Africa, pre-humans didn't sleep on the ground. (Lions and other predators hunted there.) Sleeping in the trees or some sort of protected caved or outcrop made more sense. (If you've ever wondered why people like to hear birds chirping (or to hear music playing), it's because when the birds stopped singing it usually meant a predator was around. Quiet = danger.)

Humans probably lived in extended families. As with most primates, they lived as an extended family of 10-100 individuals. Large distances separated the family groups, which warred with one another from time to time; strangers were treated cautiously.

What kind of habitats do humans find themselves in today?

We live in small boxes called houses, often built at ground level with few windows. A nuclear family of two to six humans is packed into each box. Because of a combination of economics and over-crowding our habitat boxes are tightly packed next to boxes for other families. The boxes are so tightly packed that within an hour's travel live as many as 15 million humans. Of course, humans only sleep in the boxes. They spend most of their waking time in larger boxes called office buildings and schools. To get from their sleeping box to their daytime box humans travel through well-marked corridors winding between the boxes.

Put like this, our modern habitat sounds more like an ant farm than a savanna, not a place for primates to live. No zookeeper would consider urban or suburban living a proper habitat for pre-humans. The local humane society would be up in arms if somehow zoos resurrected pre-humans and placed them in habitats that looked like urban streets.

Humans aren't that different than pre-humans. Most contemporary houses and their proximity to other houses are, to put it mildly, inhumane. I'm not suggesting that our pre-human habitat be accurate duplicated in modern architecture. (Although I've always wanted a tree house.) Rather, I do suggest that housing meets our instinctual needs, such as: The desire to see long distances, to hear the birds, to sleep off the ground, and to not be overcrowded.