I was reading Aquinas’s commentaries on Aristotle, especially his Physics. In it, Aquinas frequently gives, as an example of animals which do not have locomotion, none other than oysters. Oysters do not walk about the sands or rocks at the bottom of the sea looking for their lunch. They are carried about by water motion or what they need is brought to them by the same waves. But they are definitely alive. They are not plants drawing their needs from roots.

{ First Principles | Continue reading | Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s De Sensu et Sensato }

quote { Sweet Zoo }

photo { Grant Cornett }

{ Nacho Gil | more }

{ Calf with Cats for Ears | Abandoned Veterinary School of Anderlecht, Belgium via animal NY | More: The Horror Labs }

Critics of zoos usually compare them to prisons. Ralph R. Acampora, an associate professor of philosophy at Hofstra University, thinks zoo confinement is closer to pornography. “Both participants in pornography and inhabitants of zoos are slaves to other people’s desire for viewing, for sight,” he explains. All “have their real nature concealed through their exposure,” with zoo animals “reduced to their shapes or colors or stereotypical behaviors.”

{ The Chronicle of Higher Education | Continue reading }

photo { Garry Winogrand, Central Park Zoo, New York, 1967 }