Interpreting the YouTube zoo: Ethical potential of captive encounters

Yulia Kisora*, Clemens Driessen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

YouTube hosts a vast number of videos featuring zoo animals and humans actively reacting to each other. These videos can be seen as a popular genre of online entertainment, but also as a significant visual artefact of our relations with animals in the age of humans. In this chapter we focus on two viral videos featuring captive orangutans interacting with zoo visitors. The interpretations of ape-human interactions arising from the extensive number of comments posted to the videos are ambivalent in how they see the animals and their assumed capabilities. We argue that the YouTube Zoo could figure as a snapshot of human-animal relations in late modern times: mediating artificial conditions of animals suspended between the wild and the domestic, while offering a screened account of a deeply surprising interaction. The chapter shows the potential of close interactions between humans and animals to destabilise or reinforce the neat divisions between the human and the animal. It also shows the ethical potential of these interactions to either reinforce or question common practices of dealing with wild animals.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAnimals in Our Midst: The Challenges of Co-existing with Animals in the Anthropocene
EditorsB. Bovenkerk, J. Keulartz
Place of PublicationCham
PublisherSpringer
Pages323-340
Number of pages18
ISBN (Electronic)9783030635237
ISBN (Print)9783030635220, 9783030635251
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Apr 2021

Publication series

NameInternational Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics
Volume33
ISSN (Print)1570-3010
ISSN (Electronic)2215-1737

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