Harriet Ritvo

When in 1679 a London woman swung at Tyburn for bestiality, her canine partner in crime suffered the same punishment on the same grounds. King James I ordered a bear that had killed a child to be baited to death, and rural shepherds frequently hanged dogs caught worrying their flocks. The Merchant of Venice included a reference to “a wolf, hanged for human slaughter” sufficiently cursory to suggest that Shakespeare’s audience recognized animals as appropriate participants in formal judicial proceedings.

The ultimate measure of the tiger’s unregeneracy was its fondness for human flesh. Many tigers living in the populated parts of India and Ceylon routinely preyed on domestic animals and occasionally became man-eaters. Some turned to human prey because they were too sick or old to catch faster and less dangerous quarries. Most, however, were thought to be “cattle-lifting tigers” who had once “summoned up courage to attack the herdsmen,” and thereby added a tasty new item to their diet.

The most natural way for most visitors to interact with the animals was to feed them, an act which symbolized both proprietorship and domination. Most zoos encouraged this activity. The first elephants in the collection of the London Zoo were reported to “have a keen relish for buns and biscuits, which are vended on the spot for their benefit and the gratification of visitors.” Their successors shared the same tastes. When the celebrated Jumbo was about to depart for the United States, his admirers expressed their regret with farewell gifts including fruit, cake, oysters, and a variety of alcoholic beverages.