Creature Comforts

In interview #880, Jake interviews Lindsay about how she feels about zoos. Below, Nick Park, interviews the animals themselves.

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Click below to read a transcript of the dialogue.

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Polar Bears: Well the zoos are very important to animals. They are a bit like homes, like nursing homes and for poor animals and peoplem, like old people. And there's old animals which are dead. And people in the wild don't have much to eat so they have to kill their own people to have something to eat.

Armadillo: Oh it's very, very good. It's very good. That he comes to (????) We're well looked after and it's a nice position.

Lion: They try to make you comfortable. They try to put you in a quite nice situation with a standard food that looks more like dog food than food proper for wild animals. Alright?

Baby hippo: Well um, most of the cages are a bit small and...rather grotty and everything but the two (???) they've got a good side, they've got a big (????), big pools to play around in, there's lots of them there. They looked really happy.

Turtle: ????????? comfortable I suppose, this place but uh...I've been in more comfortable rooms, yes.

If try to compare the situations and the environment that we live in here and the environment that we live in Brazil, there is a big difference. Here, you live in a very small place with all the technological advances possible. You have everything sorted out, double-glazed and your heating and everything, you know but you don't have the space. In Brazil, you have the space although you don't have all this technoligical, you know, double-glazed and things like that. And you know but um...you have the space. And we need the space to live. We need the space to feel that we are part of the world and a kind of piece of object in a box.

My room is bit too small really and I've got so much stuff in it that I can't get anything new, there's just nowhere to put it.

Gorilla: Well sometimes you just can't get out and about as much as you would like to. You're stuck in for some reason like I'm stuck in today. Yes and you get bored and you get fed up looking at the same four walls.

Turtle: I try to spend as little time in here as possible but I can't actually get out and about. I just sort of escape into books and things.

Lemur: I feel very secure and well looked after, very well looked after and I'm not worried about anything. I know, whatever happens, they'll look after me -- put me where I ought to be.

Polar bears: I think they'd like it in the wild if they were in the wild but I think it's much better to be in bars because, like they said, they get fed, whereas some animals they go for days without food.

Bird: Because animals that are in the circus have to get on boxes and (????) but animals in the zoo they don't have to do anything. They can do their own things like drinking and eating.

Lion: I miss a lot of the foods. I miss the fresh meat. You know, because in Brazil we are prodominantly carnivorous. We are not, you know, vegetarians. And uh, we don't like potatoes, we like meat. We like fresh meat.

Polar bear: My favorite food is, I'm afraid to say, steak. I'd go a long way to go and get a nice steak. Do you like lions as well then? Do you like steak and chips with lions with it? Not with lions, no, I don't like lion steak I prefer the ordinary steak.

Gorilla: I'd like to live somewhere a bit hotter. I don't like getting rained on and I don't like being cold. And I find the here I often get rained on and I'm often cold.

Lion: Where would I like to live and spend most of my life? In a hot country! You know, in a hot country that has good weather and that has space! And that has trees! You know? That doesn't have only grass with pollen that gives me hay fever everyday. I need space with blue skies with that I can't see the sun everyday. Alright? That I have nice weather that I can just have nice water, you know, to dive to swim in. It means a tropical country. Not on an island -- a cold one. It's easy -- any part of the world...but hot! Name it and I'll go.