Just like humans animals have rituals to follow. Humans can make rituals on certain days of the week or if you are an athlete you can have a ritual before a game or event. Animals roar or howl at certain times, birds sing in the morning, and when Pi is in the Lifeboat he can count on Richard Parker to entertain him. Animals like regularity just as much as humans because it means giving a sense of security. This also goes into repetition which can train animals and humans. TRhe problem with repetition is that it becomes monotonous and dulls the senses. This is what some zoos use, which eventually gets the animals to think of a zoo as their home. Yet again zoos can seem like paradise, the animals are provided with the regularity that they prefer, the zoo provides food and shelter, which explains why they rarely run away. " Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forvever endured" (Martel, 17)
Wild creatures are at the mercy of nature, zoo creatures live a life of luxury and constancy, they don't have to go catch food or find shelter, they can just sit around in a zoo and get all they need right away. It's just like if someone came to you and told you to be free with just the clothes on your body and some change, you wouldn't want to be free you would like to have a home to live in, it's your own house after all.
Life in the zoo provides a good model to follow for the situation Pi finds himself in now, like the zoo the boat is confining and territory must be marked to keep Richard Parker at bay. As you can see all this knowlegde about zoos has helped Pi survive in more ways than one, he has to feed Richard Parker, clean up after him anmd with the help of the zoos training manual get over the fear of Richard Parker. "I've heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about God and religion" (Martel,16)
To Pi zoos are the best place to grow up in because you have the best playgrounds and t he most fun, there are new things to experience every day. You could spend all day in a zoo just observing the behaviour of each animal and enjoying the natural habitats of each animal, in some ways it's peaceful you can just sit back and enjoy the moment of being in a zoo.
Some people don't realise that zoos are actually not all bad for animals, they help animals live longer and the animals are protected from disease and sickness' and animals can build bond with zookeepers and visitors. After being in zoos for so long animals don't want to leave the zoo, if they leave they usually come back after a while because they can't live in the wild for a long period of time, they don't know how to survive on their own. The animals have grown a routine of being in the zoo, which makes it pretty rare for animals to leave the luxury of living in a zoo. You don't have to agree with zoos, you just have to remember that there are certain benifits to having zoos. " I know zoos are no longer in peoples good graces. Religion faces the same problem, Certain allusions plague them both" (Martel, 21)
