376 EURAMERICA Quatermain in King Solomon’s Mines (1885), a typical example of the genre, was based on explorer-hunter Frederick Selous, who paradoxically was one of the colonial hunters responsible for establishing wildlife reserves in Africa and Asia that now host safaris for ecotourists who “hunt” with their cameras and prize their photo trophies. Big game hunting remains a favorite sport among international elites and hunter narratives continue to be popular in contemporary magazines and websites devoted to the subject. Despite exposés of some notorious hunts, the allure remains, or even increases, as megafauna become rarer, and therefore more valued.3 Combining these two narratives about zookeeper care and trophy hunter adventure is a third genre of storytelling—that of the live animal collector. From 1870 to 1980, the rise of public zoos in America and Europe required the services of collectors who obtained live wild animals, primarily from Africa, Asia, and South America. Collecting living animals emerged from the eighteenthcentury gathering of specimen fragments and taxidermies for natural history museums and scientific research institutes. Even David Attenborough, arguably the most famous media personality for conservation, began his career as a collector for zoos.4 The practice was phased out in the 1980s when most zoos stopped taking animals directly from the wild and instead traded animals born and bred in other zoos within self-regulating associations. The wild animal capture narrative belongs to a specific period— from the height of colonialism in the early twentieth century to the post-World War II aftermath—and reflects many American and European attitudes toward colonized peoples and territories. In addition, however, it records a transition in perspectives concerning 3 For example, the American dentist Walter Palmer, who went into hiding after receiving wide-spread condemnation and death threats for shooting the famed lion, Cecil in 2015, resumed both his dental practice and big game hunting, boasting of his latest shoots of an Altai argali (Mongolian wild goat) online in 2020. 4 Attenborough featured as a young collector in the television show, Zoo Quest (1954-1963), which Jean-Baptiste Gouyon (2019: 87) suggests was a template for Durrell’s shows.
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