It was textbook material from The Naked Ape. In a gloomy conference room on the fourteenth floor of the Department of the Environment in Westminster last Thursday, two rival groups of males enacted a ritual battle over the Great White Elephant of Regent's Park.
Arms crossed, four DoE men hugged themselves defensively as David Jones, the director of London Zoo, menaced them with the political implications of the closure of this faded tourist attraction through lack of money, as revealed in The Sunday Times last weekend.
Consider the impact, he told them, of having to get rid of 8,000 animals. What would you do with the 63 buildings, nine of them listed for their architectural merit? What will the 23 conservation societies have to say? And the voters?
The DoE men shuffled. Jones shifted tack. There was a way of avoiding this election year public relations disaster. The DoE men relaxed. In came the tea and biscuits as Jones spelled out his plans to modernise the Zoo, displaying animals in semi-natural habitats. Yes, they would cost money, he agreed, but nothing like as much as exiling the Zoo to a theme park in the East End, an idea that has been floating around the DoE for some years.
Paul McQuail, a DoE deputy secretary, retaliated at last. He wanted facts. The Zoo should go away and cost its plans thoroughly.
The confrontation was over and the winner, marginally, was the Zoo. Until then the DoE had resisted all talk of more spending. It was still offering no money, but not dismissing it altogether.
So, perhaps, London Zoo is edging towards survival due to the uproar provoked by The Sunday Times's revelations: that its council had voted, in principle, to close and that plans for an "orderly and structured withdrawal" were being prepared after ministers had turned down requests for money.
The Zoo was jubilant at the public dismay over the report. Attendances rocketed last week by 45 per cent and donations of ú1m poured in. Talk began of a fund-raising rock concert, a partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature, and improving prospects for commercial sponsorship. An advertising agency gave ú200,000 worth of free space.
But for all the public reaction, the central question remains. What is a zoo (the creation of Victorian cultural values) actually for nowadays? If that is solved, perhaps the problem of finance will be solved with it.
The reason why there is no money at London Zoo is that annual attendances are down from 3m in the 1950s to little more than 1m. The crisis has provoked a debate that goes beyond the financial viability of the world's oldest zoo to the ethics of zoos in general and their future role in education, research and the captive breeding of endangered species.
Everyone is agreed on the need for reforms in Regent's Park. But they divide on the question of whether or not commerce and conservation can live in harmony a conundrum illustrated by two hugely successful enterprises that draw the crowds outside London.
Noon is nap time for Timbou. Bridget Wedderburn cradles him under her coat to protect him from prying eyes and climbs on her bicycle for the five-minute ride to her cottage. By the sitting-room fire, she lays him gently down in a playpen where his tiny head rests on a voluminous pillow. He snuggles up to his favourite toy, a cuddly hippo. In seconds, the 11-month-old baby gorilla is asleep.
Timbou gets the nursemaid treatment because his real mother neglected him. The personal touch is evident in the care of all 33 gorillas at John Aspinall's zoo, Howletts, among the hop gardens and orchards of the Kent countryside.
Their cages are vast, stuffed with straw in which they forage for 70 different foods (including papaws, guavas and dates). Their play, like their diet, is enriched by variety: slides built to accommodate ample gorilla bottoms plunge beneath hanging ropes and climbing bars.
The gorillas live in social groups, as they would in the wild, but their keepers give every impression of being part of the family. Wedderburn, who spends her afternoons with them behind bars, even speaks their language: a short cough denotes a reprimand; a rumble in her throat approval.
Aspinall is passionate in his belief that such animals should not be treated as objects of entertainment, and he is planning to introduce some of his young gorillas to the wild.
"The days of the zoo as just a children's recreation ground or a gawp for the public should have long since gone," said Aspinall last week. "They didn't evolve for hundreds of millions of years to be exhibits for humans, to satisfy our curiosity."
But Aspinall, the colourful gambler turned gamekeeper, finances his collection with the interest on ú25m of his own private funds, the results of his gambling career. If a zoo has to stand on its own two feet, as London Zoo is supposed to, it has to make money.
Sixty miles from Howletts, in a cage modelled on one of Aspinall's, a solitary adult silverback gorilla was hugging his knees as children tossed him morsels of hot dog last week. They whooped as he fruitlessly jabbed a small stick at some bread that had fallen out of his reach.
This was Chessington World of Adventure, Britain's most popular zoo. Last year it drew six times as many visitors as Howletts: 1.5m came to see a blend of real animals and artificial ones, scattered among more than 100 theme park rides and attractions. Children love it.
Ralph Armond, Chessington's marketing director, emphasises that it conducts some conservation work and he takes pride in its profitability compared with rivals.
"The difference is we're providing a full day out for a family," said Armond. The average "dwelling time" at the theme park is six and a half hours, while at any zoo it is only two. "Theme parks have enough to keep anyone occupied so you can charge twice what a zoo can charge."
Some critics compare Chessington unfavourably with Howletts. The flip side is that while Howletts and its sister zoo lost more than ú2m last year, Chessington made several millions in its own right. (It is too coy to say how many.)
Is Aspinall right to argue that it is morally wrong to keep animals in cages with no prospect of reproduction or release? Have so many people been disturbed by the neurotic, back-and-forth pacing of big cats and polar bears in zoos that they no longer wish to see such animals at first hand, let alone pay for the privilege?
Or is it simpler than that? Johnny Morris, veteran presenter of the Animal Magic television series, thinks so. "The boys and girls just aren't going. Probably too many other things to do."
Virginia McKenna, the actress and anti-zoo campaigner, believes that wildlife films have opened people's eyes to the cruelty of confinement. "One of the disappointments of a visit to the zoo is that it's not like seeing them in the wild at all."
Her son Will Travers, director of the pressure group Zoo Check, rebuts claims that zoos have an educational value.
Last week, Travers presented the government with a plan to save London Zoo by turning it into a "world life centre" devoid of animals. One idea would be to link visitors by satellite with conservationists in the threatened habitats of the Amazon rainforests, Antarctica and the Serengeti.
"Pie in the sky" was Jones's reaction. He says he is losing patience with "affluent yuppies from the Surrey stockbroker belt" who can afford holidays in Kenya but want to deny others the opportunity of seeing its wildlife at first hand in zoos.
"More than 50 per cent of kids in London don't have access to private transport," he said. "They can't even get out of London. They will only appreciate animals and their care if they can get close to them."
Jones's own ideas for bringing back the crowds include innovative displays that appear to strive for a balance between commerce and conservation, between Chessington and Howletts.
To recreate an African savannah, for instance, would provide more space for fewer animals than at present: giraffes, ostriches, zebra and small antelope. Arguably kinder conditions would have the added benefit of giving the visitor a glimpse of some semi-natural habitat.
Desmond Morris, the former curator of mammals at London Zoo and writer on human-animal behaviour (The Naked Ape), suggests an attraction on the theme of seven wonders of the animal world, including a walk-through monkey jungle and a river where beavers would build their dams.
"The future of zoos is in specialisation: this is not just an economic measure," he said. "The aim is to show people how fascinating the animals are and make them want to protect endangered wildlife."
There are plenty of examples of similar successful specialist initiatives around the world including a ú6m gorilla complex at San Diego (which will devote four acres of prehistoric forest to robotic dinosaurs later this year). There has been international acclaim for a re-created rainforest in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and an "underwater jungle" aquarium in Sydney, Australia.
The sticking point is the money to set them up. Jones says London is the only major city zoo in Europe not to receive a hefty state subsidy. Many of the exciting new displays being developed in the United States are funded by large private donations and commercial sponsorship which London Zoo has struggled to attract.
Aspinall, a supporter of zoo subsidies, nevertheless regrets that the sense of civic pride engendered in American corporations is relatively seldom evident in Britain. "The whole place could be a showpiece and a benefit to the economy, bringing tourists and prestige to the capital," he said. "London is a great city and it should have a great zoo."
But, finally, it comes down to public taste. As a thoughtful zoo vet put it: "People don't feel they've really been to the zoo unless they've seen a lion, a camel, a giraffe, an elephant.
"They don't want to hear about research into a rare Venezuelan tree frog; they want to see a hippo."
