The Human Zoo
Chase Williams
With spring coming to an end and graduation coming soon, Hillford Hill High School went on an end-of-the-year field trip to the Smithsonian National Human Zoo. The Zoo had every member of the homo genus such as habilis, erectus, heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, and floresiensis. A senior student named Zachary was livid when he heard about the field trip location, since he considered himself a human rights activist. Zachary’s class filled up a green coach bus and began their trip to the Zoo. Zachary sat directly behind the bus driver, with his friend sitting beside him. He had folded arms, a frown, and tapping feet that hit the bus floor.
“Stop with the feet tapping, Zack. It’s annoying,” Zachary’s friend said. “What’s the problem this time?”
“The problem is that our school’s staff is filled with bigoted, anthropophobic, and insensitive people that would rather send their senior students to a hellscape instead of somewhere normal like the damn aquarium. Or I don’t know, maybe a normal zoo that doesn’t hold actual people captive.”
His friend rolled his eyes as if he had heard this one before.
“Why are you under the impression that they’re being held captive? Most zoo animals are there because they were rescued or are there for research purposes. Speaking of research purposes—here, take a pencil because Mrs. Celine has a question packet for us to complete, and you never have supplies,” Zachary’s friend said.
“You know me best. Thanks, Darell. All humans have brains capable of vast creativity and abstract thought, not just us sapiens. The human brain is a gift from God, and these captive humans should be able to use their gift freely, just like we do.”
“Hey, I don’t fully disagree with that… I don’t hate our genus cousins, and I wanna see them thrive as well. Just lighten up a little. You can’t help how the rest of the world views the other humans, so it’s no point in getting worked up,” Darell said.
“Well, somebody needs to be worked up over these clear injustices,” Zachary huffed. “They need to get out of that prison, and they need help.”
Darell put his left earbud in while Zachary ranted to him for the remainder of the bus ride. The bus's passengers felt the wheels go from smooth terrain to bumpy as the driver made a detour into a grass field. After a few feet, Zachary and Darell could fully see the zoo sign.
Mrs. Celine got out of her seat to get her students' attention.
“Alright, everyone, headphones out; tap your neighbors to get their headphones out. Okay, is everyone listening? So, the zoo managers told me no phones or cameras are allowed, so be prepared to put them in whatever container they have. Next, despite it being the end of the year, this is still class, and your work will be graded. Make sure you guys stop at every exhibit, fill out y’all’s questions, and then give me the papers when we get back to the bus. And one last thing: be prepared to see some unnatural, abnormal things when we go inside. The sub-humans don’t believe in clothing, privacy, or common sense. Questions, comments, concerns?”
“No,” the class said collectively.
The bus driver parked in the designated parking lot, and the passengers left and walked to the zoo entrance. The grass was perfectly mowed, classical music played from the speakers, and the air smelled like a typical zoo. The entrance wall was covered in glass panels with bronze, ornate cast aluminum panels in front of them. The wall had two chrome doors about forty-two feet tall and seventeen feet wide. These giant chrome doors would’ve been better suited for giants, as the doorknobs stood taller than any average person. The wall's name was professionally carved at the top of the doors and read, “Smithsonian National Human Zoo.” In front of the doors were a woman and man sitting at a wooden table, playing chess, both wearing all black. The man sported a full suit and tuxedo while the woman had on a long black dress with black high heels. Two long stone slabs sat perpendicular next to the woman and man and spanned the entire wall width.
On top of the stone slabs were hundreds of flowers in pots or vases. A wall fountain from the top of the building spewed water that landed in a drainage system behind the stone slabs.
Next to the man and woman was the first zoo informational sign. It read, “Homo sapiens, the species to which all modern human beings belong. Homo sapiens are one of several species grouped into the genus Homo. Still, it is the only one that developed true intelligence. Humans are characterized by hairlessness, bipedalism, language, creativity, and high intelligence. Our researchers at the Human Zoo have concluded that the hominids inside are to be considered sub- human.”
“Okay, guys, there goes the first informational sign. Don’t forget to answer any questions in the packet,” Mrs. Celine told the class.
The left door slowly swung open, and a Zoo employee came out and said, “Y’all from Hillford Hill High?”
Everyone nodded, so the employee brought out a bucket and directed everyone to give up their phones or cameras. Once everyone’s electronics were confiscated, the employee waited for everyone to come inside to shut the door behind them. Zachary was one of the first to go inside the zoo, and to his surprise, there were no exhibit signs, no restaurants or bathrooms, and no people in cages. The zoo was an open grass field with five football stadium-sized amphitheaters that highly resembled Roman colosseums. Around the colosseums were several black trailer trucks with police tape around them. The class commented on the odd sounds coming from the black trailers. These colosseums varied in size but were also far away from each other, so Zachary, Darell, and some classmates decided to go to the closest and smallest one first. The rest of the class went to the furthest and biggest colosseum.
“Fix your face, Zach. You have to admit, this is the most unique zoo you’ve ever seen,” Darell said.
Zachary replied,“I’ll admit it, I thought their captivity for public display would be a lot smaller and more cramped, so it’s nice to see that they made their environment big enough. But I’m more concerned about what’s in these trucks around here.”
“Maybe it’s supplies for them? I’m sure we’ll find out once we get inside,” Darell said. Zachary, Darell, and the other students arrived at the entrance to the smallest colosseum.
The entrance had no door, only an escalator going up in a dark room. As the group rode the escalator, electronic screens installed into the walls of the colosseum began to cut on and show information about the species of humans living there. The screens read, “Homo floresiensis, discovery date: 1209, where: Asia, when: about 100,000 years ago to present, height: 3 feet 6 inches, weight: 66 lbs.
“The hobbit people,” Zachary says.
After a long escalator ride, the group finally made it to the top of the colosseum, where they could safely view the homo floresiensis located on the stage floor. A glass dome with a sliding door surrounded the stage floor for extra precautions so the zoo visitors could willingly go inside the exhibit. The group, unexpectedly including Zachary, oohed and ahhed over the large, plentiful landscape the zookeepers made for these humans. A large river sat in the center, taking up about fifty percent of the exhibit. The “river” was more like a public toilet as it was filled with feces and urine. The other fifty percent was filled with tall jungle trees that had vines covering the trunks and vegetation like berry bushes and flowers. Most of the group struggled to find zoo animals for a while. At the same time, a few reported seeing quick flashes of something swinging from a tree. Suddenly, a siren blasted and loud, heavy machinery sounds creeped closer to the right side of the colosseum. The sliding door on the glass dome opened, and one of the black trailer trucks came in. Workers left the truck to release a hoard of giant rats, capybaras, squirrels, and baby elephants. The top of the jungle trees all shook like maracas and downpoured a slew of miniature hominids. They jumped down from branch to branch, then down to the floor, where they started their pursuit.
“Oh! There they go, Zack, over there! How are they surviving that fall?” Darell asked while nudging Zachary. “You heard me, Zack? You see them? Zack?”
Zachary was dumbfounded and disturbed by what he saw.
The rest of the class could be heard saying, “Oh, look at the little shits go. Why are they galloping in between running? Where are their shirts? It ain't that hot outside yet. No, not the little baby elephants!”
The small hominids pounced on the rats and capybaras with their tiny daggers and executed their prey. Some of the large rodents put up a fight as they used their incisor teeth to gnaw the arms of the few unlucky hominids. They left the elephants alone for the time being but dragged their prey back to the jungle, where they became harder to see again.
“I hope the rats didn’t give them a goddamn infection. Did they think of that?!” Zachary shouted.
“Whoa, dude, chill. What the hell?” Darell said, backing away from Zachary.
“Hey, Zach?” Mrs. Celine said.
“Oh. Um… yeah? What’s up, Miss C?”
“Maybe if you walk around and find some informational screens, you wouldn’t be so triggered by what’s happening. This is why I warned everyone, but really you in particular, before we came here.”
With a look of embarrassment, Zachary walked away to look for some signs. Darell tactically stayed behind as he became more irritated with his friend. Zachary read the history, morphology, and habitat of the small hominids.
“Maybe their hunting traditions aren’t that new and crazy,” Zachary said to himself. Despite some clarifications, he still scoffed at the uncleanliness of the river. The class made their way to the next colosseum. It was slightly larger but was covered in blood stains. Darell decided to catch up with Zachary and walk with him.
“Cool outburst. Feel better?” Darell asked.
“Look, sorry for embarrassing you by association, but my outburst was valid. Did you see the ones that got bit?” Zachary replied.
“Yeah? Did you expect them to not defend themselves? Wouldn’t you bite a dude trying to kill and eat you?” Darell said.
“It’s not about that. There’s no point in giving them live prey if they don’t need to hunt anymore.”
“See, this is my point, because how do you know that? Since when have you been an expert on the homo floresiensis diet? Bro, if you really want to help your genus cousins, you have to learn their struggles instead of what you think they are,” Darell said with finality.
Zachary scoffed and walked faster. The unamused Darell decided he was over Zachary’s attitude, so he went in a different direction. When Zachary reached the blood-stained colosseum, he traveled up another escalator with informational displays.
The screens read, “Homo Erectus.iscovery date: 1207; location origin: Northern, Eastern, and Southern Africa; Western Asia, East Asia, time period: between about 1.89 million years ago to present; height: 4 feet 9 inches - 6 feet 1 inch, weight: 88 - 150 lbs.”
As Zachary and his group moved up the escalator, they all began to smell something that was less tolerable than they had ever smelled before. Once at the top of the colosseum, the group bore witness to hundreds of dead and mutilated bodies inside the exhibit. Zachary began tearing up. Some students from the group hurriedly left because of the nausea, and some seemed disturbed beyond words.
The exhibit had a small batch of tall trees tucked in the top left corner; grass, bushes, and a medium-sized pond in the left half of the colosseum; sand, desert plants, and a few zebras on the right side. Another glass dome covered the colosseum. It was clear that the hominids split themselves into two factions: an arboreal, forest faction and a desert faction.
Zachary quickly searched for informational screens to clear his confusion. He discovered that their exhibit was meant to resemble South and East Africa, where these particular hominids had been taken. He also found these two factions were naturally aggressive towards each other due to resource issues.
The two factions minded their business for a while. The people in the forest drank from their pond. They ate whatever food they could find in the trees or bushes whilst the people in the desert feasted on zebra carcasses and homo erectus carcasses. The only thing they had to drink was blood since the forest faction occupied the pond.
The same siren from before went off, and the feeling of dread filled Zachary’s stomach. The zoo animals ran to their respective right and left sides of the colosseum when they heard the siren. The door of the dome slid open and the black trailer truck backed in to let out several S.W.A.T. soldiers. The soldiers surrounded the truck to protect the zoo workers while they prepared the zoo animals' supplies. A team of ten people came out with twenty young zebras on leashes. They let the zebras loose on the desert side and another team came out with a hose and several pool nets. The team cleaned and filled the pond on the forest side. Once the zoo workers were done, they returned to the trailer, and the S.W.A.T. team followed closely behind. After the truck left, the hominids all moved back towards the center of the colosseum. Both factions noticed that what they desperately needed was right across from them. Both factions darted at each other with no hesitation, and chaos erupted. The hominids fought and killed each other over the supplies. Some successfully crossed to the other side to eat or drink, but they were soon stopped by the owners.
“This is disgusting, I’m done here,” Zachary said, leaving the colosseum.
Zachary quickly walked to the next colosseum but decided to skip to the biggest one instead of continuing to tour the smaller ones. Once he got closer, he noticed that smoke beaconed from the top of the colosseum, and it was the only colosseum without a glass dome on the top. Zachary walked inside and traveled up the escalator. The informational displays read, “Homo Heidelbergensis. Discovery date: 1189, location origin: Europe, possibly Asia (China), Africa (Eastern and Southern), time period: between about 700,000 years ago to present, height: 5 feet 2 inches - 5 feet 9 inches, weight: 112- 136 lbs.”
Zachary reached the top and was relieved to see no violence but rather the opposite. The colosseum resembled a small town instead of the wilderness outside, with hundreds of tiny wooden houses. A long stream of water stretched across both sides of the colosseum for all hominids to share, and crops also grew next to the water stream for them to eat. The upper right side of the colosseum had a farm that kept sheep and swine. The hominids bred, shed, and milked their livestock. They even made clothes out of their livestock. The upper left side of the colosseum had a cemetery where a few of the hominids could be seen wailing over the loss of their loved ones. The bottom left side had hay barrels and haystacks that the hominids used for several purposes.
Mrs. Celine went to the Heidelbergensis Colosseum to check on Zachary. “Zack, you getting that packet filled out? Don’t worry about doing the homo erectus section. I wouldn’t make y’all sit in that cesspool,” Mrs. Celine said with a light laugh.
“Yes, Ma’am. I just have to go to the other two, and I’ll be done.”
“Great. Do you think I can ask you a personal question?” Mrs. Celine asked. “Go for it.”
“Why do you care so much about them? The sub-humans. Did they save your family from a fire or something?” she questioned.
“No, they didn’t save my family from a fire. I care about them because they are oppressed people that need saving. I mean, look at them; they’re just like us. They wear clothes, cook, mourn, build, and innovate. They should be treated equally, considering we evolved before them. Like, how is it that the youngest human species have the right to treat the older human species like trash and nothing more than another mindless animal?” Zachary finished with a huff.
Mrs. Celine raised a brow. “I see. They need you to save them in particular, right? A white, seventeen-year-old young man?”
“I mean… yeah. I don’t see why not. I don’t have to be the only one, but I would like to be a part of their future liberation.”
“Okay, Zack. I think that’s pretty noble. Just remember, a savior must have a plan for saving. You’d better have one,” Mrs. Celine said, walking away.
Zachary began to read the informational signs to fill out his packet. As he walked, he saw a person sitting alone in a brown bomber jacket with black jeans and black boots in the distance. As he came closer, he could see that the person was also wearing large black sunglasses and a black baseball cap. Zachary sat next to them and remained quiet for a few moments.
“Yo brown jacket, what’s up? How are you doing? My name is Zack.”
No response.
“You got a name?” No response.
“Okay, rude… I don’t recognize you from my class. Do you work here?”
“Yes,” the mysterious person responded.
“Oh, cool. What are you doing?”
“Recruiter.”
“Cool, well, nice talk. Have a good one,” Zachary said as he began to walk away.
“What is class like?” the mysterious person asked.
“Huh? Class? I mean, it’s… classy? Probably still the same since you graduated. Why?” Zachary asked, sitting back down.
The mysterious person removed their sunglasses and replied, “Never been.”
“Woah, what the hell. Hey, don’t be offended, but I have to ask this. Are you, like, human? Your brow ridge is more pronounced than probably any human I’ve seen.”
“No, not a modern human, no. But human nonetheless,” the mysterious person said.
“Wait, you’re an archaic human? That can speak? English?!”
The mysterious person pointed down to the hominids below to indicate what type of human they were.
“Most of us can speak. It’s a matter of being taught. Some of the Neanderthals even speak Spanish and German,” the zoo animal said.
“Holy shit, what? Dude, we need to get you out of here.”
“Why would you want to do that?” the zoo animal asked.
“Because you guys are literally trapped in glorified cages. The rest of the world considers you guys to be mindless, vicious brutes who would be better classified as monkeys than humans.”
“Trapped? Zachary, do you know about the lives of the ‘other’ humans who aren’t in the zoo?” he asked.
“I um… I guess I don’t.”
“There are more laws protecting dogs than there are protecting archaic humans. We are allowed to be sold and used as property. A large majority of us are slaves, working all day whilst being beaten, killed, and humiliated. If not slaves, then we are simply just another prey animal waiting to be eaten by whatever predator is close by. Although the zoo is far from perfect, we are at least not being forced to do unwanted labor. Plus, the only thing that hunts us here is each other. It’s not much, but any archaic human living in this zoo would be considered the lucky minority. Why would we leave?”
Zachary had no response.
“It’s flattering that you want to see us thrive. But let me tell you something, Zack. You shall not save us. You cannot save us. We will save us. We’ve always saved us. If you truly care about our well-being, you will listen to our needs rather than tell us what we need. Do you understand?” the zoo animal asked.
“Yeah. I apologize. I didn’t notice how self-centered I was actually being.”
“Good. Apology accepted. Now, stand in front of me and come shake my hand,” the zoo animal said.
Zachary stood in front of the person to shake hands. When the two made contact, a trap door activated underneath Zachary, and he plummeted to the zoo exhibit.
He woke up unscathed, since he'd fallen onto a haystack that was set up by the hominids. He screamed and yelled for help, but of course, no one who was that high up could possibly hear him.
His class tried to find him after the field trip, but they soon gave up.
“Darell, where’s your friend, man? The bus leaves in thirty minutes, and I’m responsible for him. Where’s the last place you saw him?” Mrs. Celine asked.
“The last time I saw him, we were walking to our next colosseum, but he was still complaining about the unfair treatment of the archaic humans. If you ask me, he probably got sick of this place and decided to take a taxi home.”
“Damnit. Well, tell him to submit his packet in tomorrow’s homeroom, or he’s getting an E on it!” Mrs. Celine said.