If our eventual destruction / enslavement at the hands of imperialist aliens is the worst possible answer to the Fermi paradox, the zoo hypothesis is the scariest. Horror movies take advantage of the suspense in the feeling of being seen, and very little can make you feel as vulnerable or terrified as the creepy feeling that there is someone behind you, watching your every move.
And just think: that’s with a human as a villain, maybe someone insane, maybe someone in a mask, and quite possibly someone stronger, faster, and better armed than you. Movies and books branch out into the realm of monsters and ghosts, but at the end of the day, regardless of how much our irrational mind imagines all kinds of hideous creatures and demons in our blind spots, there is a little kind of comfort in the repetition. . Thought of ‘monsters are not real’.
In a universe with aliens, however, that lifeline we cling to might no longer be available. The law of averages has to count for something: not all aliens would be physically terrifying, not all would come out to study or dominate us, and not all would be our intellectual and technological equals or superiors. But some could be. And if they’re even doing something as relatively benign as what the zoo hypothesis describes, there’s still a lot of terror to work with.
What exactly is the zoo hypothesis? It’s a possible answer to Enrico Fermi’s frustrated question from over 50 years ago: If there are aliens in the universe, why haven’t we found any evidence yet?
There have been countless responses to this. They range from boring and standard – ‘there are no aliens’ and ‘if there are aliens, the universe is so staggeringly huge that no conclusive evidence will ever reach us’ – to anthropomorphic: aliens die before us. they are aware of them, either due to war or trying to dominate forces such as nuclear energy that they could not control. The zoo hypothesis says that aliens are watching and studying us, carefully hiding any signs of their existence from us so that their observations can continue unhindered.
And really, that’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever heard of … and that includes the possibility that, with the multiverse and alternate dimensions in mind, there is a world in which Sarah Palin became the president of the United States.
Of course, what makes it even scarier is by applying a couple of anthropomorphisms myself:
Non-stop observation is not what we do. It just isn’t, not even in real zoos. Undisturbed observations can happen in zoos on Earth, yes, in the entertainment part of the entire setup. (And if this innocent enough idea doesn’t slip like hell, boy, I have a book you need to read.) So in human zoos, I suppose some environments may continue as facsimiles of original societies, but then there are the metaphorical, spoiled children and adults who pounded on glass, fed us things we weren’t supposed to, and eventually threw at us. stones. There might even be one or two insane aliens that would make us aware of our imprisoned state and release us, violent, terrified, and not just slightly freaked out with outrage, to the galaxy at large, where they would summarily hunt and hunt us down. killed for being threats like so many wildcats or snakes.
Neither of those scenarios were what I had in mind initially, however now that I’ve imagined them, they also seem particularly gruesome and horrible. No, what I was originally thinking about was the scientific side of animal captivity. We experiment; we introduce external variables to see the reaction on the environment and social structure; we tested various chemicals and lobotomies. And when we finish, we dissect or start a new experiment. When we don’t get the results we wanted, we cut funding.
This is also not a consequence of the use of aliens as a medium for change. I’m not saying we should stop animal testing everywhere and in all its forms … well, I kinda am. Above all, I’m just saying that if we experiment with animals with the justification that they are more expendable than humans, we shouldn’t be too outraged if a superior alien race is similarly minded.
Of course, now that I think about the original subject, zoos, those kinds of science-based situations aren’t a particularly novel kind of horror. Human experimentation has been done, especially in all kinds of non-fiction real-world applications. We’ve all heard about the Stanford prison experiment or the Stanley Milgram experiment that showed quite concretely that the average person is a bit weak and terrible, willing to electrify someone to death if an authority figure says so.
We also have to take into account Mengele’s tests on concentration camp prisoners, as well as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment conducted by American doctors. Human experimentation is reprehensible, but we know it. It is known with rather horrible clarity and on the basis of a great deal of evidence and examples. In essence, it does not have the mystery that our imagination can drag. Books, several books, can be made on these ideas, but it does not have the immediate and unexpected visceral conflict of the darkest belly of a human zoo.
There are so many elements to augmenting the horror, it’s almost as if an argument isn’t necessary. We know that captive animals adapt to accept their incarceration, comfortably if the conditions are right, even if they are not. It’s not very hard to imagine seeing humans doing the same thing, even before the last generation of humans that were once free dies out. But, in a typical zoo, the animals know their situation to some extent; they know they are surrounded by humans, at the very least. It is the examples of when we want to ensure that animals can be reintroduced into the wild that most closely resemble what an up-to-date zoological hypothesis might be. Every now and then there is a viral image of baby pandas being fed by caregivers on panda clients, the idea is that pandas will not become dependent on interactions with humans and will spend all their time thinking that they have just been with other pandas. These photos are always followed by comments about how beautiful the whole montage is.
Apply it to the zoo hypothesis and all of a sudden it’s not cute anymore – it’s an image that could keep you awake at night.
