Hologram Zoo in Austin Beats Traditional Zoo Cages, But Still Has Room to Grow

Jumping at the chance to witness a trendy new wave of technology in real life that may help decrease animal suffering in the future, our team recently visited Austin’s newest virtual interactive animal experience in April: Zoocade, a hologram zoo.

Unlike a traditional zoo, which houses hundreds of animals in restrictive, artificial, and unstimulating captive exhibits, Zoocade provides 3-D animal graphics with surround sound on giant screens, which (perhaps counterintuitively) foster a more realistic experience by giving visitors the opportunity to view these animals in their natural habitats, happily engaging in species-specific behaviors, living in natural social groups, and eating natural foods.

Upon entering the indoor zoo, we were presented with three different themes for our zoo experience: Africa, Australia, or dinosaurs. We chose Africa, which included several guided walk-throughs in an immersive tunnel with floor-to-ceiling screens. With help from our complimentary 3-D glasses, we were instantly transported to an African savannah, where we saw and heard elephants, lions, giraffes, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, gorillas, chimpanzees, flamingos, gazelles, ostriches, wildebeests, and zebras.

A Fun, Interactive Experience

The experience was electrifying and provided much more action than most people see in real life at a traditional zoo; instead of mostly just seeing the bigger animals lounging around, bored and unhappy, we got to see a full-grown rhinoceros charge us, a lion roar at full volume, gorillas seek shelter during a thunderstorm, and lions run after gazelles in a thrilling chase.

After the tunnel, we explored a few other stations, which provided birds’ eye views of small and large animals on screens placed on the floor and ceiling. These stations also incorporated educational audio clips for each video segment, which taught us about many of the smaller animals’ roles in the ecosystem, like dung beetles, frogs, birds, and meerkats.

Next, we entered an immersive marine themed hologram room. We were given special 3-D glasses and motion wands, which allowed us to plunge into the ocean and interact with life-like hologram animals in educational games. The games (mostly geared towards children, but equally as fun for adults, in our opinion) taught us about the process of seahorses rapidly changing color to blend into their background (also known as camouflage) to hide from predators.

In the game, we used the motion wand to find each seahorse and help them camouflage quickly to avoid being eaten by sharks. We also learned that parrot fish are named for their beak-looking mouth and vibrant scales, and that some whales have been aged by removing and studying the harpoons that were lodged into them by human hunters over 200 years ago. Lastly, we helped clean up trash from the ocean floor with our motion wands to prevent marine animals from consuming harmful objects and understand the negative impacts of pollution.

While Fun, the Experience Could Benefit from a more Intentional Educational Program

While this virtual zoo experience was incredibly fun and already represents a great alternative to visiting traditional zoos, we think that future hologram zoos could lean more into providing more intentional education about animal biology, behavior, and wildlife conservation. We would love to see more on-screen exhibits that help people understand the main threats that are driving animals towards extinction in the wild and what people can do to help decrease the severity of these threats. To accomplish these goals, we would recommend that future hologram zoos seek out guidance from wildlife experts when crafting virtual exhibits to better capture authentic animal behavior to tell the unique stories of their lives in the wild.

We hope that, in the interest of protecting wild animal welfare and conservation, more people will choose to visit venues that use virtual animals. Perhaps an increase in hologram zoos will help reduce the demand for traditional zoos, which only fuel the false belief that wild animals exist solely for our entertainment and financial gain. Hologram zoos offer the best possible scenario: animals can remain in the wild while we can continue to appreciate and learn about them safely and ethically.

Keep Wildlife in the Wild,

Devan