Compare the Meerkat: Seeing and being seen at the Zoo

Last Saturday I went to the human zoo (Headingley during the Otley Run)

This week I went to an actual zoo, one with animals. Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire.

I went for the monkeys but I was unexpectedly taken aback by three things I hadn't expected. A blue butterfly, a black Rhino and some Meerkats.

I did see some primates. I saw a chimp that the person next to me said looked really sad. I thought he was maybe just thinking. Possibly we were both right and he was thinking sad thoughts. I also saw a black spider monkey collecting up pieces of aubergine like a greedy person arriving first at the all you can eat buffet.

There was a sign on one of the animal enclosures which said something like 'Don't bang on the glass. You'll see more if you just remain quiet, watch and wait'. How much of human life is us just impatiently banging on the glass? I wondered

The butterfly and Rhino I saw were at opposite extremes. One was delicate and floating, a beautiful luminescent blue but incredibly fragile; it maybe only lives a few weeks and not even that if it gets swatted by a scared child. Having seen them fly around me, I can understand why Muhammad Ali used to boast that he could float like one.

The Rhino on the other hand looked like every movement was an effort of will and determination. He took longer to get himself in a lying down position than I do with my creaking middle aged frame. Although he had two horns, he could probably wouldn't need to gore me in a fight, he could just crush me. His body was massive, like he was carrying a car on his back. I was imagining the strain on his joints and whether he felt as heavy to himself as he looked.

On the day I went, all the zoo's big name attractions like the Gorillas and Tigers were asleep or hiding (hopefully hiding rather than escaped in the Tiger's case, Jurassic Park alert!) With the tigers missing, I liked the meerkats best.

They were the ones who had properly understood their jobs. Maybe they're just better at being around people since they started making car insurance adverts.

The meerkats uniquely seem to have realised that the point of a zoo is not for us to look at them, it's for them to look at us. The never-ending procession of humans with their packed lunches and snart phones and overpriced ice creams pushing small humans in pushchairs, constantly passing by for their entertainment. Based on the sunshine and showers weather situation on Monday meerkats must think that human behaviour consists largely of taking raincoats on and off.

For meerkats, there's always something worth seeing, and it's important to be able to see it from high up so that you can summon your friends if something interesting is going on.

A lot of the animals at the zoo looked fairly bored and largely underwhelmed. The meerkats look like they're constantly operating at the optimum level of whelmed-ness.

They are brilliant at just paying attention. And so a kind of stand-off developed between me and one meerkat in particular where I paid attention to him and he wouldn't stop watching me. It became like the World Staring Championships. We were having an attention off, a game of attention chicken.

Parents I overheard were often urging their children to notice things, maybe to get more value for money. Just tell them to be more like a meerkat, I thought.

I felt like the meerkat and I started peering directly into each other's souls. It wasn't a Pixar movie though, it was reality, so the meerkat never actually spoke.

But if he had, he might have said:

'Never stop being curious. Life is better that way. Just be still and pay attention, all the answers are there if you just look'

Maybe I shouldn't compare myself to a meerkat. Or to a butterfly or a rhino. But what's the point of having a supposedly bigger brain if you can't imagine or wish for things.

I wish I could move with the lightness of a butterfly, especially when I'm battling gravity going uphill on a run. I wish I could be more like the Rhino and accept uncomplainingly whatever it is I need to carry. And I wish I could pay attention to everything that's going on and not get lost in a world of thoughts, like the meerkat seems to be able to do.