Where have all the monkeys gone? The changing nature of the Monkey Temple at Bristol Zoo

Built in 1928, the domed structure once called the Monkey Temple still stands in Bristol Zoo, UK, the architecture preserved by planning regulations, but the enclosure remodelled and rebranded as the Smarty Plants exhibit. Its transformation is used as an archaeological case study to illustrate how society's changing encounters with "nature" have acted as the inspiration for different styles of zoo enclosure. Colonially inspired and based on the idea of exoticism and the separation of human and animal, the Monkey Temple has been naturalized using a set of material symbols to accommodate it within the modem zoo's ecological vision of nature, integrating humans and animals into a single ecosystem. In microcosm, the shift from Monkey Temple to Smarty Plants illustrates changing material metaphors, from exotic to ecological, as Bristol Zoo enters the 21st century. (c) 2004 International Socieiy for Anthrozoology