Name: Zoological Information Management System.
Age: Eight.
Appearance: Zoo Tinder.
Let me guess. It’s an app that matches couples who want to dry-hump next to the giraffe cage. If only. In actual fact, the Zoological Information Management System – Zims for short – is a piece of software designed to help horny animals hook up with each other.
This sounds a bit dodgy. I promise it isn’t. Got an elephant with an itch it can’t scratch? Check out Zims and it will find you the right elephant to give it the trunky rumpy-pumpy it has been looking for.
Yeah, this isn’t helping. Oh, fine then, it’s a database of 10m animals from 22,000 different species that was created in order to promote genetic variety, with a view to improving the adaptive ability of a species.
Pardon? Incest is bad and this stops it.
Wow, none of this is sexy at all. Sorry, but it is important from a zoological perspective. Having a unified database of all captive animals – containing their age, pedigree, medical records and diet – should help to ensure the survival of all manner of species.
This sounds like that Channel 4 show Married at First Sight. That’s a very good analogy.
Doesn’t almost every match on Married at First Sight end in acrimonious failure? Yes, but that’s only because humans are stupid and picky. Zims, on the other hand, is already bearing fruit. It matched two Sumatran tigers in 2012 – one from Canada and one from Australia – who have since had two cubs in London zoo.
It almost sounds romantic when you put it like that. Yep. Two beasts, rutting for procreation while a busload of horrified children look on. It’s basically a Mills & Boon novel.
Hang on, why London? That’s just how zoos work. They don’t own the animals. If another zoo needs them, their current zoo has to give them up.
A date, a holiday and some nooky. It’s practically Take Me Out. Hardly. We’re talking about a system that allows a procession of unthinking creatures to get shipped around the world in order to gurn and drool and hump at the behest of an unseen authority figure and ... oh, I get your point. Yes, you’re spot on.
Do say: “Darling, my animal heart will for ever be intertwined with yours in the stars above.”
Don’t say: “So, let’s bonk in a cage for increased genetic diversity.”
