San Francisco Zoo is Failing Its Primates
In a city of progress, mandrills, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans remain trapped in the past.
These days, I’m buried in the fight. Filing records requests, building coalitions, sitting through hours of public meetings, reading the latest zoo drama. It’s easy to get caught up in the campaign—the strategy, the politics, the paper trail. To treat it like a systems problem, a matter of governance and accountability.
And then I go to the zoo.
And I remember what this is really about.
The mandrill still sits in that barren pit, staring into his hand.
The orangutan is still sequestered on that concrete island.
The chimpanzees still live in yesterday’s failure.
While we debate policy and negotiate reform, they stay there.
I spent a day at the San Francisco Zoo with photographer Jack Gescheidt, whose camera captured what my words could only try to hold. What began as an attempt to capture the animals’ stories became something else: an act of bearing witness. There’s a difference between knowing and seeing—between understanding suffering, and facing it.
The mandrills live in a pit. That’s not poetic license—it’s a literal pit. A deep, concrete enclosure with almost nothing to do, nowhere to go. One older male sat for an hour staring at his own hand, as if trying to remember what it was for. A female kept banging on the door to the off-exhibit area. Over and over. She was desperate to leave the exhibit, visibly frustrated. Animals should never be forced on display, especially when the display feels like punishment.
The orangutans live on two 10-by-10 islands—not lush, leafy refuges, but barren relics of another era. The exhibit, built 75 years ago, offers no real trees, no complexity. Just concrete, metal, a few fire hoses, and some burlap bag. Sometimes they put the bag over their heads—not as play, but, I imagine, as a way to hide. From the sun. From the stares. From the years. Years spent with little to no outdoor access, unable to fully extend their arms, confined to dark, rat-infested holding areas. What does it do to a mind like theirs to live like that?
Across from their moat, money is being spent—not on real improvements, but on what one staffer wryly called an “art installation.” A couple of fake concrete trees, surrounded by tropical plants already browned and dying. That’s the upgrade. A cosmetic fix in a place that needs a transformation.
Even the keepers—the ones who spend the most time with these animals—are frustrated. I overheard one say, “Welfare standards have changed,” their tone heavy with resignation. They weren’t making excuses—they were naming the problem. Many of them want better, but like the animals, they’re trapped inside a system that won’t change fast enough, with management who may not care to change at all.
Then there are the François' langurs, locked in some of the smallest, most inappropriate cages I’ve seen in a U.S. zoo. Chain link, no space to leap, nothing soft or natural. These are sensitive, arboreal monkeys—creatures built for motion, for canopy and cliffside. In the wild, they swing through limestone forests in tight-knit family groups. Here, they can barely move.
The chimpanzees—who once spent decades marooned on a 10-by-10 slab of concrete—have slightly more room now. But only a few remain, a far cry from the rich social groups they need to thrive. One laid motionless for a long time. Another stared into space. I don’t know what they were feeling, but I know what I felt.
The gorillas are confined to outdated, overexposed enclosure—concrete, fake rocks, and sparse patches of grass that offer no real cover. The Zoo’s own website notes that gorillas in the wild prefer dense ground-level vegetation, yet their habitat provides none. Visitors surround them on all sides—phones out, voices raised. There’s nowhere to retreat, no sanctuary from the stares. The viewing glass is streaked with water stains, cloudy and hard to see through. One female turned her back to us and sat by the closed door to her off-exhibit space. A quiet act of resistance. Or maybe, still mourning the loss of Oscar.
All of these animals—great apes, Old World monkeys, our closest living relatives—share more with us than we like to admit. In the wild, they use tools, solve problems, form complex family bonds. They play. They mourn. They pass culture down from one generation to the next.
Chimpanzees have been known to grieve for years. Orangutans have been observed using leaves as gloves and branches as umbrellas. Gorillas hum while they eat and comfort one another with gentle touches. Mandrills live in intricate social hierarchies and communicate with a rich repertoire of facial expressions and vocalizations.
These are not simple creatures. They are not here for our entertainment.
So why are they still in these cages?
The answer lies in a legacy of indifference. A city-owned zoo that hasn’t evolved. Exhibits built in the 1940s and earlier still house some of the world’s most intelligent beings. Even recent improvements feel like Band-Aids on broken bones.
Sometimes the problem with this zoo is just the concept. But sometimes, like on this day, it’s the reality.
The breath of an orangutan who has very little to climb.
The banging of a mandrill on a door that won’t open.
The blank stare of a chimpanzee who has run out of things to do.
Jack and I left the zoo with a lot of photos. But mostly I left with a question:
What would it look like if we treated these lives as sacred?
Not as exhibits. Not as talking points. But as lives.
Real ones. With needs and wants and the capacity to suffer.
That question hasn’t left me since.
I hope it never does.