In 1775, a customer to Laurent Spinacuta's Grande Ménagerie on the annual wintry weather reasonable in Paris could have obvious tigers, numerous sorts of monkeys, an armadillo, an ocelot, and a condor—in all, forty-two stay animals. In Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots, Louise Robbins explains that unique animals from world wide have been universal in eighteenth-century Paris. within the streets of the town, citizens and viewers may notice appearing elephants and a struggling with polar endure. these trying to find strange pets may well buy parrots, flying squirrels, and capuchin monkeys. The royal menagerie at Versailles displayed lions, cranes, an elephant, a rhinoceros, and a zebra, which in 1760 grew to become a massive courtroom attraction.

For Enlightenment-era Parisians, unique animals either piqued medical interest and conveyed social prestige. Their availability was once a boon for naturalists like Buffon, writer of the best-selling Histoire naturelle, who saw strange species in numerous destinations round the urban. Louis XVI observed his menagerie as a manifestation of his energy and funded its maintenance consequently, whereas critics used the caged animals as metaphors of slavery and political oppression amidst the transforming into political turmoil. In her enticing and infrequently dazzling account, Robbins considers approximately each element of France's obsession with unique fauna, from the huge literature on unique animals and the internal workings of the oiseleurs' (birdsellers') guild to how the animals have been transported, housed, and cared for. in accordance with wide-ranging and creative learn, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots stands as an important contribution to the heritage of human-animal kinfolk, eighteenth-century tradition, and French colonialism.