Suspend the usual platitudes and accepted opinions of the social groups to which you’ve assigned yourselves. Mission accomplished? Now read on.

We’ve seen many beautiful animals over the past 10 weeks in India.

India really knows how to create and maintain national parks the way they should be. The kind where tourists are only allowed in a tiny percentage of the park lands and animals live in the rest according to their natural instincts and behaviors, without threat or fear of their main predator – us.

As it turns out, India also really knows how to create and maintain zoos the way they should be. The kind where the animals have enough space to live their lives as comfortably as possible, while being protected from their precarious reality out of captivity.

Of course the Saraus Crane, that very tallest of birds, might prefer to fly free, and that Bengal Tiger might prefer to roam the tropical and subtropical rainforests chasing prey, but their natural habitats are, sadly, disappearing or have become too dangerous for them.

We humans have been responsible for many of the causes of extinction and the threat of extinction for many members of the animal kingdom (though certainly not all). We have become one of the major causes of their comeback, too.

Wolves and buffalo, verging on extinction in the ‘60s, have made a valiant recovery as a result of protection laws passed in the ‘80s. Severals kinds of frogs, antelope, birds, turtles, and leopards have been saved from extinction by zoos. Yep, zoos.

Seeing wild elephants from a safe distance in Periyar Park creates a very different visual than seeing elephants in the Mysore zoo. That difference makes it tempting to condemn the zoo concept.

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But that condemnation could paradoxically lead to the extinction of a large number of animal species.

I admit to some of my very best memories being the Macaws at the clay lick in the Amazon, the playful Otter family in their natural waters near Sandoval, the Blue Boobies on the cliffs in the Galapagos, the warm weather Penguins in the Patagonia plains…you get the picture.

But I’m happy that the Golden Lion Tamarin, once almost extinct, is thriving in captivity so that my grandchildren can get acquainted. Same for the California Condor and other majestic beasts.

Sometimes generally accepted ideas need to be re-thought.

Just saying.