Top 5 Ways to Help the Zoo Community

Hi there! If you're reading this, there's a pretty good chance that you're a zoo. And as a zoo, you're part of a small and tight-knit community of other zoos all trying to make the world a better place for our two-legged peers and for animals in general. And while that goal is great and wonderful and incredibly lofty, it's also very hard to break down. If a group of people have a goal of digging a very deep hole, it's pretty easy to understand what to do to help, start digging. But, if your goal is to do something like go to the moon, it's not like it really helps no matter how high or how often you jump. Our goals are much more like the latter. But, that doesn't change the fact that you still really want to contribute to the cause. What do you do? Well, today I want to talk about the 5 best ways to help the zoo community and cause, so that it's as simple and easy to do as picking up a shovel. 
 
 
 
1) Create something
 
If you're a long time reader of the magazine, it might come as a plot twist to you that "Create Something" is just its own singular category, instead of breaking it down into writing, making music, drawing, etcetc. But, we're going big picture here! Still, let's start with the basics and most direct ways to help the community. And that's by just making something for the community! Chances are you've seen some of the amazing pictures drawn by artists like Toxic, Soren, Milk, or some of the other amazing zoo artists that are around the community. Pictures are one of the best ways to pass information across the internet. They really are worth a thousand words! But, even if you're not an artist, there's plenty of other things you can create too. People like Zipwok and Konny and Cookie Cat are creating amazing music that really inspires people. People like Eggshell and Pawful are writing, whether that's stories or articles or whatever. Helping to entertain and also explore big ideas that are hard to get across in a tweet or a chat room. All of that is incredible as far as creation goes. 
 
But, there's even more that we can talk about. Those are all the basic things, but they're far from the only things that you can create. There are people out there making zoo stickers, zoo jewelry, zoo bongs (not sponsored by Epiphiny but hey check them out if you wanna), zoo graffiti. Hell, I've seen some half decent zoo woodworking. The possibilities are endless. If you can make something, you can make it in service to the community in a cool way.
 
 
 
2) Donate
 
Listen, I love money as much as the next raccoon. Running a magazine like this has costs involved. We have a server to pay for, a domain to try and keep. Not only that, but creating this all takes a lot of time. I work a full time job on top of running the magazine, as does Alissa, our editor-in-chief. And I think looking at Toggle's ZooTT schedule would probably give most people a stress induced heart attack immediately. All of this is a lot of work, and we love doing it don't get me wrong. But, hey, if you really love what we're doing and you want to contribute, you can always show your appreciation monetarily. If you don't have money to spare, absolutely don't feel like you have to, but if you're someone that's been having a good year and you want to share the love, I'm sure any zoo project would be happy to put a few bucks into the new laptop jar. 
 
But, money isn't the only thing you can donate! You can also donate something arguably even more valuable, and that's your time! Maybe you don't know how to create something on your own, but if you're willing to pick up some new skills, there are always lots of things around that just need pure time spent to get going. Brainstorm a really cool episode idea and pitch it to ZooTT, with an outline and a few scripted bits you think would be interesting. Learn how to mix and team up with a musician that isn't really producing right now. Teach yourself how to use Photoshop and help other people set up graphics for their projects. Get into a zoo space and offer to moderate. It's very rare for a project to exist as a result of one person. We're literally just an online magazine and a Discord server and we have a team of ten-ish people, with some donating a lot of their time, and some just chipping in when they have a couple hours to spare. A lot of people working together does more than anyone could on their own, and you don't necessarily need to know how to do anything incredibly technical to help out. 
 
But okay, I hear you, you don't know how to make anything, and you don't want the responsibility or have the time to try and help with a bigger project like that. Well, guess what, a lot of these projects are for an audience, and so in a sense, you can still donate your time by engaging with those very projects from a more public angle. Listen to Zoo & Me, read articles, hang out in zoo spaces and do your best to keep them fun and lively. The more attention that any zoo project receives, the more it's achieving its goal. Just being an active and positive member of a community space does a lot to help the community on its own.
 
 
 
3) Support animals
 
That's right! If you want to support the zoo community, you don't necessarily have to do it directly! After all, what's more zooey than helping animals out? There's lot of ways to do this, but I want to go over a couple. You can always throw money at various organizations, and I'm sure they'd appreciate that. But, you can also do a lot more, and more directly too. For instance, if you live somewhere on planet earth, chances are you've got an animal shelter or rescue somewhere near you. And chances are, they are desperately begging for people to help them. Not only does this let you interact with animals more closely, which is already very cool, it also lets you make a difference to people that are in your local neighborhoods and communities. Also, volunteering is so cool and will make you seem way more wise and worldly. 
 
There's also lots of things you can do just in how you live your life to support animal causes! Veganism is a big one, or vegetarianism if that suits you better. I know it's not as easy as just saying "Okay I want to stop eating meat," but any amount we can stop supporting the ongoing mass slaughter of millions of animals is a step in the right direction. Start small, drop meat once a week, see how that feels. Not only does that let you get a taste of what veganism is, but also you can feel good that you're making a difference, even if it's a small one. There's more than just veganism too. We live in a world that's totally structured around human convenience, and there's plenty of room to try to push back against that. You can become more eco-conscious, limiting your pollution, energy usage, and the waste you produce. You can get involved in local development and protest deforestation and expansion. You can use no-harm traps if you need to remove animals from your home. There's a billion things that need your help when it comes to supporting animals, it's easy to find the things that work for you if you just look.
 
And when you're thinking about the animals that you can support, don't forget the animals that live with you! What better way to support the zoo cause than being an amazing animal companion. Treat your partner with so much love and care. Treat other animals with respect. Live as an example to other people of how they should be treating the animals in their life, and you're already making a big zooey difference.
 
 
 
4) Support queer people
 
You know who else needs love and support, especially right now? Queer people. It's a big scary world out there, and it hasn't gotten any easier on our last trip around the sun. For starters, there are a LOT of queer people in the zoo community. And that's not counting zoosexuality being queer in general! We've got the gays, we've got the transes, we've got the everything in betweens. And those people are all valuable, amazing members of the community. By being open and welcoming and supporting to them, we make the zoo community a more welcoming place, which means those people are more likely to join in and help in their own ways too. It's exponential. Not only that, but queer people being stable means there's more room for those queer zoos out there to focus on helping the community. If you're a gay married zoo that lives somewhere that is talking about banning gay marriage, I can understand why you might be focused on the gay issue moreso than the zoo one.
 
Plus, I mean, think about it realistically. We might not have many allies on any side right now, but who do you think is more likely to support us, the group of people who are open and understanding and want acceptance and support for various sexualities even if we're not on that list yet, or the group that thinks that the only acceptable thing to be is straight and cis? The more that we let the right take away rights from queer people that already have them, the more that we need to make up ground before we can really bring up our own issues. By supporting queer rights, we're helping to foster an environment where it's possible to actually talk about zoo stuff.
 
 
 
5) Just live a good life
 
Really, this is the most important one of the whole list. The absolutely best thing that you can do is just live the best life that you can. Work hard, set goals and achieve them. Be happy. At the end of the day, you are the zoo community, regardless of how involved with the community you are or aren't. You're a zoo, and life is hard. There are so many problems in the world facing everyone, and also facing us. So if you can struggle through it, endure, and try to make something out of it, that's amazing. And what better thing is there for the zoo community than that? I'm not just talking hyperbolically here either. I mean tangibly. If you want money to give to zoo causes, work hard at something totally not zoo related and get to a point where you can do that. If you want to support animals, get enough influence in your community to be able to push for animal causes and have people actually listen to you. Get a good education, become a lawyer and help zoo advocates understand how to stay safe. Become a vet and let zoos with questions they'd be scared to ask their at-home vet talk to you instead. Get into politics and push for actual change in the world around you. 
 
Or, say that your goals aren't that big, and you just want to do your own thing and focus on yourself. That's still INCREDIBLY powerful for the community. We can always benefit from more role models and inspirations. Imagine how cool it would be to know that there are zoos out there that are flying planes. That own businesses. That work in media. There's a perception in society that zoos are all misguided children and weirdo freaks that can't talk to humans. How amazing would it be to prove that wrong? There are so many people that hate themselves because they're attracted to animals. How amazing would it be to show that you can live a good, happy, fulfilled life with an animal partner, and help those people realize they don't need to be miserable either? 
 
 
 
 
See, here's my thesis for this piece. Anything can be something you're doing in service for the zoo community so long as you're a zoo doing it. At the end of the day, if you're someone who loves animals, and you try and make the world a better place in whatever way you can, you're helping the zoo community. We might all be zoosexual, but at the end of the day we're all incredibly different people, and all of us have our own ways of touching the world around us. No matter who you are or how powerless you feel, there's something that you can do to help the zoo community, even if that's just helping yourself. 
 
Stay zooey out there folks, and thanks for helping the community. 
 
 
 
 

Article written by Tarro (April 2025)

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