More and more criticized, zoos however play a task in elevating public consciousness concerning the coverage of untamed species. Has the primary digital actuality zoo discovered a profitable method in Brussels?
Opening in Brussels in September 2025 and open to the general public till 30 December 2025, the Zoo of the Long term, Europe’s first 100% digital zoo, guarantees the sweetness of a zoo, however with out the cages. Conceived by means of the animal coverage affiliation Gaia, in collaboration with immersive enjoy studio Truth Issues, the Zoo of the Long term provides audiences the chance to reconsider the connection between people and animals by means of permitting them to recognize a large number of animals roaming freely in a digitally recreated herbal setting.
Two immersive applied sciences permit the invention of those virtual worlds: digital actuality (VR) via headsets for looking at animals, in addition to augmented actuality via a cellular utility to have interaction with instructional modules (quizzes, details about animals). The ambition of the venture is twofold: what if VR is not just for leisure, but additionally for schooling to inspire extra accountable habits?
Having labored at the results of VR on customers, the Zoo of the Long term subsequently represents a privileged box of commentary to know the way immersive applied sciences are converting tourism and cultural practices. As a part of this analysis, I spoke with a number of actors of this initiative.
Renew the general public enjoy
Those immersive applied sciences impact a number of dimensions of the customer enjoy. The primary corresponds to the metaversification of enjoy, this is, that virtual era now complements actual business, cultural and touristic puts. On the subject of the Brussels Zoo, 3 themed VR universes be offering an immersive enjoy to guests: Savannah, Ice Sheet and Jungle.
The second one measurement corresponds to the multisensory side presented by means of new applied sciences, which, as an actual enjoy, stimulate a number of, even all, senses. The Zoo of the Long term combines ambient sounds, smell diffusion, and digital interplay that comes to the customer’s actions “to try to have the most complete immersion possible,” as indicated by means of Sébastien de Jonge, Gaia’s director of operations whom I used to be ready to interview throughout my analysis. When a customer places on a VR headset, he all at once sees an elephant coming near, its eyes staring into his, its trunk emerging. He tries to the touch the animal, satisfied that he feels its presence. Sensory phantasm is tangible and emotion is actual.
Dealing with an elephant in digital actuality has the possible to rouse extra emotion, permitting you to manner and have interaction with the animal. Gaia/Truth Issues, supplied by means of the writer
The 3rd measurement corresponds to the empowerment of customers, i.e. the facility to actively act with their frame and to keep up a correspondence with items in a digital setting. Through permitting first-person immersion in digital environments with extremely practical graphics, VR appeals to a public that now expects to be extra of an actor of their enjoy than just having to hear a tale.
For Andy Van den Broek, founding father of Truth Issues, VR is complementary to the actual enjoy, even augmented. He issues out that “in a real zoo, you can’t get close to the animals to observe them, or move freely and interact in these large natural spaces.” As well as, the digital zoo enriches the enjoy with augmented actuality to supply amusing and academic interplay with the animals.
Galvanize empathy for animals, even digital ones
Those dimensions assist to stimulate a way of incarnation, or the appearance of being a digital personality. Some of the benefits of VR lies in its skill to offer an embodied enjoy the place we no longer most effective follow, but additionally the place we emotionally assume and react in some way very similar to actual enjoy (Leveau and Camus, 2023).
Studying by means of doing is among the benefits of VR. Lively participation promotes reminiscence and talent acquisition via a extra concrete working out and higher appropriation of the location than just studying a file, for instance. The training pyramid established by means of the American instructional researcher Edgar Dale confirms that we be told higher once we are fascinated with a finding out state of affairs. In line with him, a person keeps most effective 10% of what he reads, in comparison to 90% of what he says and does.
Immersing the customer in a digital setting additionally provides the chance to get to grasp the animals as they behave of their herbal setting and no longer in a man-made enclosure. Gaia/Truth Issues, supplied by means of the writer
Immersive applied sciences additionally expand empathy. Whilst within the vintage zoo we take into accounts actual animals, however disadvantaged of freedom, the digital zoo reveals virtual animals of their herbal habitat. To these days, “visitors think in terms of protecting species, not individuals,” insists Sebastien de Jonge. The digital zoo subsequently invitations us to opposite the standpoint by means of valuing the animal as a singular residing being and proposing a concrete and certain choice, whilst wondering the residing stipulations of animals in conventional zoos, with out without delay attacking their strategies.
We see interactive VR-related gamification, corresponding to interactive quizzes concerning the elephant’s residing area, using consciousness and urban behavioral adjustments. In line with Sebastien de Jonge, the general public’s response to animal welfare on the finish of the digital enjoy displays this by means of scary questions concerning the choices that are meant to be introduced. Thus, immersing guests in herbal environments recreated in VR provokes mirrored image on animal captivity whilst keeping the learning measurement of zoos. This manner, in keeping with the expectancies of animal coverage associations, additionally invitations everybody to rethink their dating to residing beings and undertake extra accountable intake alternatives.
Profit from conflicting shopper wants
It’s exactly the transition from a passive observer to an concerned actor that provides a singular position in moral and environmental consciousness. The VR enjoy no longer most effective permits us to be told via interplay in a extra direct manner, but additionally to reconsider our tactics of intake and recreational time. Through providing a extra accountable choice in leisure and recreational actions, VR influences habits in the appropriate manner.
To this finish, VR contributes to extra moral advertising practices by means of every so often changing itself as a viable choice to bodily go back and forth or contributing to extra inclusive tourism for sure audiences (seniors, other people with disabilities, and so on.). For a zoo, VR is helping create the appearance of an actual enjoy with out harming ecosystems. Gaia defends this style: “The zoo of the future is a campaign for us like any other,” confides Sebastien de Jonge. Intentionally low costs, from 12 euros in keeping with front, don’t seem to be winning and ensure this common sense.
However what’s truly going down at the shopper aspect? In a survey of 100 other people in France in September 2025, 83.4% stated they might slightly seek advice from an actual than a digital zoo. On the other hand, greater than 98% of them say they’re delicate to the welfare and residing stipulations of animals in captivity. This paradox is noticed, at the one hand, during the business good fortune of the most important zoos in Europe, whose attendance exceeds one million guests in keeping with 12 months, such because the Barcelona zoo, alternatively, during the multiplication of dolphinarium closures (Marineland in France in 2025 or the final dolphinarium in Belgium, Boudevijn Seapark in 2025), whose impact is the executive center30.
Inspire habits exchange
In any case, 95% of respondents informed us that they’re keen to regulate their spending habits to higher recognize animal welfare by means of who prefer a digital zoo over an actual zoo. So we are hoping, like Sébastien de Jonge, that this fiction-reality can “simply turn on a light in the public mind” and lead zoos to reinvent themselves to reconcile animal welfare with financial viability. If a success, the brief venture may just turn out to be everlasting and constitute a brand new trade style for zoos.
On the other hand, we will have to no longer put out of your mind that those applied sciences create virtual air pollution and that VR is understood to inspire guests to in truth move to where they’ve explored just about. This kind of machine subsequently dangers proving counterproductive, opposite to the ambitions proven by means of the affiliation, regardless of the main vocation of the venture to mix marvel, schooling and recognize for animal welfare. With its digital zoo, on the other hand, Gaia demonstrates the possibility of VR past easy leisure: the era paves the best way for extra sustainable practices and an ecocentric financial style, in line with the intrinsic price of lifestyles.
