“How great are Your works, O God! You made them all with wisdom, the earth is full of Your creatures.” (Psalms 104:24)

The Torah rates contemplation of the complexity and beauty of the natural world as being of great importance. We are instructed to contemplate the skies and draw faith from what we see: “Lift your eyes upon high, and perceive Who created these!” (Isaiah 40:26). Maimonides writes: “When man contemplates the great wonders of God's deeds and creations, and he perceives from them His wisdom that is boundless and infinite - instantly he loves, and praises, and gives glory, and he has a great desire to know God...” (Yad HaChazakah, Hilchot Yesoday HaTorah 2:1–2).

There are two ways of going about this. The duty to appreciate God from study of the universe can be fulfilled by using one's intellect to learn of astonishing aspects of the natural world. For example, we can discover how the forked tongue of a snake picks up two slightly different scents, thereby enabling it to pinpoint the direction in which the desired scent is coming from. Or we can learn how certain crabs take anemones that fire poisonous darts and stick them on their front pincers, to use as portable machine guns. Or we can find out that the large basilisk lizard is so light and has such big feet that it can run across the surface of a lake without falling in (see video clip). Discoveries such as these fill man with profound love and awe for the One Who created such an amazing design, and the Zoo Torah program provides many such astonishing insights.

But there is another, no less important, method. Modern man must learn to take the information that he already knows and increase his sensitivity to it. We all know that tadpoles change into frogs, but we can either take that fact for granted or appreciate the miracle involved. The thrill that a tiny child feels when touching a live animal for the first time or seeing a duck swimming in a lake should not be lost to us as we grow older. It is not a matter of discovering the detail involved. It is a question of learning to appreciate the beauty of nature. The Zoo Torah program accomplishes this by encouraging participants to stop and consider the wonder of the animals that are witnessed.