Animal crackers: inside the world's most madcap menagerie

With its Frankenstein fauna and cosmopolitan chickens, Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen’s eco-park puts the perverse into biodiversityA huge steel cage pokes up through the trees on the edge of Genk in eastern Belgium. It emerges from a long, dark brick building that has the fortified look of a high-security laboratory. Through narrow windows, you can make out the inanimate bodies of pigs, chickens and strange winged creatures, lit by eerie neon lights, while a symphony of exotic squawks em