IV.

History of Zoos

The earliest known collections of captive animals date back more than 4,000 years, to the time of the first civilizations in North Africa and the Middle East. In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs acquired giraffes, monkeys, and gazelles from the southern edges of the Sahara. From India they imported chickens—at the time considered exotic birds—which proved to have a very practical value. In the Middle East, the kings of Assyria collected animals in the course of their conquests, keeping them in landscaped zoological gardens. Among them were Asian elephants and Bactrian camels, as well as crocodiles and hippopotamuses, which were kept in specially constructed pools.

In 1490 bc Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt launched what is thought to be the first animal collecting expedition. Five ships ventured as far as Somalia and returned with leopards, exotic birds, monkeys, and a giraffe. The animals were all housed in the queen’s palace menagerie. Two centuries later another Egyptian ruler, Ramses II, took pride in his collection of animals, particularly a lion that is said to have followed his master everywhere, even into battle. In 1000 bc Chinese emperor Wen Wang established a 600-hectare (1,500-acre) animal preserve. Called the Garden of Intelligence, this animal collection was established to study and learn from wildlife. These early menageries were kept purely for amusement and to exhibit royal wealth and power, and they were rarely open to the public.

Around the 4th century bc the ancient Greeks collected animals primarily for scientific education. During this time, increased interest in the natural sciences led to the development of a discipline for the study of animals, known as zoology. Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, brought back exotic animals from his military conquests. Greek scientist Aristotle, who was Alexander’s teacher, studied these captive animals and compiled his observations in his Historia Animalium (350 bc), considered the first encyclopedia of zoology.

In ancient Rome animal collections were primarily used in brutal contests in large amphitheaters in which animals were forced to fight each other, or humans, to the death. In the 1st century bc Roman emperor Titus once put on a spectacle in which 5,000 animals were killed in one day, and 9,000 more were slaughtered over the next three months. The number of animals slaughtered during these spectacles was so massive that the populations of some animals, including leopards, became endangered. These animal games continued to flourish well into the 12th century, at which time their popularity declined.

In England early in the 12th century, during the reign of King Henry I, a royal menagerie was collected in a mansion in Woodstock in Oxfordshire. The menagerie included camels, lions, and lynx. A century later King Henry III moved the collection to the Tower of London. An animal collection remained in the tower for the next 500 years. The public was invited to view these animals for a small fee, and those who brought a dog or cat to feed to the lions were admitted for free.

When Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés entered Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City) in 1519, he found an enormous zoo. The Aztec leader Montezuma II had gathered a spectacular collection of animals. Ten ponds were home to flocks of waterfowl; hundreds of vivariums (glass enclosures) housed reptiles; and huge cages with bronze bars secured pumas, jaguars, sloths, and monkeys. More than 500 keepers attended the animals, including a team of nurses who tended sick animals and kitchen workers who prepared food for the animals.

With the start of European exploration and colonization, from the late 15th century onward, the first major collections of animals featuring species from several continents were established. When the explorers returned home from their travels, they brought many animals with them. These early animal collections, which included ornamental species such as parrots and peacocks, were assembled largely as curiosities.

By the 18th century, however, zoos began to reflect the growing scientific interest in the natural world. In 1793 a zoo was established in connection with the Jardin des Plantes (Botanical Garden) in Paris, France, fostered by figures such as French zoologist Georges Cuvier, the leading animal anatomist of his day. By the time the London Zoo opened in 1828, scientific study had begun to rival entertainment as a reason for collecting animals. During the mid- to late 1800s, thousands of species were brought back to Europe, where they were examined and classified by biologists. This flood of living animals—or their preserved remains—demonstrated the unsuspected vastness of the animal kingdom, particularly in the tropics.

Modern zoo design dates back to the early 1900s, when animal trainer Carl Hagenbeck opened a zoo in Stellingen, Germany. Hagenbeck housed animals in outdoor enclosures that used ditches and moats instead of bars. Many of these enclosures were built to imitate natural habitats, such as rocky mountainsides or open plains.

The first modern zoos founded in the United States were the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens in Pennsylvania, established in 1859; Central Park Zoo in New York, which opened in 1861; and Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Illinois, which opened in 1868. By the early 1900s American zoos started to become involved in conservation work, as the growing human impact on North America's wildlife became steadily more apparent. Many zoos established collections of threatened native animals, but not all of the species succeeded in captivity. Most prominent among the failures was the passenger pigeon, once the most abundant bird in the world. As a result of overhunting, the species died out in the wild in the late 1800s, and the last living specimen, a 29-year-old captive-bred female named Martha, perished at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

Most of today's zoos exhibit both common animals and ones that are much rarer. More recently, however, some zoos have been founded to concentrate solely on animals that are at risk. In India, for example, the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust breeds the endangered fish-eating gavial. In Australia, the Marsupial Cooperative Research Centre at the Perth Zoo raises endangered marsupials in captivity. Writer and naturalist Gerald Durrell established the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust in 1963 on the island of Jersey off the French coast. The trust has successfully raised a number of exotic animal species, such as the Mauritius pink pigeon, Bali mynah, and Rodriguez fruit bat, all of which are on the brink of extinction in the wild.