Zoos of the Past Lead to the Zoos of Today - Brief Article

The Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut created the first zoo in 1500 BC. Some five centuries later, under the direction of the Chinese Emperor of Wen Wang an Imperial Zoo, called "The Garden of Intelligence" was created. From 1000 to 400 BC, the royal keepers of Senurabus and Ashurbanipal of Assyria and King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia maintained zoos, and a major collection for scientific study was developed in Greece, as Alexander the Great sent back many animals that he captured on his military campaign. The Emperor Charlemagne had a zoo in the early ninth century, and in the Americas, Hernan Cortes discovered great zoos kept by the Mexican royal families in the early sixteenth century.

During the Renaissance, exotic animals were kept at the Tower of London, and attracted wide-eyed visitors. But the animals seldom survived long, as no one knew how to feed them or care for them. The modern zoo began in 1752 in Schonbraun Place ("The Imperial Menagerie") in Vienna, and soon after, public zoos opened in Spain and England.

These early zoos consisted of cages -- and often not very big cages -- where the animals were imprisoned, but this creel practice has changed. From the 1930s, Whipsnade Zoo outside London, England, showed animals in their natural surroundings, without bars, and with the visitors separated by moats and walls. This pattern is followed in other great modern zoos of the world, such as the San Diego Zoo and the Toronto Zoo -- where the visitors have long walks to the various enclosures, and where the animals seem to be at ease, and frequently hiding. "Can you see the brown panda? Is it up one of those trees? I don't see it! Daddy, there's a butterfly!" are the sorts of comments one hears, but with all the visitors recognizing that the excitement of seeing the animals up close is nothing compared to the excitement of seeing them (or even not seeing them) contented in their natural environment. We are not visiting a prison, but the wilds of Africa or Asia.

Of course, this adds to the challenge for photographers.

Next time you go to the zoo, think of it as a safari to Asia or Africa -- you are the modern "Big Game Hunter" with a camera, not a gun.

RELATED ARTICLE: "Zoo Rules"

* Allow the other visitors a chance to look at the animals, from aardvarks to zebras. They didn't come to see the back of a photographer's head.

* Shoot best in less crowded areas.

* Follow the keepers' instructions and zoo regulations to the letter.

* Carry lots of film and batteries -- you don't want to run out the moment a tiger yawns in your face.

* Leave no photographic mess and pick up others'.

* Take care to have good notes -- you'll remember and recognize a crocodile or a lion, but will you remember a Manchurian Sika Deer? Or a Reeve's Muntjac?

HAVE LOTS OF FUN!

COPYRIGHT 2001 Photographic Society of America, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group