Great Zoos Of The World

Their Origins And Significance

Lord Zuckerman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367022419
• eBook ISBN: 9780429728617
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book illustrates how some best zoos in the world have evolved, by reference to the history of a few. It contains a list of names of the present and former professional staff of the Zoological Society of London.

Paris

Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes and Parc Zoologique de Paris du Bois de Vincennes

Marcia Edwards

No zoo has had so colourful a history as that of the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris; and few have been associated with so many of the great names of classical zoology. The story begins in the mid-seventeenth century, in the reign of Louis XIV, a monarch to whom the world owes the splendours of Versailles. When the King started to embellish his vast palace to the west of Paris, he decided to include in the gardens a menagerie consisting, not of isolated houses, but of a series of cages set in a coherent pattern within a splendid garden. The first animals were installed in 1665, and the collection then grew, mainly as a result of gifts from foreign royalty and heads of state. Initially, the privilege of visiting the King's beasts was restricted, but gradually more and more people were admitted, until the damage caused by unwelcome crowds thronging his park induced the King to deny entry to any but members of his court.

Both science and art gained from the establishment of the menagerie. Members of the Académie des Sciences were able to dissect the animals which died, and their studies helped to prepare the ground for the flowering of comparative anatomy in the following century. The King commissioned paintings and sculptures of new creatures as they arrived and many artists worked at Versailles during the last part of the seventeenth century.

Towards the end of his life Louis seldom visited Versailles. He also took less and less interest in his menagerie, but until his death in 1715 provision was made for its inmates. His successor, Louis xv, did not share his great-grandfather's interest in animals, and when his grandson Louis XVI became king in 1774, the menagerie, which was already more than one hundred years old, was in serious need of repair. The new monarch was equally unconcerned and it was not until 1785 that some much-needed restoration was undertaken. By then, however, revolution was stirring and in October 1789 Louis abandoned Versailles for Paris.

Not surprisingly, economies had to be made in the royal budget, and the collection at Versailles had to be reduced. But worse was to come. For some time menageries had been viewed with disfavour by many who held that it was shameful to feed animals when people were starving. In August 1792 a local group sympathetic to the Jacobins, the most ruthless element of the Revolutionaries, made its way to the menagerie. The leader told Laimant, the menagerie director, that they had come, both in the name of the people and of nature, to demand that those creatures which God had created to be free, and whose freedom had been denied by the vainglory of tyrants, should be set at liberty.

Laimant was in no position to refuse but, handing over the keys, he pointed out that the first act of some of the animals might well be to attack their liberators. Not unnaturally, this produced a change of plan, and it was decided that, for the time being, the more dangerous beasts should be left where they were. Harmless animals were released but, with a Gallic practicality which owed nothing 'to the name of nature' and even less to 'freedom', most were delivered to the butcher.

The Registrar-General for the area then wrote to Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, Comptroller of the Jardin du Roy in Paris, to enquire whether he wanted any of the few remaining animals, adding as an incentive that the collection still contained a superb rhinoceros. On his return from a visit of inspection to Versailles, Saint-Pierre recommended that all the animals should be brought to Paris to form the nucleus of a national menagerie.

The Jardin du Roy or, more fully, the Jardin Royal des Herbes Médicinales, had been proposed in 1626 by Louis XIII for the study of plants and their medicinal properties. Over the years the activities had widened to include other branches of natural history and medicine, each with its own chair and professor. About the middle of the eighteenth century, Buffon, the celebrated naturalist, developed and improved the Garden. He built conservatories and made a pond for waterfowl, and he also allowed peacocks to roam the grounds. A plan which he commissioned in 1776 provided for a great aviary and enclosures for other animals but, although he succeeded in enlarging the area of the Garden, he did not pursue the idea of a menagerie. That came into being almost by accident while negotiations were still proceeding to save the survivors of the Versailles collection.

In 1793 the Jardin du Roy became part of the newly established Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. Saint-Pierre had foreseen how the prospective museum and a menagerie could cooperate in the interests of public education. What brought his ideas to fruition was the fact that, at that time, Paris was the focus of travelling side-shows in which combats were staged between various sorts of domestic and wild animals. The civic authorities decided to ban these cruel contests and the police confiscated the animals, which were then foisted on the Jardin du Roy, by then known as the Jardin des Plantes. The Officers and Professors of the Jardin were, not surprisingly, dismayed, and some tried to reject the unwanted gifts. No preparations had been made to receive the animals but, equally, it was impossible to slaughter and dissect so many creatures all at once. As if these were not problems enough, the Garden was besieged by angry owners demanding compensation for the loss of their stock-in-trade. In the end shelter was found in some not particularly suitable buildings, and the question of care was temporarily solved by employing the animals' erstwhile owners. The national menagerie was thus founded with a small collection of creatures rescued from an unenviable fate. A few months later, in April 1794, the survivors of the Versailles menagerie, including a quagga, and a lion with his friend, a small dog, were added to the collection. The rhinoceros, ill from a wound received as the result of an accident, could not be moved and died at Versailles in May. That same month, a number of exotic animals from the estate of the Due d'Orléans joined those in the Jardin des Plantes.

Better, though still temporary, quarters for the animals were soon built, and the Professors planned to establish a menagerie which would be of educational value to the nation, a project which had the sympathy of the Convention by which Paris was ruled. But times were becoming increasingly hard and, without regular funds to provide for the animals, many of them died of starvation and disease.

The situation took a turn for the better at the end of the following year when Mordant-Delaunay, who as 'citizen Launay' had recently been appointed to the staff of the Muséum Library, took matters in hand. Launay, a cultivated man with some literary talent, did not lack initiative. He brought together a collection of native French animals and, by various means which included as 'spoils of war' a valuable collection of animals from the Chateau of Het Loo, abandoned when the French army invaded Holland, improved and enlarged the menagerie. Additional land along the Seine was bought for the growing collection, and he also managed to arrange a proper budget for the menagerie. But within four years, when 'troubles' once again broke out, animals starved as food supplies dwindled. Not until the restoration of peace at the turn of the century were plans put in hand to restore and improve the Jardin. The architect Molinos designed a Grand Rotunda in the form of the Cross of the Legion of Honour. While this might have been a timely tribute to Napoleon, who was much interested in the menagerie and museum as he was in educational and cultural matters generally, it was not the most practical of ideas for housing animals. The building was first intended as a lion house, for which it was clearly unsuitable, and construction work was suspended while it was redesigned to house large herbivores. The year of its completion, 1812, was, alas, the year which saw the commencement of the decline of the man it was intended to glorify. Some rustic-style animal houses had been built in the preceding years and, in 1804. Frédéric Cuvier, brother of the great anatomist Georges Cuvier and himself the first incumbent of a chair of general physiology created in 1837, was appointed Director. He not only expanded the building programme, but acquired more land. Between 1817 and 1837 he added a Lion House, a Birds of Prey Aviary, a Pheasantry and a Monkey House, although in 1814 he had to suffer the anxiety of seeing Prussian troops about to take up quarters in the Garden. Fortunately the high reputation of the museum and its menagerie saved them from damage. The famous German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt had intervened on their behalf.

The middle years of the nineteenth century were uneventful for the museum and its menagerie. The collection was enriched as a result of increasing foreign travel and expeditions, but no 'new arrival' was to stimulate as much interest as did a giraffe presented as a gift in 1826 by the Pasha of Egypt. The young animal was put on board ship at Alexandria, together with cows to provide her with milk, four Arabs to care for her, and a parchment 'necklace' inscribed with passages from the Koran to ward off evil. She was offloaded at Marseilles in November, and the following year made her way, on foot and accompanied by her court, to Paris. When the entourage reached Saint-Cloud in June 1827, the King, Charles x, fed the giraffe rose petals from his own hand. Amidst great public excitement, she eventually arrived at the menagerie. The first of her kind to be seen alive in France, she was celebrated in song, prose and even fashion.

Anyone travelling abroad and willing to collect animals was pressed into service by Constant Duméril, a professor at the Muséum who was particularly interested in amphibians and reptiles. His growing collection of reptiles, amphibians, fishes and insects was accommodated in the old Monkey House and became the prototype of similar collections in other European zoos.

Much of the early work of the menagerie concerned itself with the acclimatization of exotic species and the hybridization of domestic animals, an interest which reflected the fact that its establishment, during the difficult time of the Revolution, had been partly justified by the belief that the zoo could produce additional sources of food for the populace. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, another distinguished zoologist of the period, was much interested in this aspect of the menagerie's work, and in the late 1850s helped to found a society whose purpose was to try to add to the number of domesticated animals. As part of this venture, which was paralleled by the formation of a similar society in England, a Jardin d'Acclimatation was established in the Bois de Boulogne.

The Franco-Prussian war broke out in 1870 and by late summer it became apparent that the invading Prussian army would soon be in Paris. The staff of the Jardin d'Acclimatation immediately decided to disperse their animals and many were sent to safety. But before all of them could be moved, military operations put an end to railway transport. Alphonse Milne-Edwards, yet another famous name in the annals of zoology, then offered to house the stranded animals, among them two elephants, Castor and Pollux, in the Jardin des Plantes. In the autumn the Prussian army laid siege to Paris, and by the winter famine in the city had become so acute that all edible animals in the Jardin des Plantes, including those from the Jardin d'Acclimatation, were slaughtered to provide food for the people, just as, not a hundred years before, the menagerie at Versailles had been decimated for the same purpose.

This was not the only calamity the Garden suffered. A field hospital had been set up in the grounds and on the night of 8 January 1871 the Prussians began to bombard the whole of the area. The shelling caused extensive damage, not only to the Muséum and menagerie but also to the hospital nearby.

The war ended in 1871 and, once again, a rebuilding programme had to be instituted. An imposing Reptile House, containing two large halls – one for crocodilians and the other for an aquarium – was put up in 1874. Other reptiles exhibited included lizards, snakes, turtles and tortoises. In 1881 another Pheasantry was completed, and in 1888 a large aviary, enclosing a small pond and many full-grown trees, was erected. This aviary was generally held to be the most elegant and advanced of its kind anywhere.

The appearance of the Jardin des Plantes then remained more or less unchanged until the 1920s. A Vivarium was built in 1926 for delicate animals needing special conditions of warmth and humidity. Still in use today, it houses insects and other invertebrates as well as amphibians, reptiles and various small mammals.

Several buildings dating from Cuvier's time had to be demolished. The old Lion House was replaced in 1937, and the new building now accommodates a representative collection of the cat family. Lions, leopards and tigers live there all the year round, but during the summer months the smaller cats are housed, with various canine species, in a Small Carnivore House.

The Monkey House, which dated from the mid-1830s, was pulled down in 1927 and, after some years in temporary quarters, the monkeys and apes were moved to a new home in 1934. Here baboons, drills and mangabeys breed well. The gibbons were provided with a large, high cage in which they have ample scope for swinging as they do in the wild. Many other outmoded buildings were also removed during the 1930s. Bars were replaced with modern barriers and the whole Garden took on a more pleasing aspect.

It was during this period of redevelopment that the sister institution of the Jardin des Plantes, the Pare Zoologique de Paris du Bois de Vincennes, was founded. Some seventy years earlier the Muséum had been granted land in the Vincennes woods on the outskirts of Paris, but had not developed the area. In 1932 it was exchanged for a more suitable site, where the City and Muséum agreed to establish a zoological park. The Muséum purchased the animals from a small zoo which had been part of the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1931, and the new park, 43 acres (17 hectares) in extent, was opened in June 1934. It was designed by Charles Letrosne after the style of Hagenbeck, the famous animal dealer and trainer who, in 1907, opened the Stellingen Animal Park near Hamburg. Hagenbeck pioneered the concept of keeping animals in moated enclosures without bars and against backgrounds of artificial rocks. The use of vegetation and of hidden moats created dramatic panoramas in which various animals, both predator and prey, appeared to be living together.

Vincennes Zoo provides spectacular settings for large groups of animals. Spacious enclosures are landscaped to simulate various natural habitats and are separated from the public by moats or ditches. In many of the enclosures, artificial rocks serve to disguise the large indoor quarters which in winter are open to the public,

Where practical, suitable numbers of animals are kept together in breeding groups. There are nearly 700 birds belonging to about 140 species, and breeding colonies of flamingos are of particular interest. The Great Aviary houses birds of prey, and several species of penguin can be seen in the pools round the base of the Grand Rocher, an artificial rock rising to a height of nearly 240 feet (73 metres). Set in the rock are air-conditioned temperature-controlled caves into which the penguins can retreat when the weather becomes too warm. The Grand Rocher, with trails winding around it, also provides a suitable home for mountain goats and sheep, while inside a lift carries visitors to the summit for a bird's-eye view of Paris.

The Parc's collections of hoofed animals and bears are justifiably famous. About forty species of antelope are kept; most varieties of zebra and many kinds of deer, including the rare Eld's deer, are represented. There have been over fifty giraffe births, and the seven specimens of okapi were also born in the Pare. Okapi are found only in forested areas of the Congo, and are rarely seen in captivity. There are ten species of bear, including the South American spectacled bear, the North American grizzly and black bears, the kodiak from Alaska, polar bears, and bears from India and Malaysia. The great apes and monkeys are well represented. Some live in semi-liberty on islands in the Pare, and baboons in particular have bred well for many years.

In 1973, to mark President Pompidou's visit to Peking, the People's Republic of China presented two giant pandas to the people of France. One did not survive long but the young male, now installed at the Pare, remains in good health.

A good collection of ungulates, which complements that at Vincennes – both institutions being directed by Professor Jacques Nouvel – is kept in the Jardin des Plantes, and its breeding successes include the Przewalski horse and the European bison. Among the Bovidae, gorals, bharals, several types of ibex and a breeding group of chamois are of particular interest. There are also deer, and the domesticated llamas and alpacas.

Many of the early menagerie buildings in the Jardin des Plantes are now protected as national monuments, including the rustic-style houses built in the early nineteenth century and now used to house some of the ungulates. The Rotunda, built to commemorate Napoleon, accommodates camels and a selection of mammals and aquatic birds which need shelter in bad weather. Its central dome contains an aviary for tropical birds.

Other houses which have been renovated include the Old Pheasantry, now used for the hardier doves and pheasants, the New Pheasantry, designed for birds needing warm winter quarters, and the Great Aviary, in which aquatic birds breed successfully. The Birds of Prey Aviary is particularly noteworthy for its display of European and African eagles, and many birds wander freely in the grounds of the menagerie as their predecessors did in Buffon's day. The Bear Pit, dating from the foundation of the menagerie, has been restored, and h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• List of Contributors
• The Rise of Zoos and Zoological Societies Introduction
• The Zoos
• SPECIALIST COLLECTIONS
• Introduction: References
• Zoo Chapters: Bibliography
• Scientific Names of Animals
• Index