From Royal Amusement to the Modern Zoo
The modern zoo is a descendent of the imperial menagerie, private gardens where aristocrats kept exotic animals and plant life for display. Menageries started during Roman times and by the 17th century became a fashionable addition to wealthy homes throughout Europe. The Tower of London sported a menagerie from 1195 to 1835 and excavations held next to the site in the 1930s uncovered many animal skulls including 19 dog and three large cat skulls – two lions and one leopard, making them some of the earliest examples of animals in captivity in the United Kingdom.
Colonial adventures introduced new species of animals to the Western consciousness and the menagerie became adapted to the public’s growing interest in the natural sciences and all things exotic. Travelling menageries or Beast Shows, brought the exotic to the masses and featured the latest animal and bird finds from the New World and Asia. Entrepreneurial showmen gave sailors extra money to bring back specimens from their voyages.
Travelling menageries very often gave people their first and possibly only exposure to wild animals, especially as the population grew more urbanised. The animals were usually kept in small and crowded cages with heavy bars separating them from spectators; not very humane conditions compared to today’s standards. Because animals are shaped by their environment, they would have appeared dangerous and unfriendly, which would have fit in well with the Victorian ideal of conquering nature to serve the interests of man.
Animals were not the only attraction in travelling menageries. Set up at the edge of pleasure gardens or fairgrounds, they also featured music, theatricals and later the Cinematograph or moving picture. As travelling menageries reached the peak of their popularity during the late Victorian era, ambitious showmen introduced tricks and performances into the animal’s routine. The most interesting and potentially dangerous, was lion taming. Incidents involving animals and their keepers or trainers were not unusual. It is rumoured that a lion tamer’s female assistant at one of the most famous travelling menageries of the time, Bostock and Wombwell’s Menagerie, was decapitated by a lion when her falling hair tickled the inside of the lion’s mouth.
By the time menageries fizzled out in the 1930’s, though some were still making the fairground rounds in the United States until the 1960’s, zoological gardens or zoos became increasingly popular as people’s perception of wild animals shifted. Where menageries focused on exploiting animals for their exotic value, keeping them in cages and uncomfortable settings to maximize the thrill given to spectators, zoological gardens attempted to recreate the animal’s natural surroundings and in doing so, educate the public about the natural world.
The transition from menagerie to the modern zoo coincided with man’s developing environmental awareness. As issues like extinction and habitat destruction became more important, the heavy bars and isolated cages of the menagerie were substituted with natural barriers like stone and man made waterfalls. The closing menageries provided many of the animals that first stocked zoos whilst the showmen of the era were replaced with scientists and conservationists. During the last couple of decades, zoos have experienced a resurgence in popularity by introducing unique programs and events. In the oldest American zoo in Philadelphia, guests can take hot air balloon rides and in the highly acclaimed Singapore zoo, people can visit the botanical gardens and get up close and personal with the animals in a special “Night Safari”. Where menageries kept animals in cramped isolated surroundings, today’s zoos have learnt that recreating the animals’ natural surroundings adds to the guests’ enjoyment without harming the animal.
