The Modern Zoo
The zoological world has changed and developed drastically to meet the standards of the modern world and is not just about animals on show to the public.
Zoos keep animals for public display, right? Yes, but what animals, in what way and most importantly why?
Operant conditioning, as a method of training captive animals, is a practice increasingly recognised by zoological collections as a valuable addition to standard husbandry.
ZSL’s animal collection as we know it today has evolved immensely since its conception during the 1820’s and subsequent opening to the public in 1847. We now care for over 600 species and one thing they have in common is that they all require feeding.
Animal records have been kept at London Zoo since 1828, when arrivals, departures, births and deaths were all entered in ‘Day Books’. This information is now stored electronically and takes account of our entire collection that is in excess of 7,000 animals.
ZSL London & Whipsnade Zoos have hundreds of species and thousands of individual animals. But where do they come from? And where do they go when they leave our zoos?
...to the question: how do we recreate situations that will encourage animals’ natural behaviours?
Good zoos do much more than simply display animals to visitors. They play a vital role in conservation, through breeding species at risk of extinction in the wild.