The Tower of London housedEngland's royal menagerie for several centuries (Picture from the 15th century, British

Library).
The predecessor of the zoological garden is the menagerie, which has a long history from the ancient world
to modern times. The oldest known zoological collection was revealed during excavations
at Hierakonpolis, Egypt in 2009, of a ca. 3500 B.C. menagerie. The exotic animals
included hippos, hartebeest, elephants, baboons and wildcats.
[8]
King Ashur-bel-kala of the Middle Assyrian
Empire created Zoological and Botanical Gardens in the 11th Century BC. In the 2nd century BCE,
the Chinese Empress Tanki had a "house of deer" built, and King Wen of Zhou kept a 1,500-acre (6.1 km
2
)
zoo called Ling-Yu, or the Garden of Intelligence. Other well-known collectors of animals included King
Solomon of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah, queen Semiramis and king Ashurbanipal of Assyria, and
King Nebuchadnezzar ofBabylonia.
[2]
By the 4th century BCE, zoos existed in most of the Greek city
states; Alexander the Great is known to have sent animals that he found on his military expeditions back to
Greece. The Roman emperors kept private collections of animals for study or for use in the arena,
[2]
the
latter faring notoriously poorly. The 19th-century historian W.E.H. Lecky wrote of the Roman games, first
held in 366 BCE:
At one time, a bear and a bull, chained together, rolled in fierce combat across the sand ... Four hundred
bears were killed in a single day under Caligula ... Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and
elephants. In a single day, at the dedication of theColosseum by Titus, five thousand animals perished.
Under Trajan ... lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami [sic], giraffes, bulls, stags, even
crocodiles and serpents were employed to give novelty to the spectacle ...
[9]

Henry I of England kept a collection of animals at his palace in Woodstock, which reportedly included lions,
leopards, and camels.
[10]
The most prominent collection in medieval England was in the Tower of London,
created as early as 1204 by King John I.
Henry III received a wedding gift in 1235 of three leopards from Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, and in
1264, the animals were moved to the Bulwark, renamed the Lion Tower, near the main western entrance of
the Tower. It was opened to the public during the reign of Elizabeth I in the 16th century.
[11]
During the 18th
century, the price of admission was three half-pence, or the supply of a cat or dog for feeding to the
lions.
[10]
The animals were moved to the London Zoo when it opened.
Enlightenment era[edit]

The Versailles menagerie during the reign of Louis XIV in the 17th century
Further information: List of zoos
The oldest zoo in the world still in existence is the Tiergarten Schnbrunn in Vienna, Austria. It was
constructed by Adrian van Stekhoven in 1752 at the order of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, husband
of Maria Theresa of Austria, to serve as an imperial menagerie as part ofSchnbrunn Palace. The
menagerie was initially reserved for the viewing pleasure of the imperial family and the court, but was made
accessible to the public in 1765.
In 1775, a zoo was founded in Madrid, and in 1795, the zoo inside the Jardin des Plantes in Paris was
founded by Jacques-Henri Bernardin, with animals from the royal menagerie at Versailles, primarily for
scientific research and education. The Kazan Zoo, the first zoo in Russia was founded in 1806 by the
Professor of Kazan State University Karl Fuchs.
The modern zoo[edit]
Until the early 19th century, the function of the zoo was often to symbolize royal power, like King Louis
XIV's menagerie at Versailles. The modern zoo that emerged in the early 19th century
at London, Paris and Dublin, was focused on providing educational exhibits to the public for entertainment
and inspiration.
[12]

A growing fascination for natural history and zoology, coupled with the tremendous expansion in
the urbanization of London, led to a heightened demand for a greater variety of public forms of
entertainment to be made available. The need for public entertainment, as well as the requirements of
scholarly research, came together in the founding of the first modern zoos.

London Zoo, 1835.
The Zoological Society of London was founded in 1826 by Stamford Raffles and established the London
Zoo in Regent's Park two years later in 1828.
[13]
At its founding, it was the world's first scientific
zoo.
[2][14]
Originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study, it was eventually opened to the
public in 1847.
[14]
The Zoo was located in Regent's Park - then undergoing development at the hands of the
architect John Nash. What set the London zoo apart from its predecessors was its focus on society at
large. The zoo was established in the middle of a city for the public, and its layout was designed to cater for
the large London population. The London zoo was widely copied as the archetype of the public city
zoo.
[15]
In 1853, the Zoo opened the world's first public aquarium.
Dublin Zoo was opened in 1831 by members of the medical profession interested in studying animals while
they were alive and more particularly getting hold of them when they were dead.
[16]
The first zoological
garden in Australia was Melbourne Zoo in 1860. In the same year, Central Park Zo