He was a very noble person, rather a shy person, and he esteemed animals in his way. “The love for animals”, he always said, “is not the care of animals, “but to understand animals and to recognize animals “as their own personality.” So somebody not knowing him would have thought he has a very distant relationship to animals, but that was not true. He just didn’t want to interfere with them. And Heini was a scientist. He was a very, very well-known animal psychologist. So he was, I think, ahead of time when he was Director of Zurich Zoo. Before, by the way, he was Director in Bern Zoo and in Basel Zoo and then in Zurich Zoo. He always studied the animals for which he built exhibits and took into consideration the animal behavior, especially, when planning new exhibits.
