We had the pandas and the idea was knowing what was going on in American zoos at that time. We are looking now at the sort of 80, really the eighties, late seventies and eighties. What was going on in American zoos in the way of investment in, in better… Read More
So when we went back in Mag Maggie Thatcher’s time, we went back to Maggie and said, look, we, we, there’s no way that we can survive. This institution can’t survive without similar funding to the other great biological institutions in the, in the, in London, which were, as you… Read More
And, and actually right now we are okay financially. And they were fi they were okay financially up until, up until really the early fifties when so much else was available in the way of days out for the, the London and surrounding public. And of course the late fifties,… Read More
Can you discuss how the London Zoo was able to raise money?… Read More
Well, with, with a lot of difficulty, I mean yes, yes. Soli Zuckerman was very good at, because he was a great networker, and particularly within his wealthy Jewish community, Jewish friends, they, the claw and the cottons in the exhibits named after those guys that, you know, wealthy businessmen… Read More
But the expectation behind the scenes, certainly for us and others in the panda world, the western country, panda world, was that some of these animals should be, and from Mexico should actually be distributed. Particularly where again, I think there was a male left in Berlin, there was a… Read More
So this debate went on for quite some time. And in the end, in the end we lost that opportunity. And I always reckon that actually had that worked and those, some of those pandas from Mexico City had been distributed, we’d probably have a hundred pandas in the west… Read More
So they built, completely rebuilt those facilities. I mean they were being loaned the money to begin with and then the mail moved to Mexico City and they, and you can imagine the sort of how the London Press dealt with this and our other zoos couldn’t quite see what… Read More
Can you relate the history of pandas at the London Zoo, your role and why in some ways you say it’s a cautionary tale?… Read More
And Mexico City had also been given a pair. And, and they were one, I think at the time they were the only pair that were breeding and they produced the whole succession of females, four or five young females and then lost their breeding male. So, and they didn’t… Read More
Yes, it’s a, it’s a tale I’ve told several times to young Pando watches, you know, in the last 20 years. And it, it’s a, it’s a tale really of where cooperation failed and where people couldn’t see why cooperation in zoo species management was so important. We had this… Read More
So she would be sneaked in on a human stretcher covered in a, you know, to make sure I can imagine this panda’s head, you know, sticking outta the top of the, of the, of the cover of the strike being taken into the X-ray Department of Middlesex Hospital. Now… Read More
I mean they, they were huge, but the very early ones and the, the people that were developing them, the companies developing them, all that equipment was based at the London teaching hospitals because we, either we couldn’t afford it or it wasn’t available at that time. And we built… Read More
Yes. And, and, and they loved it. Not medical and dental. I mentioned guy, the gorilla unfortunately had all his teeth removed at one time. We had to feed him largely on yogurt for his later, you know, yogurt and bits and pieces put in the yogurt to make it… Read More
Did you ever have to bring in human medical doctors as Consultants as often For your medic, your dealings with the animals Procedures?… Read More
I remember we, we, we gave up after a while doing it, but we had a, a senior staff lunch table in the Fellows restaurant where anybody sort of a curator level and above was supposed to go every day for lunch because it was a way that also we… Read More
Well, it was, it was still living in that sort of rather competitive era. We, we act, we had one gorilla guy, the gorilla. And I always, I always remember having to remove his last teeth, poor animal because he’d been given too much sugar. But it was, it was… Read More
And this was at a time in the late fifties when, because there weren’t a lot of other things for people to do, London Zoo was getting something like 2 million visitors. So it was making a lot of money and, and it was that money that was being used… Read More
What kind of zoo was Regents Park?… Read More
What kind of zoo did you come to when you arrived now at Regents Park?… Read More