Today the zoo is a place that divides the public regarding the purpose of its existence and the function that captivity of animals performs in our modern times.
However, it remains an attraction for the whole family, which is included in the lists of places to visit in one destination, as you no longer need titles of nobility or income criteria to pass through its gates.
Only it wasn't always like that. The first animal collections were you see symbols of prestige exclusively for the eyes of emperors and kings, before slipping into "humble" situations to the delight of the public and scientific observation.
With the establishment of the Pax Romana and the Holy Roman Empire later, exotic animals were dragged to the imperial courts by the myriad diplomatic missions that arrived there.
In the 8th century, the ruler of the Franks, Charlemagne, accepted with the scoop the gifts of the monarchs of Africa and Asia and always included items unknown in the Old Continent.
Of course, he was not the first to make such a collection that showed his omnipotence. Murals in Egypt and Mesopotamia suggest that pharaohs and aristocrats have done the same since 2500 BC, sending expensive expeditions to bring back giraffes, elephants, bears, birds, and even dolphins.
Private animal collections existed in the ancient cultures of the Chinese, Greeks and Romans, at the same time that on the other side of the Atlantic was probably the Aztec emperor, Montezuma II, who maintained the first collection of animals in the western hemisphere. Which he destroyed Conquistador Hernan Cortes the 1520.
William I the Conqueror of the 11th century AD was one of the first kings of the Middle Ages to maintain such a large collection of exotic animals on the European continent. Two hundred years later, the gifts of exotic animals came and went in the Old Continent, and from the 17th century onwards in France even wild beast battles were organized for the spectator audience in their arenas. Versailles.
Now the zoos were places that could be visited by ordinary mortals. And the Enlightenment had to come to change the use of these animal collections, when the scientific study of the species monopolized the interest. Such "zoos", as they were now called, began to sprout in the West in the late 18th century.
And in 1828 something historic happened: the first zoo in England was created exclusively for scientific purposes, the London Zoo. He was followed by the Dublin Zoologist in 1831, the Central Park Zoologist in New York in 1860 etc.
The 20th century has found zoos well established in the world, in the form we know them more or less today. And then, in 1963, something unexpected happened…
The New York Zoo at Bronx, which had opened in 1899 with 843 animals in its structures, advertised in 1963 a special exhibit in the department with the Great Capitals. Between the cages with the orangutans and the mountain gorillas, a small facility had been set up, which was predicted by demons by the zoologists with the inscription: "The most dangerous animal in the world".
It goes without saying that the advertising trick attracted a lot of interest and became a fuss in the city. Visitors lined up outside the small window with the railings that under the inscription "The most dangerous animal in the world" had a few more arades.
"You see the most dangerous animal in the world. It is the only animal that has ever lived that can exterminate (and has done so) whole species of animals. It now has the power to wipe out all forms of life on Earth. "
And as you bent down to see what was good in there, you realized that all there was was one… mirror. They were indeed seeing the most dangerous animal in the world and most of them monologued that "it's true".
What a genuine truth it really was! The only image we have of that skilful human consciousness comes from the world's first illustrated weekly magazine, the British Illustrated London News, which ran from 1842 to 2003.
In the June 8, 1963 issue, the reader could see the image above. The message was more than clear.
Despite the impact of this photo today, however, the journalistic investigation reveals a true mystery here. Neither the zoo has any entry in its records nor has the issue been covered by the press of the time.
Absolute silence. Despite the fact that recently on social media there was a loss with the image, which violently distracts us, it is the truth from our sugar, the issue has not played mysteriously on the big news networks. Nor is it possible to check if it has actually been published in the illustration pages of a magazine that no longer exists.
Some say the photo is included in the book "The Animals1969, the album of photographer Garry Winogrand (1928-1984). Bronx-born, the photographer depicting everyday life on the streets of New York was at the Bronx Zoo that year to capture the relationship between man and animal.
It was not in the New York Zoo, it was published, it was not published in the "Illustrated London News", all this obviously means little to us today. The testimony of the photo remains creepily true no matter what its true story was.
Man is indeed the most sweeping force the planet has ever known, a destructive phenomenon that imposes its will by defying everything else that crawls, moves or even breathes.
And science no longer caresses anyone's ears. THE species extinction It happens 1.000 times faster because of humans, a Duke University academic study published in 2014 in the journal Science told us. A thousand times faster just because he's the man in the frame!
The Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature points out something similar, proceeding with the parasympathy: 20.000 species are close to the final disappearance of the human footprint on the planet. And other 1 million species are openly threatened from human action, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) is sounding the alarm.
Where human action is deforestation, destruction of natural animal habibat, air pollution, climate change and so much more that is known to all.
Some 100-1.000 species are disappearing every year, every year, simply because we don't want to change course.
Will this be the largest human contribution to Earth? The extinction of species? An extinction that has now taken on such dimensions that scientists are clearly talking about the "sixth mass extinction" in the history of the planet.
We have known for sure that we were the most dangerous species in the world since 1963. Why we didn't do or don't do something remains to be seen.