Edinburgh Zoo celebrate centenary with exhibition

EDINBURGH Zoo will celebrate its centenary with a new public exhibition.

The display, which opens today, charts the zoo’s ongoing popularity and includes information about it welcoming Scotland’s first giraffe, providing a home for Wojtek, the brown bear which carried ammunition for Polish troops during the Second World War, and on bringing penguins and baby chimps to the capital.

The gates of the zoo first opened on 22 July, 1913, four years after the Zoological Society was established by Edinburgh lawyer Thomas Gillespie.

Initially, the zoo simply gave people the opportunity to see wild animals, but over the years it has gained a wider remit in response to a changing world, Chris West, chief executive of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said. He said the main focus was now conservation.

He added: “It’s vitally important organisations like zoos remind people of the wonder of and the fragility of nature, but also how dependent we are on it being a healthy planet with a healthy nature.”