Chi Chi in her indoor enclosure in the old Deer & Cattle Sheds, Regents Park, 16th May 1972. Scanned from a Kodacolor negative. Chi Chi died 2 months after this photo was taken.
Chi Chi in her indoor enclosure in the old Deer & Cattle Sheds, Regents Park, 16th May 1972. Scanned from a Kodacolor negative. Chi Chi died 2 months after this photo was taken.
There was a window looking into the indoor dens. I think there had to be as Chi Chi spent most of her time there and she was the zoo's most famous animal.
There was a window looking into the indoor dens. I think there had to be as Chi Chi spent most of her time there and she was the zoo's most famous animal.
When I was a very young child, back in the days when the old Deer & Cattle Sheds only housed ungulates, it was possible to go inside the building.
After the deer were moved to the Cotton Terraces in the early 1960s, the previous deer accommodation was used for wild dogs (which were transferred from the old North Mammal House); after that I don’t recall ever going into the Deer & Cattle Sheds again as the interior was invariably closed to the public on all my visits.
When the giant panda ‘Chi-Chi’ was first moved to the Deer & Cattle Sheds there was no viewing window into her indoor accommodation although that didn’t matter as she spent most of her time outside.
As ‘Chi-Chi’ got older and spent more time indoors, and with the interior of the building closed to the public, the viewing window was added in 1970 about two years before she died.
When I was a very young child, back in the days when the old Deer & Cattle Sheds only housed ungulates, it was possible to go inside the building.
After the deer were moved to the Cotton Terraces in the early 1960s, the previous deer accommodation was used for wild dogs (which were transferred from the old North Mammal House); after that I don’t recall ever going into the Deer & Cattle Sheds again as the interior was invariably closed to the public on all my visits.
I think I can remember when the interior was open to the public too.
There was a passageway running the length of the building between the inside stalls which led into the outside paddocks on either side of the building.
I suppose it is always sad to see an old animal nearing the end of its life: but it is hard to appreciate nowadays how important Chi Chi was. The publicity generated by the attempts to mate her with An An, first in Moscow and then in London was immense. There were headlines in the papers with photos of Dr Desmond Morris, in a fur hat, posing beside Chi Chi in her travelling crate and nightly film of the pandas' encounters on the TV news. I can't think of any other zoo story which generated as much public interest in the UK.
Incidentally Desmond Morris, who is still with us, was the Curator of Mammals at London Zoo, and he also presented 'Zoo Time' for Granada TV. I remember hurrying home from school to watch it. After leaving the zoo, he made a fortune by writing The Naked Ape and other books on popular anthropology and TV spinoff series. He is also a painter and an expert on surrealism.
