In its early days the Elephant and Rhinoceros Pavilion housed:-
• two African elephants "Diksie" and “Toto”
• two Asian elephants "Rusty" and "Lakshmi"
• a northern white rhino "Ben"
• a southern white rhino "Mashobeni"
• two black rhinos "Paul" and "June"
Technically speaking it actually held five pachyderm species as, following current taxonomy, the northern and southern white rhinos are now considered to be two distinct species.
There were only two outside yards one for the elephants and one for the rhinos. The Asian and African elephants shared the same enclosure; as “Pertinax” has already mentioned, the white and black rhinos took it in turns to use the outdoor enclosure.
Thanks Tim and Pertinax. It's certainly interesting to see how London has changed, alongside zoo husbandry in general. I'll stop there to avoid stirring up too many hornets
Tim (or anyone else), do you have an image of a map of the zoo at what you would consider to be its highlight, from a collection point of view? I have such a hard time picturing it as it was, although my recent visit to Berlin gave me some idea perhaps.
Zooman64, you are right of course. An embarrassing mistake, but then I haven't read any Durrell for several years. The Stationary Ark was a formative book for me; I still try to evaluate enclosures based on GD's priority list:
1. Suitability for its animal inhabitants
2. Suitability for their keepers
3. Suitability for visitors
I often wonder if this has anything to do with the perceived UK/US divide on functional vs naturalistic.
