In 1932 there was, quite incredibly, 19 lions living in this exhibit! The Great Depression era of the Detroit Zoo saw as many as 200 monkeys scampering about on Monkey Island; 125 Hamadryas baboons on Baboon Rock; and 30 alligators, 24 turtles and 218 snakes in the collection. Even more astonishing is that all of the cold-blooded specimens were sent to Toledo Zoo and Cincinnati Zoo at the end of every summer as Detroit did not have any winter maintenance facilities for those animals.
Detroit Zoo has at least two terrific history books (50th Anniversary and 75th Anniversary) and I'd highly recommend both of them to be added to any zoo nerd's collection.
