A day at the zoo - BBC4

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Devi

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Just thought I'd bring your attention to this interesting show about the history of zoos in the UK. Awesome old footage from London, Dudley, Bristol, Jersey, loads, I'm enthralled!

A Day at the Zoo
 
Simply brilliant, yet occasionally distressing! Shows how most British Zoos seem to ooze with history. Hopefully everyone on ZooChat will eventually watch this.
 
Devi said:
Just thought I'd bring your attention to this interesting show about the history of zoos in the UK. Awesome old footage from London, Dudley, Bristol, Jersey, loads, I'm enthralled!

A Day at the Zoo
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Many thanks for the link - a very interesting programme with some wonderful historical footage.
 
I thought it was a great programme, very enjoyable :) just a shame Liz Tyson from CAPS was on there!
 
I was not impressed. To be honest, I expected better from BBC4. The whole thing looked cheap, with too much poor quality video (some of the home movie stuff was dreadful, there is better and more varied footage available) which was made worse by aimless editing and a very stilted commentary. Sharper direction would have allowed the inclusion of such important topics as the development of Whipsnade, public reaction to 'Brumas', the 'Chi Chi' and 'An An' saga and the way zoos have introduced new ways of displaying animals to replace the elephant rides and chimps' tea parties of yesteryear.

Alan
 
Only for UK residents :(
 
I watched this the other day, thanks to Devi for bringing it to our attention.
I enjoyed the programme, but i can see Gentle Lemur's point, but i guess cramming nearly 200 years of Uk zoo history into an hour is not easy.
 
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Devi. Whilst I agree with Gentle Lemur about the quality of some of the filming, the coverage of Dudley brought back some very happy memories particularly seeing the polar bears and elephants.
 
Just caught up with the documentary - thanks to the people for supplying links. It was a nice little documentary actually, I was thrilled to see the echidnas towards the end :D. It was also nice to see the Mappin terraces and the last pair of pure bred Bengal tigers at Bristol.
 
Jordan-Jaguar97 said:
It was also nice to see the Mappin terraces and the last pair of pure bred Bengal tigers at Bristol.
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I didn't see this programme. Presumably the Bristol Tigers were in the enclosure that is now part of the Lion exhibit? Was there any commentary about them?
 
Really enjoyed it, thanks for sharing.

I would really like a series on the whole history of zoos, BBC 4 take note!

Pertinax: you can still watch it, just click the link.
 
Pertinax said:
I didn't see this programme. Presumably the Bristol Tigers were in the enclosure that is now part of the Lion exhibit? Was there any commentary about them?
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The only Bristol tiger footage i can remember was of white tiger cubs in the 60s, which weren't where the current lion enclosure is.
 
pipaluk said:
The only Bristol tiger footage i can remember was of white tiger cubs in the 60s, which weren't where the current lion enclosure is.
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The bit I've seen so far they are in the central outdoor cage of the old Lion House. I doubt many people would have bothered to film the last ones in the cat enclosures that superseded it.
 
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JamesB said:
Pertinax: you can still watch it, just click the link.
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Thanks, I just watched a little bit of it, will watch the whole thing later.;)

I've just watched the whole thing. I really enjoyed a lot of the old footage, particularly from Bristol Zoo and especially the Gorilla 'Alfred' and many of my own 1950-60's favourite animals. But I agree with GL rather about the structure- some major zoo landmarks like 'Brumas' and the ZSL Panda saga were completely missing. Interesting too how Dudley was given a major segment- I should have though Chester was more deserving of the 'Zoo without Bars' section perhaps? Also I found some of the editing was rather strange with bits of film from different eras cobbled together(e.g. the Bristol Giraffes & Alfred) so it went old-newer-old-newer etc- though no doubt part of that was because a lot of it was home-movie stuff they were working with.
 
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Jordan-Jaguar97 said:
J It was also nice to see the Mappin terraces and the last pair of pure bred Bengal tigers at Bristol.
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Jordan- those weren't(quite) the last pair of (white) Indian tigers. Those on the film would probably have been Bristol's original white female 'Chemili' with one of her litters of cubs circa 1967 (she had several litters). They lived in the central cage of the old Lion House, on the site of what is now the Nocturnal House. Initally it was a barred cage but it was enlarged slightly with low level glass windows put in, by the time that was filmed.

The last pure Indian/whites were her descendants, the last dying circa 1984 in the cages that are now the Indian Lion enclosure, as discussed here before.
 
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We watched this and i enjoyed seeing how the zoos used to be and what is there now (and for some animals the enclosures are more suited in my opinion now as to then) however i agree with gl they could have made it a full series spending maybe an hour on each zoo??
 
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I'm on agreement that an hour on each zoo would be amazing, but as a zoo geek, who loves any sort of new footage, I really liked seeing things I'd not seen before. The shots of the newly built maplin terraces were awesome, and there was so much dudley footage (where I used to work) that I'd not seen.
I worked in TV for a while, so if anyone fancies giving me a plan happy to turn it into a formatted synopsis and sending the suggestion to bbc.
 
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