When I was a young child, I rented a vhs tape from my local library many times -- it was sixty minutes of light narration over visits to Lincoln Park Zoo and Brookfield Zoo, including a wide variety of animals from both institutions, along with a cheesy 'going to the zoo' song. It ran for about an hour with Lincoln Park taking up the first thirty-five or so minutes out of sixty. I found it very delightful and it allowed me to experience some of the base pleasure of a zoo visit without leaving home.
It appears to have been recordered in the 1980s, based on the presence of beloved Olga the walrus, who passed away in 1987, and in addition to a couple of still standing habitats it includes glimpses at several now demolished or renovated exhibits at both institutions, including a brief glimpse at Lincoln Park Zoo's former Reptile House, a longer look at the Lester E. Fisher Great Ape House, the mixed Asian Elephant-African Elephant exhibit, the Penguin-Seabird House, the Polar Bear exhibit of the era, the Antelope-Zebra area when guests could cross the bridges, and more, as well as Brookfield's original Seven Seas exhibit outdoors, Baboon Island when the baboons were breeding and mixed with meerkats, the older Wolf Woods, the long gone Ibex Island, Brookfield's obscure Small Mammal House, the former bear grottos, and a more populated, and early Tropic World South America including anteaters, vultures, bell birds, toucans, as well as monkeys.
The narrator remarks upon zoo standards and of course some of those remarks will be laughable, but they seem fair for the standards of the era, and most of the animal facts seem accurate enough, although the 'same species' remarks seem open to misinterpretation. The narrator makes a few brief comparisons to a past trip to Africa as well.
I recently tracked down the video, by Jack Schmidling Productions, and found out they had uploaded it to YouTube some years so, and am providing the link for anyone who may be interested in seeing these exhibits from a bygone era and the zoos' histories:
It appears to have been recordered in the 1980s, based on the presence of beloved Olga the walrus, who passed away in 1987, and in addition to a couple of still standing habitats it includes glimpses at several now demolished or renovated exhibits at both institutions, including a brief glimpse at Lincoln Park Zoo's former Reptile House, a longer look at the Lester E. Fisher Great Ape House, the mixed Asian Elephant-African Elephant exhibit, the Penguin-Seabird House, the Polar Bear exhibit of the era, the Antelope-Zebra area when guests could cross the bridges, and more, as well as Brookfield's original Seven Seas exhibit outdoors, Baboon Island when the baboons were breeding and mixed with meerkats, the older Wolf Woods, the long gone Ibex Island, Brookfield's obscure Small Mammal House, the former bear grottos, and a more populated, and early Tropic World South America including anteaters, vultures, bell birds, toucans, as well as monkeys.
The narrator remarks upon zoo standards and of course some of those remarks will be laughable, but they seem fair for the standards of the era, and most of the animal facts seem accurate enough, although the 'same species' remarks seem open to misinterpretation. The narrator makes a few brief comparisons to a past trip to Africa as well.
I recently tracked down the video, by Jack Schmidling Productions, and found out they had uploaded it to YouTube some years so, and am providing the link for anyone who may be interested in seeing these exhibits from a bygone era and the zoos' histories:
