Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

By Elizabeth Johnstone

I enjoy being a tourist in London.  Armed with my Super Off-Peak Travelcard plus Network Card, I like to take the train into town on a Saturday and visit one of our many attractions. Recently, I used the 2-for-1 discount offered by the Days Out Guide in association with National Rail.  Provided you travel by train, you can get two full price entry tickets for the price of one.

Meerkat at London Zoo

London Zoo seemed like a good use of this scheme. A single full price adult ticket, including a 10% “voluntary donation”, is an eye-watering £28.10.  Discounts are available for children, seniors, disabled people, groups etc but none are as good as two for one. My husband and I took the train to Finsbury Park, then a 29 bus to Camden followed by a pleasant 15-minute walk to the zoo.

Our first stopping point was Penguin Beach.  One of the newer features, it had raked seating so we could look down on these delightful creatures. Several “portholes” in the side of the pool showed off their streamlined underwater prowess. Readers may remember the Modernist Penguin Pool designed by Lubetkin in 1934.  It is preserved as architectural heritage but the penguins now enjoy a much more sympathetic environment.

Next, we explored the new “Land of the Lions”.  This huge, Indian-themed area includes a railway station, crumbling temple clearing, high street and guard hut.  Seeing the actual lions was harder.  A group of lionesses snoozed contentedly on heated rocks, but the male was well hidden somewhere in his spacious and protected habitat.  Ideal for him, less so for the customers.

Artworks and statues are too numerous to mention.  I liked the “Big Clock” outside the aviary.  It sprang to life on the hour with a charming mechanised interpretation of the Victorian attitude to animals.  Small animals were easier to spot.  Who doesn’t love a meerkat? An adult stood on guard duty on top of the burrow.  Even better were the black-capped squirrel monkeys, whose enclosure we could walk through. Plenty of keepers were on hand to prevent problems between curious monkeys and over-enthusiastic toddlers.

The venerable Galapagos tortoises lumbered purposefully around. The Komodo dragon glared balefully. We ate our sandwiches in “Australia”, eye-to-eye with emus.  Kangaroos dozed in the shade beside huge “termite mounds”.  We were in time for a presentation of the tigers and looked down on these fantastic animals from a viewing station.

By chance, we were visiting on Vulture Awareness Day.  Apparently, vultures are uniquely susceptible to an antibiotic routinely used on cattle in the sub-continent, with the result that over 99% have been wiped out. Vultures no longer devour disease-ridden carcasses and those diseases are spreading among the human population.  London Zoo has a programme to re-populate the vultures, to which we gladly contributed.

Another top exhibit was the vast and superbly appointed “Gorilla Kingdom”.  The enormous male slumbered in an equally capacious leather hammock, while the female relaxed on a branch.  She kept an eye on the baby whose eagerness to explore was not matched by its expertise.

At the end of the day, we had walked far enough, so used our Travelcards to hop on the 274 bus to Camden, where we picked up another 29.  We made it in time to catch the next train home from Finsbury Park, all pretty seamlessly.

Opinions are divided on zoos.  Some consider them unacceptable in any circumstances and I freely admit that the relationship between humans and animals is a complex one.  All I can say is that London Zoo appears to operate to the highest standards of animal welfare, conservation and education.

First published in VISA 131 (February 2017)