Natural habitat not a priority for most animals in the early iron-and-concrete cage days of Adelaide Zoo
A small pond for the polar bear at Adelaide Zoo. Inset: Another bear in a cage about 1925.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
While some celebrity animal exhibits at the early Adelaide Zoo were given distinctive accommodation, most were housed in concrete pits and iron cages.
Creating natural surrounds was not a priority. Rather the enclosure for the black bear (1914) and the carnivora house (seven lions and two tigers) was lined with white tiles in 1896 to give “an excellent background for visitors, including natural history students and artists”. The zoo was sensitive to occasional criticism of its conditions and practices. But, as late as 1931, its annual report was claiming that the animals were more comfortably housed than in their natural habitat.
The zoos’ bears were confined to sharing small enclosures from early in the 20th Century. In 1902, keeper Richard Dorricott lost his right arm to a bear attack – reported by The Advertiser as Dorricott having been “seriously maltreated by a big brown bear”.
For many years, the zoo’s polar bears had no pond or area to get into water, except for a depression about 30 centimetres deep in the middle with water dripping from a hose in the ceiling.
In 1909, a boa constrictor swallowed a rug in its exhibit that stayed in its stomach for a month.
Moves towards more natural environments for animals started in the 1930s but the cages remained. The zoo’s pathologist G. McLennan, appointed in 1936, still believed the zoo’s purpose to be entirely utilitarian. The animals and birds were there to be viewed but also to be available later dissections to gain knowledge to benefit humans.
By 1947, when animal quarantine regulations began to seriously curb the zoo’s society’s ability to import “attractive animals” and it started breeding programmes.
Australian zoo directors in 1944 decided to list the nation’s zoo stock so exchanges for breeding purposes could be coordinated.
A female tiger was loaned to Adelaide Zoo from Bullen Brothers’ circus in 1957 but, as with Sally the polar bear, the mother showed no interest in her cubs and they died. The failures were attributed to stress suffered by the animals.
During Great Depression and beyond World War II, when bird and animal imports and exchanges were prohibited and “more common Australian animals added”, the zoo was transformed even more into an amusement venue.
