•Publication Date：03/25/2014
•Source： Taiwan Today
Taipei Zoo kicked off a year of celebrations March 24 for its 100th birthday with many generations of animals appearing at the festivities.
The facility was established as the nation’s first zoo in 1914 during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945) in Yuanshan District in the north of the city. In 1934, a children’s amusement park was set up next door to make the area a major family trip destination for members of an agricultural society.
Closed briefly toward the end of World War II until 1946, the zoo was quite a simple affair in those days, with only 178 animals and four keepers.
Several historical replicas of the zoo’s old gates from different periods are featured in the celebrations, along with once-popular old-timers. The zoo's 1940s era was dominated by a famous orangutan, donated in 1925 by Tennoji Zoo in Osaka, Japan. The ape’s wide range of facial expressions and human-like moves captured the public’s imagination and made it the zoo’s stellar feature.
The 1940 replica gate also features two performing elephants standing on their hind legs. Shows by the zoo’s trained animals pulled in the crowds until 1979.
The modern zoo still has an animal school, but it now trains animals to make simple moves for treatment purposes, such as extending their limbs for taking blood pressure.
In 1986, the zoo moved to its present site in Muzha in the south of the city. The animals also went from being kept in cages in the old zoo to a more open arrangement with large enclosures. The koala featuring on the replica gate of this period symbolizes another international exchange taking place at the new zoo.
Another of the zoo’s household names from the 1980s was Lin Wang, an Asian elephant famous for fighting in World War II and adored by children of several generations. The zoo held an unprecedented birthday celebration for the popular pachyderm in 1983 when he was 66. In 2003, the much-loved jumbo passed away at 86, setting a record for the longest-lived Asian elephant in captivity.
The zoo’s biggest star at present is the eight-month-old Yuanzai, the first panda born and bred in Taiwan, who tips the scales at over 23 kilograms. But she is just one of many baby animals to arrive at the zoo in recent months, including a chimpanzee, orangutan, white rhinoceros and three koalas.
