The Brookfield Zoo is zoo located in the Chicago suburb of Brookfield, Illinois. The zoo covers an area of 216 acres (87 ha) and houses around 450 species of animals.
Brookfield Zoo, also known as the Chicago Zoological Park, opened on July 1, 1934, and quickly gained international recognition for using moats and ditches, instead of cages, to separate animals from visitors and from other animals. The zoo was also the first in America to exhibit giant pandas, one of which (Su Lin) has been taxidermied and put on display in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. In 1960, Brookfield Zoo built the nation's first fully indoor dolphin exhibit, and in the 1980s the zoo introduced Tropic World, the first fully indoor rain forest simulation and the then-largest indoor zoo exhibit in the world.
The Brookfield Zoo is owned by the Cook County Forest Preserve District and managed by the Chicago Zoological Society. The Society sponsors numerous research and conservation efforts globally.
Read more about Brookfield Zoo: History, Animals, Former Exhibits, Special Exhibits, Notable Staff and Programs, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the word zoo:
“The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)