The first zoo animals were often gifts from people who kept wild animals as pets. A gorilla called Massa, for example, who lived at the Philadelphia Zoo for many years, was the gift of a woman who had a passion for apes. Massa had been raised to wear dresses, so he thought he was a female human. He was introduced to female gorillas, but he refused to have anything to do with them. He preferred people until the day he died.Where do zoo animals come from?
For a long time, zoos got most of their stock from dealers who bought and sold wild animals, The earliest dealers set up shop near the docks in major ports. There they would do business with the captains and officers of sailing ships that made voyages around the world. And there the zoo directors, and people who wanted wild animals for their private collections, would come to buy them.
Some twentieth century dealers did more than just buy and sell animals. Men like Carl Hagenbeck of Hamburg, Germany, and Frederik Zeehandelaar of New Jersey took orders for particular animals and planned expeditions to capture them. Some of the people who captured animals became famous. An American hunter, Frank Buck, wrote a book about his adventure called Bring 'Em Back Alive, which million of young people read in the 1950s.
Today, many wild animals are becoming endangered, and laws have been passed in many countries to stop people from capturing them. Smugglers still capture some animals illegally for sale to private collectors. But most zoos obey the laws meant to protect animals. They encourage animals in their collections to mate, so that their babies will replace the animals that grow old and die in the zoos. Many zoos also get some of the animals they need from other zoos. The animals may be traded, borrowed, or brought.
(text from What's a Zoo Do? by Jonathan Webb, 1995, Key Porter Books Ltd.)