Dublin Zoo is a historic part of Dublin for many reasons. Between school trips, childhood summers, tourist visits and so on, it holds many memories for former guests both at home and abroad.
Yet its history goes back much further than living memory. Opened in 1831, it's one of the oldest zoos in the world - and has been on the global map for quite some time.
In her 1918 book Herself - Ireland, Elizabeth Paschal O'Connor, writer and wife of Irish politician T. P. O'Connor, wrote a fascinating entry on Dublin Zoo in the early 1900s. She claimed that the tamed and trained behaviour of its wild animals was unseen anywhere else.
