Entering The Zoo

The children's faces light up when their eyes turn onto a new world full of foreign creatures unlike any they have ever seen before. The bare metal fences are all that separate these small ones from the fierce and furry faces sitting across from them. In an instant, the african savannah and the australian outback come to life as if transported over an ocean like magic, while the more familiar sounds of birds come with bright colors and wide beaks, so thrilling! London Zoo, which opened in 1828, first called itself a menagerie or "zoological garden," short for "Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society of London." The abbreviation "zoo" first appeared in print in the UK around 1847, when it was used for the Clifton Zoo, but it was not until some twenty years later that the shortened form became popular in the song "Walking in the Zoo on Sunday" by music-hall artist Alfred Vance. Relatively new terms for zoos coined in the late 20th century are "conservation park" or "biopark". Adopting a new name is a strategy used by some zoo professionals to distance their institutions from the stereotypical and nowadays criticized zoo concept of the 19th century. The term "biopark" was first coined and developed by the National Zoo, Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s. In 1993, the New York Zoological Society changed its name to the Wildlife Conservation Society and rebranded the zoos under its jurisdiction as "wildlife conservation parks." This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=126451