The oldest zoo in Russia
Perhaps starting from the times of ancient Rome and the Middle Ages, when the era of large and small travels and conquests came. In the courts of royalty or not destitute nobles, it was quite fashionable to place in some rooms or enclosures of outlandish animals living in those countries that were conquered and subdued by the colonists.
So in particular, one of the most famous institutions of this type were well-known to us from the course of history of the general education school, the famous ancient Roman circuses. Where, in addition to the gladiators, various wild beasts participated in the battles, in the genus of the same lions, tigers and panthers, which naturally did not reside on the territory of the continental part of the Roman Empire.
This is the background of the emergence of such popular institutions as zoological parks, which today are located almost in all major cities and capitals of the world. The capital of the Russian Federation, the city of Moscow, is also an exception.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, namely in 1864, on the initiative of the Russian Imperial Society for the Acclimatization of Animals and Plants, the oldest zoo in Russia, the Moscow, was created. At the same time, the most active initiator of the creation of the Moscow Zoo was the famous naturalist, professor of the Moscow University Anatoly Petrovich Bogdanov, who at his university department was engaged in questions of acclimatization of animals and plants brought to the territory of the central part of Russia from various expeditions.
To date, the Moscow Zoo has, perhaps, the largest collection of animals on the territory not only of Russia, but also of Western Europe, which is represented on an area of 22 hectares and is located almost in the center of the capital.