Duisburg Zoo

The Duisburg Zoo, founded on 12 May 1934, is one of the largest zoological gardens in Germany. It is especially well known for its dolphinarium and, since 1994, for breeding koalas.

Far less well known are the breeding successes in other areas, for example, with fossas (civits from Madagascar) and Red River hogs.

The zoo is located in the northern part of the Duisburg urban forest on the border with Mülheim on the Ruhr. Federal highway A 3 divides the zoo into western and an eastern parts, which are joined by a leafy country bridge. The highway is scarcely noticeable to the visitors.

History

The Duisburg Zoo was founded in 1934 as the Duisburg-Hamborner Tierpark am Kaiserberg. In 1936, the zoo began to grow from a small animal park with its first (loaned) elephant.

With the beginning of World War II in 1939, the zoo had to be closed. Only in 1946 was the zoo re-opened with animals loaned from the Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich. In 1952, the zoo could register the acquisition of its first elephant. In 1958, a facility for penguins and seals was dedicated by businessman and promoter Helmut Horten. In 1965, one of Europe’s largest dolphinariums was opened in a newly developed area. Research into the behavior of dolphins increased the zoo’s prestige, but also drew sharp criticism, since even the generously dimensioned dolphinarium only managed to offer a small fraction of the space available to a dolphin in its natural habitat.

Nature

Nature, in the broadest sense, is the natural, physical, or material world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena.

The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth".Natura is a Latin translation of the Greek word physis (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers, and has steadily gained currency ever since. This usage continued during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.

Animal

Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa). All animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently, at some point in their lives. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs: they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance.

Most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals are divided into various sub-groups, some of which are: vertebrates (birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish); molluscs (clams, oysters, octopuses, squid, snails); arthropods (millipedes, centipedes, insects, spiders, scorpions, crabs, lobsters, shrimp); annelids (earthworms, leeches); sponges; and jellyfish.

Etymology

The word "animal" comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, having soul or living being. In everyday non-scientific usage the word excludes humans – that is, "animal" is often used to refer only to non-human members of the kingdom Animalia; often, only closer relatives of humans such as mammals, or mammals and other vertebrates, are meant. The biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans.

Zoo

A zoo (short for zoological park, zoological garden, or animal park, and also called a menagerie) is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred.

The term zoological garden refers to zoology, the study of animals, a term deriving from the Greek zōon (ζῷον, "animal") and lógos (λóγος, "study"). The abbreviation "zoo" was first used of the London Zoological Gardens, which opened for scientific study in 1828 and to the public in 1857. The number of major animal collections open to the public around the world now exceeds 1,000, around 80 percent of them in cities.

Etymology

London Zoo, which opened in 1826, first called itself a menagerie or "zoological forest," which is 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 20 years later that the shortened form became popular in the song "Walking in the Zoo on Sunday" by music-hall artist Alfred Vance. The term "zoological park" was used for more expansive facilities in Washington, D.C., and the Bronx in New York, which opened in 1891 and 1899 respectively.

Duisburg

Duisburg (German pronunciation: [ˈdyːsbʊɐ̯k]) is a German city in the western part of the Ruhr Area (Ruhrgebiet) in North Rhine-Westphalia. It is an independent metropolitan borough within Regierungsbezirk Düsseldorf. With the world's biggest inland harbor and its proximity to Düsseldorf Airport, Duisburg has become an important venue for commerce and steel production. In the early Middle Ages it was a royal court of the Franks, first mentioned in writing in 883.

Like many other cities, today's Duisburg is a result of numerous incorporations of surrounding towns and smaller cities. It is the fifteenth-largest city in Germany and the fifth-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia with 486,855 residents at the end of 2013. The city is renowned for its steel industry. The last remaining coal mine closed down in the summer of 2009, but Duisburg has never been a coal-mining center to the same extent as other places in the Ruhr region. All blast furnaces in the Ruhr are now located in Duisburg. In 2000 49% of all hot metal and 34.4% of all pig iron in Germany was produced here. It also has a large brewery, the König Brauerei, located in Duisburg-Beeck, which makes the König Pilsener brand. The University of Duisburg-Essen, with 39,000 students, ranks among the 10 largest German universities.