Burnin' Up The Roads: Going to the zoo!

Natura Artis Magistra

Yesterday my friend Bart took me to the oldest zoo in The Netherlands! The Natura Artis Magistra, meaning 'nature is the teaching of art and science,' is located in Amsterdam. Bart had a research project there a few years back on chimpanzees, so he was well acquainted with the zoo and an excellent tour guide.

Artis Royal Zoo was founded by 3 wealthy individuals and first began housing animals in 1838. Initially, it was only open to the public. In 1851 it was open to the public only in September, and in 1920 it was opened to the public year round.
Truly, the zoo has a completely different feel than any other zoo I've ever been to. The buildings are so old and you can almost feel the stories in the architecture and layout of the zoo. There are 27 buildings in the zoo that are considered monuments and are protected structures. The aquarium is one of them! It felt like I was walking through an old art museum, except where paintings should have been hung, there were dozens of fish tanks! And the flowers and landscape design was exceptional. Artis takes a lot of pride in the flowers, as 'wherever there are flowers-there is always a feeling of celebration.' And a lot of the trees on the property began as saplings there, some in the late 1800's!
I was also really surprised to find a few of the exhibits are semi-interactive. The lemurs could literally walk among people. There were no boundaries; it was just expected that you don't touch the animals and they won't hurt you. I literally worked at a museum with lemurs for a summer, and even then, I wasn't allowed in the lemur enclosure. This time though, I was much closer to a lot of different animal species than I had ever been before. I was impressed that people were just expected not to be idiots around the animals. It made for a much more intimate zoo experience.

It really was an incredible zoo visit. Completely different than any other I had been to before. It was like historical gardens meets zoo meets art museum. And they called it Natura Artis Magistra.

Here are some pictures of the animals. There were watusis (which our anatomy lab faculty had the privilege of preserving a skull earlier this year!) Their horns are so impressive! There were also giraffes (and a newborn baby giraffe born the morning we arrived!), elephants, lions, all kinds of reptiles, a butterfly house, monkeys, birds...you name it, it was probably there.