European Forests

Lore & Background

The Royal Zoological Society of Dublin was established at a meeting held at the Rotunda Hospital on 10 May 1830 and the zoo, then called the Zoological Gardens Dublin, was opened to the public on 1 September 1831. The animals, 46 mammals and 72 birds, were donated by London Zoo and private donors. Initially, the entrance fee was one shilling. What made Dublin Zoo very different from some of its contemporaries was a decision to reduce the charge to one penny on Sundays.

This choice made the Zoo popular among the less wealthy. In 1833, the original cottage-style entrance lodge to the zoo was built at a cost of £30 and in early days also housed staff. The thatch-roofed building is still visible to the right of the current entrance. In 1838, on Whit Monday, the zoo held an open day – 20,000 people visited, a record that has since been broken (for example, in 2019 over 20,000 visited on a single day).

In 1844 the zoo received its first giraffe, and in 1855 it bought its first pair of lions which bred for the first time in 1857. Reptiles got their own house in 1876 and the first tearooms were built in 1898.

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In 2002, a twenty-eight-year-old hippo named Linda was thrown a tennis ball by a visitor. While she caught the ball, it became lodged in her intestines and she died soon after. A male and female polar bear couple named Ootec and Spunky were transferred to Dublin Zoo in the early 1980s from Winnipeg Zoo, and lived in "cramped conditions" until approximately 1998 when a new enclosure was built for them in the zoo. In 2003, it was reported that Spunky, the female of the two, had been "exhibiting signs of stress when close to the male", and did not have space in which to retreat from him when needed, exhibiting "continued pacing behaviour" which concerned zoo staff, including zoo director Leo Ooterweghel.

Eventually, the two bears were moved to Sóstó Zoo, Hungary in which they were given more space allowing each polar bear to "spend time by themselves" if they so chose but also to come together when needed. Sligo band Those Nervous Animals wrote a song about Spunky in 2003 named "The Polar Bear". In 2005, the Kaziranga Forest Trail was opened. It is now home to eleven Asian elephants; Bernhardine, Yasmin, Asha and Anak, the four mature females.

Kavi, Ashoka and Samiya the five-year-old calves, and the newest additions, Zinda, Avani, Kabir and Sanjay. In 2009, the African Savannah was opened in the African Plains section of the zoo. It is now home to species such as the giraffe, zebra, ostrich, scimitar-horned oryx, and southern white rhino. In 2010, Dublin Zoo received 963,053 visitors.

In 2015, Dublin Zoo was the third most popular visitor attraction in Ireland with 1,105,005 visitors. The year 2015 also saw the death of the well-known and loved silverback western lowland gorilla Harry. During his life at Dublin Zoo, Harry produced many offspring; thus contributing greatly to the conservation of his species. The documentary TV series The Zoo produced by Moondance Productions is filmed almost entirely on location at Dublin Zoo, and began broadcast on TV3 in 2010, before moving to RTÉ One in Ireland in 2011.

It is also broadcast on VRT in Belgium since 2011 and on Discovery Animal Planet in the UK since 2012. In November 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the public donated over 2 million euro in two days to the zoo to support it. In Seanad Éireann in July 2022, Annie Hoey reported allegations from whistleblowers of the mistreatment since 2016 of terminally ill animals, including Harry the gorilla, and of the escape or loss since 2019 of two Celebes crested macaques, a white-collared mangabey, and a citron-crested cockatoo.

The zoo said it "vehemently disputes" the allegations. In 2024, two elephants in the zoo died due to Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (EEHV). By August 2024, and after "unprecedented support from international veterinary experts, other zoos, and cooperation from An Garda Síochána, as well as the Irish and British governments", the zoo announced a clean bill of health for the remaining elephants. In 2026, the Zoo announced a promotion of free entry for mothers for the occasion of Mother’s Day & St Patrick’s Day. The promotion featured the comedian James Patrice portraying a character called "The Malahide Mammy".