Using the elephant to help construct the zoo, was probably a predecessor to the " innovative natural" logging camp shows which were popular for a while.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Vintage Detroit Zoo--Detroit, Michigan--50th Anniversary Guide Book 1978
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
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7 comments:
Wade, this is Paulina. She arrived at the Detroit Zoo in 1928, and died in 1950, at the age of 69. She gave rides to half a million people, and is the only zoo animal buried on zoo grounds, in the administrative area.
Mary Ann
500,000 kids divided by 22 years = 22727 kids a year or 62 a day (if the ride was open every day (even in the winter) The half million seems a bit high
Anonymous, the figure came from "Wonders Among Us - celebrating 75 years of the Detroit Zoo". I don't know how many people the ride carried at a time.
Mary Ann
The head piece looks like one from a Hagenbeck act (Though I doubt they have a trademark on them). I Know Hagenbecks were consultants on the Detroit Zoo -- were they also the source of this elephant?
Jim A., good one! Dan Koehl's entry in his online elephant studbook is woefully inadequate, leaving a large gap between her birth date and her arrival at the Detroit Zoo.
http://www.elephant.se/database2.php?elephant_id=2781
However, "Wonders Among Us - celebrating 75 years of the Detroit Zoo" says that "she spent her youth working in India, and then performed for the Hagenbecks at their park in Germany. She was in her late forties upon her arrival in 1928."
Mary Ann
Wade, "Wonders Among Us" also says "The last ride took place in 1940, when Paulina was beginning to show her age. Her most serious problem was a weakened trunk, and at times its mobility became so weakened that Falca (Sam Falca, her keeper) had to feed her by hand and squirt water into her yawning mouth."
Mary Ann
So she was a ride elephant for around a dozen years after arriving from Germany and probably carried 250 kids a day during a six month ride season. Probably a reasonable number in that day and age. I'm pretty sure at the height of the season their were days when 500 kids rode elephants at the Bronx zoo twenty-five years ago. It always amazes me that the single day record attendance at the park was over 84,000 people back in 1941.
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