Abstract

The perception of exotic nature had a relevant influence on applied zoology in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century and in the first half of the nineteenth century. The examples provided show how the perception of wild animals was influenced by contemporary philosophy. The author Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre reached a sentimental view of nature during his stay at Ile de France, now Mauritius. During his direction of the Jardin du Roi in Paris he advocated for the creation of a new type of a scientific and educational menagerie. His ideas of how to keep wild animals in captivity were applied at the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes which was opened in 1794. After a stay in Sumatra and Java the British civil servant Thomas Stamford Raffles founded the Zoological Society (1826) and the Zoological Gardens in Regents Park (1828). In Germany the founder of the Berlin Zoo (1844), the first director of the Hamburg Zoo (1863) and of the Berlin Aquarium (1867), the first scientific director of Frankfurt Zoo (1859-64) all had first hand experience of exotic nature