AboutZoos

2025-04-28 10:40:23

Wellington Zoo chimpanzees' tea party in 1956

New Zealand's oldest surviving zoo was established in 1906 after a group of residents petitioned the Wellington City Council to establish a Zoo for the people of Wellington. Initially housed in the Wellington Botanical Gardens. The collection was moved to Newtown Park, the Zoo's present location, in 1907.

In 1956, as a part of the Zoo's 50th anniversary celebrations, three female chimpanzees arrived from London Zoo. This must have been the reason that they introduced tea parties with the chimps afterwards. Like in London zoo the tea parties were very popular with the public.
The last tea party was in February 1970, four years after Koenraad Kuiper became Zoo director. After World War II Kuiper emigrated to New Zealand because he couldn't find a suitable job in the Netherlands. More remarkably, his father had been director of Rotterdam Zoo (Diergaarde Blijdorp) before and during the war. Kuiper senior had been a strong opponent of using zoo animals for entertainment of the public. This might have influenced the ideas of the son, and together with the new era of zoo development and husbandry this led to an end of the chimp tea parties. Today, Wellington Zoo's chimpanzees live in a large outdoor park and new indoor home, which was completed in 2007.

(Source: Archives New Zealand - Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga ;Reference: Pictorial Parade 55. National Film Unit, 1956; Licensed by Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence)