I'm 99% certain Paignton have not had Polar Bear since at least the 1950's but equally certain they had Himalayan Bears in that period.
I've done some digging and there definitely was a giant panda at Paignton in 1964, and I would hazard a guess it was still there in the 1970s. You can see it quite clearly in the following clip at the 1.30 mark. I must say that for 1964 the enclosures here were amazing! I also quite like seeing the keeper wading across to the gibbon island in a long zoo-keeper trenchcoat at about the 50 second mark. Very sixties. PAIGNTON ZOO - British Pathé
Well, there is the solution for the zoo that wants a giant panda but doesn't want to shell out millions of simoleons to China. Why don't zoos allow their chimps to smoke anymore? That seems grossly unfair.
close. The zoo (under Kevin Kline's management) installs an animatronic panda, to the keepers' disgust.
Which Kline then proceeds to ride, to their further disgust. I'll say this though - an animatronic panda would be livelier than the real thing!
which makes one suspect that Kevin Kline's character had visited the Paignton Zoo in 1964 as a child...
For all the interest some visitors show, the zoo could get away with cardboard cutouts ( I've just returned from a busy summer's morning at the zoo so am somewhat jaded I had to leave the Spider Monkeys when a pensionable adult started making chimp noises at them, and as for the person who could see one of the bachelor gorillas holding a baby......)
And I'll vouch its the only Giant Panda they have had there. Paignton was a hidden gem in those days- the Gibbon Island was always one of their highlights, as was a pretty large Primate collection in the old Monkey House. Diadem Guenon, Diana monkey, Patas, Black Spider Monkey, Colobus and King Colobus, Mandrill and Drill, those are just the ones I can remember. I wonder where the Red Deer lived- on the hill that is now the zebra paddock perhaps?
my supposition is that if the original poster of this thread was a child in the 70s, the giant panda ride may have become a real panda in his memory, perhaps due to a merged memory of Asiatic black bear if they did hold them then. I have a memory of seeing a live whale swimming out in the ocean when I was very young, but I know that in reality it was a big concrete whale in a kiddie pool next to the beach.
Paignton definitely did have Asiatic black bears and held the species for many years too. A 70-year old keeper was attacked and killed by one in 1943. They were kept initially in a row of cages on the site of what was to become the baboon rock and giraffe yard. When the giraffe house was built in the late 60s they were moved to those that continued on from the monkey house at the top of the zoo. They were there until surprisingly recently - at least the late 70s, maybe even early 80s.
Thankyou for this information. I was sure I could remember them in the top row carnivore cages you mention at the end.
I've had a quick look through 'Chimps, Champs and Elephants' by Jack Baker, a history of the zoo written in 1988, for references to bears. In 1925, a bear called 'Billy' arrived. He was the mascot of HMS Delhi and had been rescued from a forest fire in British Columbia. Also in the 1920s, 'the estate blacksmiths turned from making ploughshares to produce cages for bears and lions....' A member of staff 'was fatally mauled by the Zoo's white-collared Himalayan bears on 2 October 1943'. In c1961, '..accommodation was becoming a problem, and when news came that London Zoo were looking for a mate to cheer up their old Himalayan bear, it was realised that the answer to both problems was the black bear that was leading a lone life in the Zoo's Lion Row and was significantly known to the staff as 'Killer' because in the Goddard era he had attacked a keeper with fatal results. Paignton had a young pair next door and were happy to part with their old-timer...' Finally, a reference to Giant Pandas in c1984:'Almost to the day when Prince Philip launched the one and a half million 'Save the Giant Panda' appeal, the Zoo welcomed its first red panda on loan from Edinburgh'. My own collection of reports etc doesn't start till 1993.
