A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
IT’S 9am on a Friday morning and I am being stared at by a gorilla. He blinks, I blink back, and then hastily look away, not fancying my chances against a great ape. This is a normal encounter at ZSL London Zoo, which re-opened in April after restrictions were lifted. Once upon a time, it had a bear pit, but the raucous crowds of the 18th century are long gone. Instead, a Covidcompliant one-way system is in action, guiding visitors decorously from penguin to post.
‘In 1828, the zoo had an orangutan, an Arabian oryx and a now-extinct thylacine on display’
