10 Facts About Edinburgh Zoo

Edinburgh Zoo, formerly the Scottish National Zoological Park, is an 82-acre non-profit zoological park in the Corstorphine area of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Edinburgh Zoo was the first zoo in the world to house and to breed penguins.

Edinburgh Zoo still retains the original charter, which drives its active breeding programme, and biodiversity, conservation and sustainability initiatives.

Edinburgh Zoo is well known for housing penguins in its collection, the first three being king penguins, which arrived in January 1913.

In 2011, Edinburgh Zoo leased two giant pandas, a male named Yang Guang and a female named Tian Tian, from the Bifengxia Breeding Centre in China at a cost of $1m a year.

Related searches

Edinburgh Zoo is currently the only zoo in the United Kingdom that houses giant pandas.

In 2019, Edinburgh Zoo announced the development of a new enclosure for giraffes, and launched a Crowdfunder campaign to raise money for the project.

Edinburgh Zoo is home to a primate behavioural research centre, Living Links.

Organisations that remain critical of Edinburgh Zoo's work include the Animal Liberation Front, who have voiced their distaste for the quality of the enclosure that formerly housed polar bears.

Edinburgh Zoo received a public backlash on Twitter after the European Endangered Species Programme recommended that they should cull three red river hog piglets after an unplanned birth.