ABSTRACT
Before discussing animals in captivity and their conservation, it is essential to examine the history of ex situ animal collections and how far they date back in human history. The oldest known zoos were built in Egypt and date back to 4000 BC (Rose, 2010), and for thousands of years these collections of exotic animals were an exclusivity of pharaohs, emperors, and kings. It was not until the eighteenth century that the first exotic animal exhibitions were organized for the leisure of the general public; these gradually developed into modern zoos as we know them. The first zoos in Europe were those of Vienna, Paris, and London; in North America, those of Boston, New York, and Chicago; and in Brazil, the Belém and Rio de Janeiro zoos were founded in the nineteenth century (Costa, 2004).
