The answer is they all have connections to London Zoo, which is marking its 200th birthday.
There is a whole year of celebrations planned, but how did the Regent’s Park attraction get started?
In 1826 Sir Stamford Raffles founded The Zoological Society London (ZSL) as the world’s first scientific zoo for the study of living animals.
Two years later it opened to Fellows of the Society plus members of the public who handed over a letter from a Fellow and a shilling.
In 1829 it was granted its first Royal Charter, and soon began to hold scientific meetings where papers about orangutans and quails were presented.
There was in fact an earlier zoo in London; the Royal menagerie at the Tower of London which dated back to the 1200s, but the animals were transferred to ZSL in 1831, the same year a young scientist called Charles Darwin became a member.
In 1836 the first giraffes arrived at London Zoo – the only way to get them to their new lodgings was to walk them from the docks with Londoners stopping in amazement.
The bespoke built Giraffe House remains the oldest in the world still used for its original purpose.
1847 saw the zoo fully open to the public, swiftly followed by the opening of the world’s first Reptile House and arrival of Obaysch the hippopotamus – the first living hippo seen in Europe since Roman times.
He sparked an outbreak of ‘hippomania’, inspiring souvenirs and even a song, the ‘hippopotamus polka’.
The world’s first public aquarium opened there in 1853, coining the term as a shortened version of Aquatic Vivarium.
In fact the word zoo wasn’t used until 1869, in a music hall song about London Zoo called Walking to the Zoo.
Another famous resident was Jumbo who became the first African elephant seen alive in England when he joined the zoo as a calf.
He grew into a towering bull elephant weighing over six tonnes and in 1882 there was public outcry when he was sold to the American showman PT Barnum for £2,000.
The circus entrepreneur toured him around the US, turning him into a global sensation before his death in a train accident in 1885.
The word jumbo became synonymous with anything oversized – including the Boeing 747, the original Jumbo Jet.
Another famous zoo resident was a black bear ‘deposited’ at London Zoo in 1914 by her owner – a Canadian soldier off to the First World War.
The bear was called Winnipeg, but author A.A Milne’s son Christopher Robin dubbed her Winnie the Bear on his visits to the zoo, and she became the inspiration for A.A Milne’s character Winnie-the-Pooh.
In 1926 ZSL bought a 600-acre farm, near Whipsnade village for £13,480 to open the world’s first open zoological park where they could host larger animals. They were walked from Dunstable station to take up home there in 1931.
1934 saw the opening of the iconic Penguin Pool, designed by modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin.
Although the curved concrete structure proved more beautiful than suitable to the welfare of penguins (who now live at Penguin Beach) it remains a Grade I listed gem and is the inspiration for the familiar Penguin Books logo.
Two years later, Princess Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret were thrilled to visit Ming, the first giant panda ever seen in the UK and a national celebrity. Later Queen Elizabeth II, she would become the zoo’s patron until her death in 2022.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, the giant pandas, elephants and rhinos were sent to Whipsnade Zoo and London Zoo closed briefly, but remained open throughout the rest of the conflict – it would next close 80 years later due to Covid.
Guy the gorilla arrived on Bonfire Night 1947 and was named after Guy Fawkes. He too became a celebrity in the 1960s, and after his death in 1978 he was stuffed and put on display at the Natural History Museum where he remains in the Treasures Gallery.
The 1950s saw the first broadcasts from London Zoo with the BBC’s Zoo Quest – David Attenborough’s first presenting role.
Accompanying London Zoo keepers on worldwide animal collecting expeditions allowed British TV viewers to encounter many exotic animals for the first time and kickstarted a career that endures today.
Meanwhile a TV crew based at the zoo started producing wildlife and natural history programmes – including the arrival of Chi Chi the panda – the inspiration for the World Wildlife Fund logo.
In the 1960s London Zoo still hosted polar bears and elephants although the practice of allowing the public to feed the animals ended in 1968.
The polar bears would leave in the mid 1980s, while the last elephant went to Whipsnade in 2001 following the death of a keeper.
Despite successes in conservation and breeding at home and abroad, the zoo was threatened with closure in the 1990s due to lack of funds.
But thanks to donations from The Emir of Kuwait and Dr Swarj Paul it was able to survive.
Over the following decades new enclosures were opened for the tigers, lions, monkeys and penguins but when Covid forced the zoo’s closure in 2020, Sir David stepped up to front a fundraising campaign to save it.
Famous escapes have included Goldie the Eagle in 1965, and Kumbuku the Gorilla who broke into a staff corridor in 2016 and managed to drink five litres of undiluted squash before returning to his enclosure.
Over the years, movies filmed at London Zoo have ranged from Withnail & I, to Harry Potter, to An American Werewolf in London, and About A Boy.
But in 2024 the zoo became the backdrop to a Banksy artwork when a gorilla lifting the shutter to release a sea lion and birds became the ninth in a series of animal images spray painted across the city.
Watch out for news on how ZSL is celebrating its 200th anniversary at www.zsl.org/200.
