Human exhibits

Human beings were sometimes displayed in cages along with non-human animals, supposedly to illustrate the differences between people of European and non-European origin. During the 19th century, zoos with human exhibits existed in Hamburg, Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Milan, New York, and Warsaw, with 200,000 to 300,000 visitors reportedly attending each exhibition.

In September 1906, William Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoo in New York — with the agreement of Madison Grant, head of the New York Zoological Society — had Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy, displayed in a cage with the chimpanzees, then with an orangutan named Dohong, and a parrot. The exhibit was intended as an example of the "missing link" between the orangutan and white man. It triggered protests from the city's clergymen, but the public reportedly flocked to see it.[9][8]

Human beings were displayed in cages during the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, and as late as 1958 in a "Congolese village" display at Expo '58 in Brussels.