In the spring of 1826, two extraordinary things occurred in central London. The first was the death of Chunee the elephant. On 1 March at Cross’s Menagerie, upstairs in the Exeter ’Change on the Strand, Chunee was killed by a firing squad in the cramped enclosure where he’d been kept for the previous six years.

By this point Chunee was more than three metres (10ft) tall and weighed at least five tonnes. Like all adult male elephants, he periodically went into musth, when his body was flooded with testosterone, making him aggressive and uncontrollable. After Chunee injured one keeper (apparently deliberately) and accidentally killed another, the proprietor, Edward Cross, decided to have him destroyed.

Soldiers summoned from nearby Somerset House fired 152 musket balls into the elephant. Only wounded, he was reportedly finished off with a harpoon. The whole horror show was capped the next day by members of the public being charged a shilling to watch his body being butchered by students from the Royal College of Surgeons.

Then came the second extraordinary thing. On 29 April 1826, galvanised by public outrage at Chunee’s terrible fate, and after years of discussions among scientists and politicians about the need for an organisation to promote the proper scientific study and display of “members of the animal kingdom”, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) was founded.

To celebrate its 200th birthday on Wednesday, ZSL is building on its........

© The Guardian