£20m mystery gift buys London Zoo new hospital where you can watch vets work
London Zoo has received a £20 million anonymous donation to build a new animal hospital that will allow visitors to observe live veterinary procedures. The facility aims to combine advanced veterinary care with public engagement and will serve as a training hub for wildlife vets. While the zoo promotes its conservation efforts, critics question the ethics of keeping animals in captivity and the potential spectacle of public veterinary procedures.
- ▪The new Wildlife Health Centre will feature a viewing gallery for visitors to watch various veterinary procedures.
- ▪This donation marks the largest gift in the zoo's history and coincides with the Zoological Society of London's 200th anniversary.
- ▪ZSL aims to demonstrate the value of its conservation work while addressing concerns about the ethics of animal captivity.
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£20m mystery gift buys London Zoo new hospital where you can watch vets work28 April 2026ShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleJustin RowlattClimate Editor©ZSLVisitors to London zoo will soon be able to watch live veterinary procedures inside a state-of-the-art new animal hospital thanks to a mystery £20m donation.A viewing gallery will show everything from penguin health checks to ultrasounds on pregnant aardvarks and even porpoise post-mortems - things never before seen publicly in the UK.The health centre has been made possible by the zoo's largest ever gift - from an anonymous benefactor.With the keeping of animals in captivity increasingly questioned, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), which manages the zoo and marks its 200th anniversary today, hopes the new centre will help…
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