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Apenheul History

History

A man with an idea

In the sixties, a photographer from Rotterdam, Wim Mager, had two tamarins. In that time, it was legal to buy monkeys in a pet shop. What started as a hobby, ended in a primate park. Wim Mager decided to give up his job as a photographer and developed the ‘apen-heul’ idea (‘heul’ is old-Dutch for refuge, safety zone).

The concept was simple: people enjoy primates most when these primates enjoy themselves and show much of their natural behaviour. So the monkeys lived no longer in cages with bars, but in large and natural enclosures in the forest.

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Revolutionary

Apenheul began in 1971 as a small but revolutionary zoo, the first and only zoo in the world(!) where monkeys live free in the forest but are also free to walk around the visitors. The zoo began with the woolly monkeys, the spider monkeys and a few other small species. In a short period of time it was proven that not only the visitors, but also the monkeys were content with this concept. This freedom allowed the animals to form ideal social groups and to reproduce perfectly.

Breeding successes

The breeding successes were the main reason for Apenheul to expand and to gradually acquire other primate species. The gorilla, the biggest of all apes, came in 1976. Three years later, in 1979, the first gorilla babies were born, followed by many more. Every baby was raised in the gorilla group by the mother and this was very unique in those days! All those successes brought not only more visitors to Apenheul, but also primatologists (primate scientists) from all around the world who came to see “the completed masterpiece”.