Thousands of visitors spent the weekly holiday on Friday, 11 April 2025, at the Bangladesh National Zoo in Mirpur, Dhaka. Some came with friends, others with their families, and some travelled in from outside the capital despite the intense heat. They walked from cage to cage looking at animals and birds of many species.
Crowds build after midday, hawkers at the gate
A Jagonews24 reporter who visited that afternoon found that most visitors were children and teenagers. The Eid holidays had ended the week before. The zoo was not as packed as on Eid or festival holidays, but on Fridays the number of visitors keeps rising after midday.
Business picked up in step for the hundreds of hawkers outside the main gate, who sold lemon juice, nuts, balloons, toys and pickles. CNG-run and battery-run autorickshaws jammed the road in front of the gate.
Children at the tiger, lion and bird cages
The biggest crowds of children and parents gathered at the cages of monkeys, tigers, lions, deer and giraffes. Just inside the main gate is the monkey cage, and ahead of it the aviary, which holds several hundred birds of different species, including herons, purple swamphens (kalim), greater flamingos and pelicans. A left turn from there leads to the tiger and lion cages. Snakes and many other animals are kept in other enclosures.
Kazi Mamun had come from Sreepur in Gazipur with his wife and daughter. He works at a factory in Gazipur, and said colleagues from his workplace had hired microbuses for the trip because it was a holiday. "I was in my village for the Eid holidays. When we came back to work, we all planned to go somewhere together. Today six of us came with our families in two microbuses. The children have seen tigers and bears. We are eating together. The time is passing happily," he said.
Motaleb Amin, a young man, came with five friends. Buying tickets, he said: "We came mainly for an outing with friends. You can't get everyone together at once. Today we could, so we came on the spur of the moment."
The country's largest zoo
The Mirpur zoo is the largest in Bangladesh. According to Banglapedia, it began in 1950 as an animal park on the High Court premises and moved to its present site in Mirpur on 23 June 1974. It is run under the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock. On 5 February 2015 its name was changed from Dhaka Zoo to Bangladesh National Zoo.
Banglapedia lists 2,150 vertebrate animals of 191 species at the zoo, among them 1,500 birds of 91 species. About ten thousand people visit on an average day and about three million a year. Its two lakes shelter large numbers of migratory birds every winter. Besides being a place of recreation, the zoo is a training ground: veterinary students from Bangladesh Agricultural University and other veterinary colleges do internships there.
Photo: Dolon Prova / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sources: Jagonews24, Banglapedia, Wikipedia
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