Family Fun Day: Raised by the Zoo with Gerry Creighton

People have been enchanted by elephants for centuries: they have inspired parables, films, songs, religions and wars. For Gerry Creighton, this fascination came at an early age. His father was a keeper at Dublin Zoo, who instilled in him a love of animals and taught him how to treat them. When Gerry followed his father into the zoo at fifteen, it was the elephants that fascinated him most. He would spend the next thirty-six years observing, studying and caring for these majestic creatures.

Elephants are among the most intelligent, emotionally intricate species. They exist in complex social structures – each one serving a role within the larger group. Gerry believes that watching these animals – the way in which they live, care for each other, form relationships and teach the next generation – can reveal to us what it means to be human.

Raised By the Zoo is Gerry Creighton’s heart-warming and colourful memoir of a life spent in Dublin Zoo – a place with fond memories for every family in the country. Filled with a lively cast of the zoo’s inhabitants, including Lucy the Chimp and Upali the Elephant, it captures a pivotal period in Dublin Zoo’s history, as it became a world-leading centre of education, and underscores the importance of animal and environmental conservation efforts around the world.

Gerry Creighton was operations manager and elephant keeper at Dublin Zoo for thirty-six years and the face of RTÉ’s popular series The Zoo. He is now a public speaker and consults for zoos and wildlife parks around the world on best-practice elephant conservation and research. He lives in Dublin with his family.