The horrifying human zoos: Shocking images show how ‘primitive’ tribesmen were caged alongside animals to be gawped at by Westerners

These animals, caged in Madrid’s Retiro Park, have been described as ‘strange’, ‘deformed’, ‘cruel’ and ‘inhumane’.

In the spring of 1887, Queen Maria Cristina of Spain opened the Philippine Exposition, and for six months thousands of people flocked to the iconic venue to observe natives from the Igorot tribe.

They were shipped from the Philippines, then a Spanish colony, and displayed as part of a practice that deprived them of their dignity and made them a curiosity for public entertainment.

The troublesome human exhibit was one of many in Europe at the time and was part of the widespread practice of displaying colonized populations in what became known as human zoos.

The first exhibition in the Spanish capital featured 43 men, women and children from the Filipino tribe. He was described by the newspapers with a mixture of admiration and disdain.

Journal El Imparcial wrote that they differed ‘in their constitution, appearance, language, manners, customs, colours, and even dress’ from ‘the most civilized and hitherto known Filipinos’.

European societies had developed an appetite for the ‘exotic’, fueled by colonial expansion and the growing market for human exhibits.

Organizers sent colonized peoples from around the world to cities such as Paris, London, Madrid and Berlin; here visitors paid to observe them in staged ‘villages’ representing their daily lives.

Filipino natives pose for a photo after being brought to Madrid to take part in a ‘human zoo’ in 1887

Poster depicting human spectacles, which became a common practice in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries

Many were housed in fenced enclosures or makeshift settlements; forced to perform routines, rituals, dances, or simply go about their days while audiences watched closely with a sick fascination.

A village full of thatched huts and places of worship was built in Madrid’s Retiro Park for Igorot’s display in an indoor area called ‘Casa de las Fieras’ or ‘House of Animals’.

Organizers even built boats for the tribe and filled the park’s pond with fish so they could present their spears to the public.

The tribe was eventually repatriated after Madrid rejected Paris’s request to borrow them for display in the French capital.

Little is known about the fate of the Filipinos who formed part of the human exhibition in Madrid, but records indicate that at least four Igorots died during the exhibition due to poor living conditions.

A brochure prepared by the Spanish Ministry of Culture for a 2017 exhibition revisiting the original 1887 Exposition states that it “reaffirms the stereotypes surrounding these people who were considered primitive or savage in the ‘civilized’ world.”

The document includes several surviving photographs from the Igorot exhibition; staged images showing naked tribes and people, portraying them as aggressors and reinforcing a racist narrative.

From the mid-19th century to the early 1930s, these exhibitions in Europe and the United States were attended by thousands of people, some recruited as volunteers, most not.

Interior of a mock Congolese village set up at the Brussels International Exposition in 1897

The tribes’ people were shipped from the Philippines and displayed in an enclosure where their dignity was stripped and they were made objects of curiosity for the entertainment of the public. Image: A Filipino man at the human exhibition in Madrid

Africans are seen posing for photos at the ‘South African Savage’ exhibition at Earl’s Court in London

The horrific images, some taken as recently as 1958, show how black and Asian people were brutally treated as exhibits that attract millions of tourists.

In the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries, some of the people in exhibits were treated like animals, and many died.

These included the Congolese Ota Benga, exhibited at New York’s Bronx Zoo in 1906 and shockingly described as the ‘missing link’ of evolution.

The gruesome exhibition sparked protest and outrage, and Ota was eventually released. But six years later, unable to adapt to American life, he tragically committed suicide.

Estimates suggest that as many as 600,000 people were trafficked or contracted for such shows over the decades.

Exhibitions became more elaborate as public demand increased; It featured reconstructed huts, enclosures, and entire mock villages inside large zoos and parks.

Some of Europe’s largest institutions have hosted them, including the Tierpark in Hamburg, the Dresden Zoo in Berlin, the Jardin d’Acclimatation in Paris, and the Zoologischer Garten in Berlin.

They became staples of world fairs and international exhibitions, where nations used them to showcase populations in their colonies, and Britain was not immune to the practice of human zoos.

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was photographed meeting with Ethiopians standing behind a wooden fence in Hamburg, Germany, in 1909.

Filipinos sit in a circle in loincloths on New York’s Coney Island in the early 20th century, while crowds of white Americans watch from behind barriers.

Ota Benga, a Congolese man, is shown at right at New York’s Bronx Zoo in 1906.

From the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, hundreds of Africans were brought to Britain for use as a form of traveling entertainment.

Footage dating back to 1899 shows a large group of Africans taking part in a mock battle that took place multiple times a day in front of paying audiences at Earl’s Court in London.

They were recruited from Zulu and Swazi tribes by British circus director Frank Fillis to recreate the British defeat against the Matabele people in the 1890s.

The battle scenes were part of a show called Wild South Africa, and viewers could also wander through the Kaffir Kraal, a model of the Matabele village, to see the same artists reenacting their lives.

Approximately 80 people from Somalia took part in the 1895 African Exhibition, also held at the Crystal Palace in London.

Elsewhere, citizens from French colonies such as Sudan, Morocco and the Democratic Republic of the Congo exhibited at the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale in Paris between 1877 and 1912.

The first two human exhibitions to be held in the French capital featured Nubians, a Saharan ethnic group, and Inuit people from the Arctic regions.

Nearly 30 human exhibits were exhibited in Paris over the course of 35 years, and they were so successful that they were even integrated into the city’s World’s Fair.

At the 1889 fair, which attracted millions of visitors, 400 indigenous people were exhibited and even a ‘Negro Village’ was featured.

This Inuit girl, photographed with a girl, was born at the World’s Fair in Chicago. In 1904 St. Transferred to the St. Louis World’s Fair.

A Senegalese village set up inside a human zoo at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, Belgium

Tuareg camp at the 1907 Paris Exposition

Human zoo exhibit by German animal dealer and zoo director Carl Hagenbeck, Germany 1930s

A poster for the human zoo in Paris in 1931

In 1907 the inhabitants of these mock settlements returned to their homes and although further exhibitions were held, after the First World War the area fell into ruin.

It reopened as a park in 2006, and today visitors can still see the abandoned pavilions and greenhouses once occupied by those in Paris’s human zoos.

In 1883 Amsterdam exhibited the natives of Suriname at the International Colonial and Export Exposition, and the 1897 Brussels International Exhibition in Tervuren featured a ‘Congo Village’, displaying African people in a way that resembled a native environment.

There was a human zoo in Norway with 80 Senegalese individuals living in a ‘Congo Village’ for five months in 1914.

More than half of Norway’s population visited the exhibition in Oslo, as Africans wore traditional clothing and went about their daily routines such as cooking, eating and doing crafts.

This shameful industry also affected indigenous Australians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The shocking practice was detailed in a documentary called ‘Inside Human Zoos’.

Australian cinematographer Philip Rang, who worked on the film, said Aboriginal people were portrayed as ‘boomerang-throwing savages’.

The rise of the human zoo phenomenon is often linked to German animal dealer Carl Hagenbeck, who organized the first documented exhibition of Indigenous people in Germany in 1882.

His model was commercially successful and was soon adopted across the continent.

In the early 20th century, changing attitudes, criticism from some intellectuals, and increased awareness of unethical conditions began to change public opinion.

However, this practice continued in various forms until the 1930s, leaving a largely forgotten chapter of European cultural history.