Looking Back at the Bronx Zoo's "Human Exhibit"

Sure, the Bronx Zoo may be filled with cute and cuddly animals now, but in September 1906 there was a questionable inhabitant amongst them. Ephemeral NY looks back at the "Congolese pygmy named Ota Benga—who had been living in the Museum of Natural History" before moving into the Bronx Zoo’s Monkey House, where he was given a bow and arrow and "was free to come and go on zoo grounds." Ota Benga wasn't a paid employee, rather an exhibit, and the NY Times noted at the time that “Even those who laughed the most turned away with an expression on their faces such as one sees after a play with a sad ending or a book in which the hero or heroine is poorly rewarded. ‘Something about it that I don’t like’ was the way one man put it.” The exhibit only lasted a few weeks, and ten years later Ota Benga shot himself while living in Virginia. To this day a life mask and body cast of Ota Benga resides at the Museum of Natural History, but it's simply labeled "pygmy."