 The highest attendance till date was on January 1, 2018 with 110,000 visitors.The zoo had its roots in a private menagerie established by Governor General of India, Richard Wellesley, established around 1800 in his summer home at Barrackpore near Kolkata, as part of the "Indian Natural History Project".The first superintendent of the menagerie was the famous Scottish physician zoologist Francis Buchanan-Hamilton.