As Carol Weld put it in 1939, “Among the oak trees, desert scenes, and other natural beauties to be found on the far outskirts of Los Angeles was established a good-sized zoo." Universal City animal shipment 1913 note logos for IMP ( Independent Moving Pictures, Carl Laemmle's first operation) and 101 Bison. In July 1914, shaving the camels for "sanitary reasons" yielded camel hair that was sold for $350. The so-called Universal Oak Crest ranch zoo located at the old Providencia Ranch began with what would today be called a petting zoo of domestic animals (goats, sheep, a pig and horses) and rapidly expanded to include a menagerie of wild animals, supposedly including "lions, tigers, bears, pumas, leopards, jaguars and other wild denizens of the tropical forests." In May 1914, two lionesses and leopard got in a half-hour-long fight when a chute was left open between cages one of the lionnesses was severely injured. According to one scholar, avoiding the oversight of east-coast animal welfare groups was one of the many motives for moving the film industry out west. The Universal zoo was one of the earliest parts of the film operation that Carl Laemmle sent out to the west coast, and one of the first pieces developed within the Universal City he opened in 1915. The zoo was closed in 1930, after cinema's transition to synchronized sound complicated the existing systems for using trained animals onscreen. The animals were also leased to other studios. Universal City Zoo was a private animal collection in southern California that provided animals for silent-era Universal Pictures adventure films, circus pictures, and animal comedies, and to "serve as a point of interest" for tourists visiting Universal City.
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