The original purpose of a zoo was most of all to allow its visitors to get to know as many different species of animals as possible; nobody considered what the animals might need. Animals which live in groups in the wild were often kept singly, and all under completely unsuitable conditions in small compounds. It is only recently that things really changed, and a zoo now is not just a place to relax and to learn, but also a place where the effort is made to protect these animals, many of which no longer live in the wild, or are soon to disappear. Evidence of this effort comes in the shape of two European zoo preservation programs, known by the abbreviations EEP and ESB (American zoos have a similar scheme), and at a global level in the form of the international studbooks