Chapultepec Zoo has a predecessor worth mourning. The Aztec Emperor Moctezuma built a menagerie called the Totocalli in this same forest, the first zoo in the Americas. Hernán Cortés burned it to the ground in 1521.

The current zoo, inaugurated in 1924, has a better claim to fame: it was the first outside China to breed giant pandas. When the second cub, born in 1981, survived, Mexican television watched obsessively. A national contest to name her produced Tohui, meaning "boy" in Rarámuri. When keepers realised she was female, the name stuck anyway. She was already famous. On weekends, the queue to see her stretched a kilometre. A pop singer recorded a song in her honour. She died aged twelve and is now a city icon.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours connect the zoo to Chapultepec's layered history, from Aztec sacred ground to the Moctezuma menagerie that once stood here.