The Toledo Zoo was founded when someone donated a baby bear. Unfortunately, that bear was actially an adult woodchuck

In 1900, a resident of Toledo, Ohio donated a baby brown bear to serve as the first resident of the new zoo. Unfortunately, that brown bear turned out to be a fully grown male woodchuck.

The zoo took this fact in stride, and was founded as the Toledo Zoological Gardens. Plans were made in the early 1900s to move the zoo and expand it's holdings to make it the "third largest zoo in the United States". Dream big, guys. Unfortunately, those plans were never carried out.

In 1982, the ownership and management of the zoo was transferred away from the City of Toledo's Parks Board to the newly founded Toledo Zoological Society. Since this change, it has undergone rapid expansion both in grounds and in exhibits.

Perhaps the most famous and controversial of these new exhibits was a pair of giant pandas on loan from China for the summer of 1988. While the Pandas were a huge success, leading to over 1 Million visitors that year, the World Wildlife Foundation sued the zoo over their short term exhibition and "exploitation" of the bears.

The zoo and the WWF settled out of court, and it is assumed that the media controversy made the panda exhibit even more popular than it would have been otherwise.

(Source)