Short story from anthology (1960s-1970s) about astronaut in a zoo on a future Earth

Question

I borrowed this anthology (possibly with "2000" in the title) from the young adult section of my local library in the UK in probably the mid 1970s. There was a specific adult science fiction section in the library, so I am presuming it was written for young adults.

The main story I remember was possibly called "The Zoo". A group of school children are wandering around a zoo and looking at an alien in a cage. At the end of the story the viewpoint is switched and the alien is a human astronaut who has returned to Earth to find it is far in the future. He wonders how it is that mankind has changed so much in the interim, as they now have three legs.

There was another story in the anthology about a man meeting the devil and going down in an elevator. Within it is the old adage, "if you eat with a long spoon you will sup with the devil", but it's not the Wyndham story and I can't remember any more detail about what happens to him.

Answer 1

Well, what a strange thing memory is! After decades of trying to track down "The Zoo", I have finally found the short story I was looking for.

The story is called "Museum Piece" by Elizabeth Fancett. I found it within a Hamlyn Beaver YA anthology called "Space 1", but it also appears in the anthology "Tandem Horror 3". I had a suspicion after seeing a review of Space 1 mentioning one of the stories as a "time travel horror". Having bought a copy of the book I immediately turned to the end of the story to check for the ending that Abulafia remembered. So pleased to have it identified after so long. The moral of the story is if you really like a library book just steal it, it saves a lot of cost and effort in the long term (only joking kids!)

Edited to add: and the demon story, which is from the same anthology (and which I seem to have completely dreamt the details of, so unsurprising that no-one recognised it!) is "Environment Problem" by Michael Moorcock.

Answer 2

Per Valorum's suggestion and confirmed by the OP in comments above, this is "The Zoo" by Charles Piddock, published 1974.

User Abulafia provided the following helpful detail about the story's conclusion: "The future children has only one eye and the story ends with the astronaut looking at a book on display outside his cage. It is a bible and he recites to himself 'I am the beginning and the end, alpha and omega.'"

ISFDB lists the only publication in which it appears as The Monster Fly and Other Stories of the Unreal (a collection of stories by Piddock) with the following cover image: