Zoo #16: Zoo Zurich, 18/4/2017
There are not enough superlatives in a thesaurus to apply to this zoo.
I'd like some Zoochat dedication points, please, because it was forecast to snow - more than halfway through spring! - on the one and only day I had in Zurich. Snow and I became acquainted in Madrid, and after that experience I had made a deal that it wouldn't snow on me, and I wouldn't massively expand my carbon footprint in an attempt to escape it for the rest of my life. The weather wasn't holding to its end of the bargain. But here I was, in a city that costs a kidney for every day you want to eat and sleep there, and I was hardly going to let the risk of death by exposure prevent me from visiting.
I arrived at about midday, after waiting for the day to at least reach refrigerator rather than freezer temperature, and headed straight for Masaola. It was only when I entered the zoo and saw the building off in the distance that I really appreciated just how massive this thing is. Nor was I prepared for just how hot it would be inside, though the hand dryers in the entrance foyer, labelled for drying eye glasses, should have been a hint.
Masaola is a conceptual and technical masterpiece. I'm not sure there's any exhibit anywhere else in the world that replicates a living, breathing ecosystem in quite as comprehensive a way. There must be animals - perhaps the geckos - living, breeding and dying in here without any meaningful intervention from the keepers.
It is a work of art - and of science - but the heat and humidity were overwhelming and even more so because of the contrast with the outside. I didn't stay long. Though I managed to spot fodies and many of the larger birds, and even got lucky and found a ruffed lemur, I quickly recognised that I could spend all day in there - or at least until I passed out from dehydration - and not find any of the other passerines, the mouse lemurs or the reptiles. Think of Masaola as an exhibit of a Madagascan rainforest and it's a triumph: think of it as a mixed lemur walkthrough and flight aviary and it's maybe too good for its own good. But I prefer to think of it as the former.
From there I visited a series of exhibits that could each lay claim to being the best of their kind I had ever seen. The elephant exhibit - the same size inside as Melbourne or Taronga are outside. The geladas; as good a replication of their Ethiopian habitat as I can reasonably ask for. The Central Asian domestics section, revolving around Bactrian camels and yaks, is ethnographic theming done properly: placing the animals on display into the context of a foreign culture and teaching about both, rather than simply appropriating that culture for decorative purposes. I'm not sure there are any bears in any urban zoo anywhere that are better enabled to live a bears' life than Zurich's spectacled bears.
At this point I planned to issue a challenge to all on here to tell me where Zurich's weakness was, because I couldn't find it, but then I did. The ape house isn't terrible, it just isn't very good, and the outdoor spaces (empty, as the apes were smarter than I was and were staying warm) are too cramped, especially for groups the size of those in Zurich. It's not a complex worthy of the rest of the zoo.
That disappointment aside. I resumed my tour de force outside, as the weather began to turn against me and I began to consider buying shares in an oil company, as a warning shot to the snow. The carnivore exhibits at the top of the zoo - the famous one for snow leopards, as well as for wolves, Siberian tigers and Asiatic lions - are all top class, and a highlight of the visit was watching a red panda browsing directly above my head, in branches that over-hang the wall of the exhibit.
I had left the tropical house/reptile house/aquarium to last, which was a good thing because by this point my peace treaty with the weather had completely broken down, and the snow was launching a sustained offensive. Another substandard Antarctic penguin exhibit aside (how many places really does these well?), this building is another unbridled success. Some of the terraria in here are living works of art, and the aquarium is much smaller than Basel's but what it does, it does better, including a spectacular reef tank full of stony corals.
As I've said earlier in this thread, I care more about whether an exhibit allows the animals it houses to fully pursue their instincts, and less about how 'natural' that exhibit looks. But Zurich seems to understand something that more mock rock- addicted zoos don't; there's nothing more natural, or more conducive to natural behaviours, than actual natural features: grass, trees, bushes, dirt and rocks. Many of the exhibits here manage to be beautiful and complex all at the one time. More focus from designers on convincing the animals that their enclosures are something like the real thing, rather than visitors, will probably achieve the latter aim better anyway.
Before I finish this panegyric I'll note that my dorm-mate, a loud and proud Scot by the name of Gemma, visited the zoo the same day and professed to hate it. She adores Blair Drummond Safari Park, which she goes to frequently, and said that by contrast she thought the animals at Zurich looked cramped, bored and even under-fed. I confess I was incredulous, and I think that what underlay her opinion was the often faulty assumption that space = quality. But I wanted to throw this in here as a reminder that what we enthusiasts find to be wonderful in a zoo probably doesn't well reflect the preferences of Gemma Public.
The Australian complex is due to open next year, and I'd be curious to know what other species besides koalas will feature. And they've already started laying the groundwork for the opening of the savannah in 2020, which will (almost) complete the zoo's collection of ABC big mammals with the additions of giraffes and rhinos. I will back them in to do both developments as close to perfection as one can get. But I would like Zurich to prioritise replacing the antiquated apes exhibits, so that it can defend into the future the title I'm about to award it at least provisionally until October: the best zoo I've ever visited.
