Osaka Aquarium brought to a close the planned roster of zoo visits for my Japan trip. A recurrent theme, however, was that I allowed more time in each location than I really needed. So it was that I found myself at a loose end in Kyoto.
With the memory of Tennoji fresh in mind, it took some contemplation before I decided to visit Kyoto City Zoo. Tennoji was a larger, more prominent zoo and if I had been disappointed there, what chance did Kyoto - for which there is little positive press that I could find - have of pleasing me? Well, I suspect having such low expectations influenced my experience, because I found it a pleasant surprise.
That's not to say that there aren't problems. It's only a pocket-sized zoo of less than four hectares, but it houses most of the big ABC animals. That, by necessity, means that some of the animals are in tiny, tiny enclosures. A visitor to Kyoto confronts that reality almost immediately upon entering the front gate, where the first set of exhibits is an elderly complex of big cat cages. Lions, Siberian tigers and jaguars (one normal, one melanistic) - I think about seven cats in total - occupy an inter-connected set of pens arrayed around a night den.
The cages are perhaps of a size that would be considered generous for small cats, but for the species exhibited they are simply too small. I will say in the zoo's defence, however that each of the cages contained clear signs of an active enrichment program; climbing platforms, hanging balls to bat away at and chains on which meat could be hung to make them work for their food. Ultimately the complex is plain inadequate, but at least they are doing their best. The population should be reduced to perhaps two cats which could then have access to half of the pens each. Also in this set of exhibits is a Tsushima leopard cat, but unfortunately I had no greater luck here than at Zoorasia.
Moving clockwise around the zoo the next zone I came to was a relatively new section featuring Japanese wildlife, with a couple of pleasant communal aviaries, a row of cages for small mammals (I think the Japanese badger, raccoon dog and giant flying squirrels were here), postage-stamp pens for goral and serow, a little reptile house and some bird of prey cages. The mammal pens and cages are right up against the outer fence of the zoo, and it's strange to see cars zipping past no more than 5m away from where you're standing in the middle of an exhibit complex.
Risibly, there was also a cage perhaps the size of a minibus - no more than half as spacious as the tiger cages I have already criticised - that was labelled for a Japanese brown bear. It was clear there was no bear there, and that's fortunate; seeing it occupied would certainly have dulled my satisfaction with the zoo. Hopefully the bear, whatever happened to it, is not replaced.
The rest of the zoo is for the most part surprisingly solid. A herd of elephants have a modest but relatively modern pair of paddocks (including one for a bull); a sign says that they were imported from Laos in 2012. A small tropical house contains the bulk of the reptile collection, some typical nocturnal house-style cages for pro-simians and a sloth, who had the run (err... in slow-motion) of the building but presumably stuck to its branches. A couple of sterile looking aviaries outside housed macaws.
There's the usual preponderance of owls, which seem to be a major feature of Japanese collections. Other aviaries housed peacocks and, somewhat redundantly, emus. The African Savannah (just giraffes and zebras) is on the ugly side, with a high fence surrounding most of it. A solitary hippo has a small pool and smaller land area.
One thing I've noticed is that Japanese zoos have a love of overhead passageways for their animals. There were the moles at Tama and squirrels at Ueno, but Kyoto takes it to a new level. There is an above-ground tunnel between a couple of the tiger pens, which is the only way that cats could be moved between the night dens and one of the cages which is separated from the building by a visitor path. Red pandas have access to another branch over the path, and rather hilariously so do the goats in the children's farm area. That is the one and only time that I ever intend to look up and find a goat above my head.
This is the one zoo for which I seem to still have a species list. I think it's reasonably complete, though for some of the birds and reptiles I have relied on signs.
Asian elephant
Grevy's zebra
Brazilian tapir
Giraffe
Hippopotamus
Japanese deer
Long-tailed goral (Japanese serow?)
African lion
Siberian tiger
Jaguar
Tsushima leopard cat
Japanese red fox
Fennec fox
Bush dog
Raccoon dog
Red panda
Meerkat
Japanese badger
Gorilla
Chimpanzee
Lar gibbon
Mandrill
Rhesus monkey
Brown capuchin
Ring-tailed lemur
Senegal galago
Lesser slow loris
Cape hyrax
Indian flying fox
Four-toed hedgehog
Linne's Two-toed sloth
Japanese giant flying squirrel
Japanese squirrel
Humboldt's penguin
Emu
Greater flamingo
Lesser flamingo
Chilean flamingo
Caribbean flamingo
Northern bald ibis
Unlabelled ibis check
White-bellied green pigeon
Eastern turtle dove
Scarlet macaw
Buffon's macaw
Salmon-crested cockatoo
Sulphur-crested cockatoo
White-cheeked turaco
Plain chachalaca
Ural owl
Snowy owl
Eagle owl
Burrowing owl
Peregrine falcon
Northern goshawk
Mountain hawk-eagle
Red-crowned crane
Sarus crane
Indian peacock
Japanese grey pheasant
Chinese bamboo partridge
Helmeted guineafowl
Japanese quail
Ruddy kingfisher
White's thrush
Pale thrush
White-cheeked starling
Brown-eared bulbul
Black-necked stilt
Japanese green woodpecker
White-cheeked pintail
Common teal
Mallard
Common goldeneye
European pochard
Baikal teal
Eurasian wigeon
Bar-headed goose
Mandarin duck
Tufted duck
Black-headed gull
West African dwarf crocodile
New Guinea snake-necked turtle
Painted turtle
Black-knobbed map turtle
Yellow-spotted river turtle
Japanese pond turtle
Reeve's turtle
Soft-shelled turtle
Yellow pond turtle
Yellow-margined box turtle
Red-footed tortoise
Elongated tortoise
Pancake tortoise
Indian star tortoise
Green iguana
Eastern blue-tongued skink
Madagascar day gecko
Leopard gecko
Ball python
Kenyan sand boa
Boa constrictor
Western hognose snake
Japanese ratsnake
Japanese striped snake
Milk snake
Mamushi
Green and Black poison frog
Wide-mouth frog
Japanese common toad
Japanese giant salamander
Japanese newt
Striped bitterling
Tilapia(?)
With the memory of Tennoji fresh in mind, it took some contemplation before I decided to visit Kyoto City Zoo. Tennoji was a larger, more prominent zoo and if I had been disappointed there, what chance did Kyoto - for which there is little positive press that I could find - have of pleasing me? Well, I suspect having such low expectations influenced my experience, because I found it a pleasant surprise.
That's not to say that there aren't problems. It's only a pocket-sized zoo of less than four hectares, but it houses most of the big ABC animals. That, by necessity, means that some of the animals are in tiny, tiny enclosures. A visitor to Kyoto confronts that reality almost immediately upon entering the front gate, where the first set of exhibits is an elderly complex of big cat cages. Lions, Siberian tigers and jaguars (one normal, one melanistic) - I think about seven cats in total - occupy an inter-connected set of pens arrayed around a night den.
The cages are perhaps of a size that would be considered generous for small cats, but for the species exhibited they are simply too small. I will say in the zoo's defence, however that each of the cages contained clear signs of an active enrichment program; climbing platforms, hanging balls to bat away at and chains on which meat could be hung to make them work for their food. Ultimately the complex is plain inadequate, but at least they are doing their best. The population should be reduced to perhaps two cats which could then have access to half of the pens each. Also in this set of exhibits is a Tsushima leopard cat, but unfortunately I had no greater luck here than at Zoorasia.
Moving clockwise around the zoo the next zone I came to was a relatively new section featuring Japanese wildlife, with a couple of pleasant communal aviaries, a row of cages for small mammals (I think the Japanese badger, raccoon dog and giant flying squirrels were here), postage-stamp pens for goral and serow, a little reptile house and some bird of prey cages. The mammal pens and cages are right up against the outer fence of the zoo, and it's strange to see cars zipping past no more than 5m away from where you're standing in the middle of an exhibit complex.
Risibly, there was also a cage perhaps the size of a minibus - no more than half as spacious as the tiger cages I have already criticised - that was labelled for a Japanese brown bear. It was clear there was no bear there, and that's fortunate; seeing it occupied would certainly have dulled my satisfaction with the zoo. Hopefully the bear, whatever happened to it, is not replaced.
The rest of the zoo is for the most part surprisingly solid. A herd of elephants have a modest but relatively modern pair of paddocks (including one for a bull); a sign says that they were imported from Laos in 2012. A small tropical house contains the bulk of the reptile collection, some typical nocturnal house-style cages for pro-simians and a sloth, who had the run (err... in slow-motion) of the building but presumably stuck to its branches. A couple of sterile looking aviaries outside housed macaws.
There's the usual preponderance of owls, which seem to be a major feature of Japanese collections. Other aviaries housed peacocks and, somewhat redundantly, emus. The African Savannah (just giraffes and zebras) is on the ugly side, with a high fence surrounding most of it. A solitary hippo has a small pool and smaller land area.
One thing I've noticed is that Japanese zoos have a love of overhead passageways for their animals. There were the moles at Tama and squirrels at Ueno, but Kyoto takes it to a new level. There is an above-ground tunnel between a couple of the tiger pens, which is the only way that cats could be moved between the night dens and one of the cages which is separated from the building by a visitor path. Red pandas have access to another branch over the path, and rather hilariously so do the goats in the children's farm area. That is the one and only time that I ever intend to look up and find a goat above my head.
This is the one zoo for which I seem to still have a species list. I think it's reasonably complete, though for some of the birds and reptiles I have relied on signs.
Asian elephant
Grevy's zebra
Brazilian tapir
Giraffe
Hippopotamus
Japanese deer
Long-tailed goral (Japanese serow?)
African lion
Siberian tiger
Jaguar
Tsushima leopard cat
Japanese red fox
Fennec fox
Bush dog
Raccoon dog
Red panda
Meerkat
Japanese badger
Gorilla
Chimpanzee
Lar gibbon
Mandrill
Rhesus monkey
Brown capuchin
Ring-tailed lemur
Senegal galago
Lesser slow loris
Cape hyrax
Indian flying fox
Four-toed hedgehog
Linne's Two-toed sloth
Japanese giant flying squirrel
Japanese squirrel
Humboldt's penguin
Emu
Greater flamingo
Lesser flamingo
Chilean flamingo
Caribbean flamingo
Northern bald ibis
Unlabelled ibis check
White-bellied green pigeon
Eastern turtle dove
Scarlet macaw
Buffon's macaw
Salmon-crested cockatoo
Sulphur-crested cockatoo
White-cheeked turaco
Plain chachalaca
Ural owl
Snowy owl
Eagle owl
Burrowing owl
Peregrine falcon
Northern goshawk
Mountain hawk-eagle
Red-crowned crane
Sarus crane
Indian peacock
Japanese grey pheasant
Chinese bamboo partridge
Helmeted guineafowl
Japanese quail
Ruddy kingfisher
White's thrush
Pale thrush
White-cheeked starling
Brown-eared bulbul
Black-necked stilt
Japanese green woodpecker
White-cheeked pintail
Common teal
Mallard
Common goldeneye
European pochard
Baikal teal
Eurasian wigeon
Bar-headed goose
Mandarin duck
Tufted duck
Black-headed gull
West African dwarf crocodile
New Guinea snake-necked turtle
Painted turtle
Black-knobbed map turtle
Yellow-spotted river turtle
Japanese pond turtle
Reeve's turtle
Soft-shelled turtle
Yellow pond turtle
Yellow-margined box turtle
Red-footed tortoise
Elongated tortoise
Pancake tortoise
Indian star tortoise
Green iguana
Eastern blue-tongued skink
Madagascar day gecko
Leopard gecko
Ball python
Kenyan sand boa
Boa constrictor
Western hognose snake
Japanese ratsnake
Japanese striped snake
Milk snake
Mamushi
Green and Black poison frog
Wide-mouth frog
Japanese common toad
Japanese giant salamander
Japanese newt
Striped bitterling
Tilapia(?)
