I’ve only just caught up with this very interesting thread. I am wholeheartedly in the San Diego camp, and reading some of the comments above I am reminded of the (world’s best) film critic, Mark Kermode, who recently opined that the only people who liked the film Hereditary were Those who didn’t really understand horror. Cue, lots of responses from slightly miffed listeners, claiming that they did indeed like and understand horror – and also liked and understood this film.
What are you implying by this? Clearly SDZ is
Hereditary, but who’s the Kermode? You? Snowleopard? Are you really implying that everyone criticizing the zoo and pointing out its flaws simply doesn’t understand enough about the zoo, or zoos in general? That’s a rather broad and incriminating statement...
I’m not sure that I could add a great deal more to what has been said above.
That’s part of some people’s problems with this thread. For instance:
Why is San Diego #1? It is due to all of the things that I just listed a couple of sentences ago and even though the zoo might not be #1 for the quality of its exhibits, or it might not be #1 for historical reasons, but OVERALL San Diego Zoo is the best zoo in America
To paraphrase: “if we ignore the bad parts of each category of judgement, then this zoo is the best.” Couldn’t that be said about almost any zoo? While it has
mainly very good exhibits
It’s important to not ignore the bad parts of the zoo as well, which a lot of the zoo’s fans tend to do. Are we to accept and ignore the fact that a zoo of this statute keeps its aye-ayes in a corn crib cage, near other cages, in a row of “historically significant” bear grottos that in many cases are little more than mock rock? What about the giraffes, rhinos, and zebras, stars of many zoos, shoved into small, barren pens? To say nothing of the cluster of macaw cages in the Children’s Zoo.
beautiful tropical climate
This is a point that isn’t being discussed at present (almost two pages have been added to the thread since I started typing!) but I thought I’d add my own thoughts to it. Sure, the climate has worked in the zoo’s favor. But should our own perceptions of the zoo be changed by that? I think, rather, what we should be looking at is how a particular zoo adapts to its own climate. San Diego is fine for most of the year, but what about when it’s
too hot? There aren’t really indoor exhibits or any air conditioned buildings to duck in really, beyond shops and restaurants. Other zoos mentioned in the thread- Bronx and Omaha for example, provide a perfect mix of indoor and outdoor for their climates, year-round. Other southern zoos which I feel are far better adapted include the Texas State Aquarium, San Antonio Zoo, and even Zoo Miami; the latter having both indoor exhibits and air-conditioned transport (monorail).
This sums up San Diego's popularity perfectly. Whenever anyone finds out about my zoo obsession here in the southwest corner of Canada, one of the very first questions is "what is your favourite zoo?" Invariably the individual will say San Diego before I even have a chance to answer! There is no zoo on the planet that is more World-Famous than San Diego Zoo. Even many people that have never even been to San Diego already know that it is the greatest, or at least one of the greatest, zoos on the planet.
Yet it is not that well known nation wide outside of zoo nerds. Same with Saint Louis and Columbus.
In my corner of the country, London, New York, and Cincinnati get brought up before San Diego when discussing zoos with my friends. Discussing my upcoming trip to California with friends, I had to name drop San Diego myself for it to be mentioned, and beach time was mentioned over the zoo. So it’s certainly a regional thing.
more than any other American zoo I have seen, San Diego really celebrates its past, and its heritage (quite difficult to do when there aren’t the historic buildings that a similarly ancient European zoo would have).
But does this make San Diego good? Every zoo has a history. The distant history of zoos has little effect on the present. Why should I care if the reptile house was built in 1908 or 2008 (randomly choosing the years of course), as long as the husbandry and exhibits fit modern standards? If we incorporated the past of a zoo like, for example, Omaha, into our perception of it today, would we just blast it down for the crammed Cat Complex white tiger factory it once was? No, we acknowledge that those days (and soon, the Complex itself) are over and look towards the future. But in San Diego, we all seem obsessed with the past. There is no indication any of the bad exhibits I mention are going to be renovated or destroyed anytime soon.
Rather than seeing this as a flaw that needs fixing, I found this to be one of the best parts of the entire zoo. I think that that outweighs any negatives about the exhibits or paths causing confusion.
The only kind of lost I want to get in a zoo is like I did Zoo Miami: wandering alone, in an over one-acre large aviary, filled with birds. No boundaries in sight: just lush foliage.
Not trying to get overly defensive, so apologies
