I've seen a couple of spider walkthroughs. Lincoln Park Zoo has one, and Smithsonian National Zoo had one in the old invert house.
Europe's 100 must see exhibits
- Thread starter lintworm
- Start date
"If less zoos would focus on solely large endangered species, which often already have a robust captive population and more on smaller species. This would not only save a lot of money, but also greatly enhance the conservation role zoos could play ex situ."
I agree, Lintworm. I think that marketing teams of many zoos seem to assume that 'endangered' animals must be large to interest visitors. There are many endangered small animals that could interest people and would take up less space than enclosures for large animals.
I agree, Lintworm. I think that marketing teams of many zoos seem to assume that 'endangered' animals must be large to interest visitors. There are many endangered small animals that could interest people and would take up less space than enclosures for large animals.
I have hear to disagree B.U.G.S is the fair cheasyer name of the two
Been a while since I commented, but I’m still following with interest.
Prague’s ungulate cliffs are beyond questioning top on anyone’s list. One of the first I scribbled down.
I had both Pongoland and the Borgoriwald on my list. I haven’t been to Leipzig yet, but the fame of Pongoland is so great that as a nerd, it should be on your list. I visited Frankfurt during a lockdown, luckily the Grzimek house was open but the trade-off was that Borgoriwald was closed. It looked fine on the outside though, and it should also be on anyone’s list for sheer fame.
Don’t know about Nurnbergs martens, though I understand why the exhibit spoke to you.
I kinda disagree on seeing the “middle kingdom” as an exhibit. To me, it’s a very well planted and themed set of rather mediocre or OK exhibits for their inhabitants. I like being in it, but I wouldn’t want to be an inhabitant of it. And to me, it’s too far off the definition of “exhibit”.
And one of the insane exhibits of Caberceno should be on this list. I picked the elephants, don’t know if you picked another exhibit from Caberceno or not, but i believe a few could be on here.
B.U.G.S. leaves me is a little bit thinking “really, is this the best Europe has to offer on inverts”? I guess so, which is a bit disappointing. I rather see one of the major butterfly houses (the best one in Europe is on mine) than this, but that’s probably personal taste. I wonder if one of them is on this list
Prague’s ungulate cliffs are beyond questioning top on anyone’s list. One of the first I scribbled down.
I had both Pongoland and the Borgoriwald on my list. I haven’t been to Leipzig yet, but the fame of Pongoland is so great that as a nerd, it should be on your list. I visited Frankfurt during a lockdown, luckily the Grzimek house was open but the trade-off was that Borgoriwald was closed. It looked fine on the outside though, and it should also be on anyone’s list for sheer fame.
Don’t know about Nurnbergs martens, though I understand why the exhibit spoke to you.
I kinda disagree on seeing the “middle kingdom” as an exhibit. To me, it’s a very well planted and themed set of rather mediocre or OK exhibits for their inhabitants. I like being in it, but I wouldn’t want to be an inhabitant of it. And to me, it’s too far off the definition of “exhibit”.
And one of the insane exhibits of Caberceno should be on this list. I picked the elephants, don’t know if you picked another exhibit from Caberceno or not, but i believe a few could be on here.
B.U.G.S. leaves me is a little bit thinking “really, is this the best Europe has to offer on inverts”? I guess so, which is a bit disappointing. I rather see one of the major butterfly houses (the best one in Europe is on mine) than this, but that’s probably personal taste. I wonder if one of them is on this list
I am pretty sure that the best insectarium in Europe must be in some small collection few people heard about...
Off top of my head, Besancon, France has big and very varied insect collection. It has no walkthru spider exhibit, but there is a staff room visible through a glass wall and it has lots of orb-web spiders above the staff area.
Warsaw, Poland also has very varied invertebrate exhibit in a large greenhouse, IMO better than wall with holes in London, including e.g. crayfish.
I never visited Bristol, but it runs a number of invertebrate breeding programs, too, including Lord Howe stick insect and Desertas spider.
Off top of my head, Besancon, France has big and very varied insect collection. It has no walkthru spider exhibit, but there is a staff room visible through a glass wall and it has lots of orb-web spiders above the staff area.
Warsaw, Poland also has very varied invertebrate exhibit in a large greenhouse, IMO better than wall with holes in London, including e.g. crayfish.
I never visited Bristol, but it runs a number of invertebrate breeding programs, too, including Lord Howe stick insect and Desertas spider.
I always like smart acronyms, B.U.G.S. stood for: Biodiversity Underpinning Global Survival, which was the theme of the house and spoke for the strong conservation and education side of the house. Tiny giants is just silly...
I don't think sheer fame should be a reason to include anything. Pongoland was great when it opened, but has very clearly been surpassed by Borgoriwald, which is a similar idea, but a far superior version. Great apes will already be represented by 6(-7) exhibits in total on this list, which is quite a large proportion, so I saw no reason for adding Pongoland with its lack of standout features.
If you visit, you will understand
As said in the first post I used the term exhibit quite broadly: The term exhibit used here is rather loose, it can be anything from a single small tank to a larger exhibit complex, as long as it forms a single unit within the zoo. I would also have included any of the 3 zones of Wildlands if they had been good enough, which they clearly are not...
The Middle Kingdom certainly matches that, it is a single coherent part of the zoo and while individual enclosures are often not great, the theming is something else completely. If individual enclosure quality were the only criterion many of the architectural highlights would not have made it here...
thought one is enough to highlight this idea and for me the baboon cliffs were a better representative than the endless open plain that is the African elephant habitat, with its mediocre separation options.
B.U.G.S. leaves me is a little bit thinking “really, is this the best Europe has to offer on inverts”? I guess so, which is a bit disappointing. I rather see one of the major butterfly houses (the best one in Europe is on mine) than this, but that’s probably personal taste. I wonder if one of them is on this list
I know which butterfly house is on your list, it won't appear on mine, though we will see butterflies...
I though Besancon's insect house to be quite disappointing, it wasn't nearly a big as the online information made it out to be, with a fairly standard collection too. It is a good house though, which I forgot to list as similar exhibit.
The open-topped cockroach exhibit is nice, but the majority of exhibits was in "very fake mock rock holes" exhibits, far from a smart or attractive display to me. And with a more limited collection and no conservation or strong education message, far inferior to London imo.
Would have been a serious contender if it would not cease to exist within months after this list was published...
Of course, the argument can and should be made that this only makes it even *more* of a must-see exhibit
That said, I understand why you are loathe to devote one of the precious 100 slots to a de-facto requiem!
Of course, the argument can and should be made that this only makes it even *more* of a must-see exhibit
That said, I understand why you are loathe to devote one of the precious 100 slots to a de-facto requiem!
Exactly, there has already been the same discussion with the soon to close Orsa polar bear and tiger exhibits in Sweden. But given how much the original must see zoos thread is still used as a reference, given the many page views it still gets, I wanted to give the slots here to exhibits that do still have a future. Naturally this thread will become outdated in time, but if it is easily possible to avoid it by not including exhibits which will disappear within months, I would prefer that.
59. Elephant enclosure
Zoo Copenhagen, Denmark
Opened: 2008
Size: 8800 square metres
Inhabitants: Asian elephant
In their core zoos are cultural institutions that exist for the benefit of humans. It is therefore maybe somewhat surprising that modern star architects haven’t found their way into zoos more often. Especially the historical city zoos in Europe are places where architecture and the natural world come together and where the question on how humans have viewed nature over time is central. Whereas modern architecture in other cultural institutions has long been dominated by the star architects of its time, zoos have often been a step to far. This may be because apart from architecture, animal welfare is crucial and that is a whole different cup of tea. The elephant house in Copenhagen shows that star architects, in this case Norman Foster, can have a role in the modern zoo. Subtly integrated in the landscape, the elephant house with its stunning domes combines modern elephant husbandry with a beautiful design. Is this enough to keep elephants in a city zoo in the future, maybe, but with well over 1000 square metres of accessible space for the elephants indoor, it is still one of the larger of its kind in Europe. But it shows a possible synergy between architecture and animals. Not every modern zoo exhibit with a star architect is a match made in heaven though, as the nearby giant panda pit shows.
@FunkyGibbon
@Toddy
@lintworm
@lintworm
Zoo Copenhagen, Denmark
Opened: 2008
Size: 8800 square metres
Inhabitants: Asian elephant
In their core zoos are cultural institutions that exist for the benefit of humans. It is therefore maybe somewhat surprising that modern star architects haven’t found their way into zoos more often. Especially the historical city zoos in Europe are places where architecture and the natural world come together and where the question on how humans have viewed nature over time is central. Whereas modern architecture in other cultural institutions has long been dominated by the star architects of its time, zoos have often been a step to far. This may be because apart from architecture, animal welfare is crucial and that is a whole different cup of tea. The elephant house in Copenhagen shows that star architects, in this case Norman Foster, can have a role in the modern zoo. Subtly integrated in the landscape, the elephant house with its stunning domes combines modern elephant husbandry with a beautiful design. Is this enough to keep elephants in a city zoo in the future, maybe, but with well over 1000 square metres of accessible space for the elephants indoor, it is still one of the larger of its kind in Europe. But it shows a possible synergy between architecture and animals. Not every modern zoo exhibit with a star architect is a match made in heaven though, as the nearby giant panda pit shows.
@FunkyGibbon
@Toddy
@lintworm
@lintworm
60 Gorilla island
Apenheul, Apeldoorn, the Netherlands
Opened: 1976
Size: 1.2 hectares
Inhabitants: western lowland gorilla, l'Hoest's guenon
In a time when tiles and small cages were the standard for great apes, displaying a large group of gorillas on a wooded island of two hectares was considered a folly. It would possibly have been a folly if the island was made a gorilla walkthrough as originally planned. But in the end Apenheul’s founder Wim Mager was proven right with tremendous breeding successes and the fact that such islands are now the standard. They did however have to protect the trees from the gorilla as the wild caught individuals climbed them and partially destroyed them to make tree nests. The island has been greatly reduced in size as at one point the original island was split in two to accomodate a second gorilla group. The second island now houses bonobos. What remains has undergone some landscaping modifications compared to the original and is by a margin still Europe’s largest gorilla enclosure. This makes seeing a gorilla less straightforward, but given the many viewing points there is always a gorilla to be seen from somewhere.
@MagpieGoose
@Maguari
@Toddy
@snowleopard
Similar exhibits: A few years prior to the opening of the gorilla exhibit, the keeping of another great ape was revolutionized 25 km south of Apenheul. Burgers’ Zoo became the first zoo in 1971 to keep a large group of chimpanzees together on a 4500 square metre island. This exhibit still exists basically unchanged and has been the location of a great many behavioural studies and scientific insights, most famously by Frans de Waal, who obtained his PhD here before becoming one of the most famous modern ethologists.
@KevinB
Apenheul, Apeldoorn, the Netherlands
Opened: 1976
Size: 1.2 hectares
Inhabitants: western lowland gorilla, l'Hoest's guenon
In a time when tiles and small cages were the standard for great apes, displaying a large group of gorillas on a wooded island of two hectares was considered a folly. It would possibly have been a folly if the island was made a gorilla walkthrough as originally planned. But in the end Apenheul’s founder Wim Mager was proven right with tremendous breeding successes and the fact that such islands are now the standard. They did however have to protect the trees from the gorilla as the wild caught individuals climbed them and partially destroyed them to make tree nests. The island has been greatly reduced in size as at one point the original island was split in two to accomodate a second gorilla group. The second island now houses bonobos. What remains has undergone some landscaping modifications compared to the original and is by a margin still Europe’s largest gorilla enclosure. This makes seeing a gorilla less straightforward, but given the many viewing points there is always a gorilla to be seen from somewhere.
@MagpieGoose
@Maguari
@Toddy
@snowleopard
Similar exhibits: A few years prior to the opening of the gorilla exhibit, the keeping of another great ape was revolutionized 25 km south of Apenheul. Burgers’ Zoo became the first zoo in 1971 to keep a large group of chimpanzees together on a 4500 square metre island. This exhibit still exists basically unchanged and has been the location of a great many behavioural studies and scientific insights, most famously by Frans de Waal, who obtained his PhD here before becoming one of the most famous modern ethologists.
@KevinB
I cannot argue with either of the above two..perhaps at Apenhuel the gorillas can be difficult to see and I cant even remember the internal housing at all...then again,Ive only ever visited in summer. Copenhagen,like Artis,has improved enormously in the last 20 years and their determination to keep larger mammals in the urban environment is very much to my taste. A good case in point is the elephant area....in addition to the summary given, there is a quite excellent pedagogical display telling a huge amount about the subject and offered with style and elan.
I don't know how this idea was ever seriously considered. I'm interpreting this as gorillas and visitors sharing the same space which sounds like complete madness. Is there any sort of site plan available detailing what this may have been like?
Correct interpretation. The majority of primates at Apenheul are held on islands which visitors walk through, so visitors are in the same space. Largest species that I remember on such an island was a macaque species and I thought that was dangerous enough. (I visited over 20 years ago). How it works is the bridges between islands have a metal grid which is electrified when the primates are first introduced. The troop leader test the grid, gets a shock and the group never tries to cross the bridge again (or so I was told by Wim Mager). To be honest I don't really remember the gorillas, I was too fascinated by the walk-through islands, and actually I think they are more notable as exhibits.
It is probably for the best it never happened, but it is not as outrageous an idea as it sounds. In the wild there are multiple groups of gorillas, chimpanzees and I think even bonobos that are fully used to humans being around after years-decades of time invested by scientists like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. These groups notice humans, but behave as if they do not exist. In theory that should be possible in a zoo setting under heavy supervision, if we accept veterinary risks. But idiots will be idiots and a walkthrough for all would probably be to busy. Another difference with the wild is that zoo apes are fed by humans, so there is a different bond, which might complicate matters.
As in the Aspinall parks the keepers used to go in with the gorillas on a daily basis in the early years. Allegedly one of the keepers even took a nap once in one of the tree nests the gorillas had constructed.
I have visited the chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, which are a habituated group. To walk between chimpanzees that ignore you and go on with their daily business with humans at a few metres distance still is one of my fondest nature memories.
@MRJ , there is also an Apenheul walkthrough in this list at nr. 40
Yes you are right, habituated ape encounters are a huge eco-tourism business in East Africa. But of course the encounter groups are small and because of the cost and difficulties are self-selected to people with respect for the animals, something sometimes lacking in zoo visitors, and are also supervised by a number of guides and porters,
Sorry I missed it. I'll go back and have a read.@MRJ , there is also an Apenheul walkthrough in this list at nr. 40
I’m not sure I would put Copenhagen’s Elephant exhibit on my list. If you want to combine exhibitry with famous architects then I would think Calatrava’s Oceanarium in Valencia would be the more obvious choice? But then, I have seen neither buildings in person, but Valencia is certainly higher on my to see list and then this exhibit would be on the “similar” rostrum.
I thought about leaving Apenheul’s gorilla island off my list because of the inside quarters, which are shabby at best. But the outside island is so out of this zoo-world, it has to be in this list. So glad to see both my Apenheul scribbels are on this list too
I thought about leaving Apenheul’s gorilla island off my list because of the inside quarters, which are shabby at best. But the outside island is so out of this zoo-world, it has to be in this list. So glad to see both my Apenheul scribbels are on this list too
Europe have some iconic Elephant houses and Copenhagen's building is not mentioned very often, but I feel it deserves spot in this list. Copenhagen is a small zoo, but they accommodate their Megaherbivors with great care. Artic Ring also deserves mentioning, even though I would probably not see it here.
The Calatrava’s architecture at the Oceanarium is exceptional, of course! But the two Iconic buildings design by the famous architect are Restaurant and Entrance building ( with a small aquarium). They are few great excibits there, but it's hard to combine them directly with the Calatrava’s shapes , I think. Will wait and see
I definitely wouldn't feel safe with any great apes.(ok maybe except orangutan) If it is raised by human since born then maaaaaybe, but still a big no. Chimps can be really cruel,It is probably for the best it never happened, but it is not as outrageous an idea as it sounds. In the wild there are multiple groups of gorillas, chimpanzees and I think even bonobos that are fully used to humans being around after years-decades of time invested by scientists like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. These groups notice humans, but behave as if they do not exist. In theory that should be possible in a zoo setting under heavy supervision, if we accept veterinary risks. But idiots will be idiots and a walkthrough for all would probably be to busy. Another difference with the wild is that zoo apes are fed by humans, so there is a different bond, which might complicate matters.
As in the Aspinall parks the keepers used to go in with the gorillas on a daily basis in the early years. Allegedly one of the keepers even took a nap once in one of the tree nests the gorillas had constructed.
I have visited the chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, which are a habituated group. To walk between chimpanzees that ignore you and go on with their daily business with humans at a few metres distance still is one of my fondest nature memories.
@MRJ , there is also an Apenheul walkthrough in this list at nr. 40
No worries, it is hard to keep up with so many posts. I will create an overview at the end...
I had the Oceanografic at one of the earlier drafts, but it is hardly possible to select a part of the whole grounds as the whole aquarium is a cohesive whole. As l'Oceanografic is also in the 50 must see zoos thread, I did not include it here.
I thought about leaving Apenheul’s gorilla island off my list because of the inside quarters, which are shabby at best. But the outside island is so out of this zoo-world, it has to be in this list. So glad to see both my Apenheul scribbels are on this list too
The indoor quarters are ugly without a doubt and quite small. But apparently both the keepers and the apes love it. There is plenty of enrichment (especially in winter) and privacy.
Arctic Ring is an interesting concept, but I feel it ignores the bears too much, with all the amazing polar bear enclosures popping up in recent years, this one really feels too small.
Not more cruel than humans though. I would prefer a habituated group to any hand-raised individual, as in a hand-raised one the distinction between the species is blurred.
Getting back to this after spending some time in Ostrava during the weekend. Apparently as one of the curators mentioned, there are absolutely none bear-monkey attacks reported since the exhibit was open.
Some of the braver specimens dare to go even as close as touching distance for a while.