Dr. Loxodonta
Well-Known Member
My mistake, sorry for the confusion.
ZSL London Zoo ZSL London Zoo News 2025
- Thread starter aquilla1
- Start date
Had a nice little visit today and managed to see everything I wanted to. Been so many times I could probably go round blindfolded if it weren't for all the half-term spill out. The aye-ayes and other prosimians were all visible, as well as the African pygmy dormouse which has a nice little exhibit where the scorpions and/or millepedes used to be a while back so it's nice that they're using that space for something.
The sengis are certainly super active as some other members on here have said. Every time they came into contact with one another one would run off so I'm guessing they're still getting used to each other, but they have free reign over the length of the back three enclosures in Rainforest Life so there's plenty of space for them.
Spotted the three-banded armadillo in the offshow exhibit next to the aye-ayes and mouse lemurs when one of the keepers opened the door too.
One thing to note in Night Life is that all the loris appear to just be pygmy slow loris now, I wasn't aware if the slender loris were offshow or gone from the collection? The new fencing around the wild dogs and warthogs looks much better as it's much higher so gives more protection.
Also managed to get into the Casson and spy the female babirusa. The set up in there makes it so that half of it is closed off with lots of staff supervising activities for young kids and families about nocturnal animals - most of which they have at the zoo in the Clore. There's also a mock barn structure which I'm assuming is only for this event.
I spent a good long while hanging out with one of the female collared trogons who perched happily on one of the visitor rails in the main walkthrough of Blackburn Pavilion, enabling me to get some great close ups which I'll post later.
The empty tank in the reptile house is still empty, however everything else was very showy, especially the snakes and giant salamanders, despite it being very busy in there.
The sengis are certainly super active as some other members on here have said. Every time they came into contact with one another one would run off so I'm guessing they're still getting used to each other, but they have free reign over the length of the back three enclosures in Rainforest Life so there's plenty of space for them.
Spotted the three-banded armadillo in the offshow exhibit next to the aye-ayes and mouse lemurs when one of the keepers opened the door too.
One thing to note in Night Life is that all the loris appear to just be pygmy slow loris now, I wasn't aware if the slender loris were offshow or gone from the collection? The new fencing around the wild dogs and warthogs looks much better as it's much higher so gives more protection.
Also managed to get into the Casson and spy the female babirusa. The set up in there makes it so that half of it is closed off with lots of staff supervising activities for young kids and families about nocturnal animals - most of which they have at the zoo in the Clore. There's also a mock barn structure which I'm assuming is only for this event.
I spent a good long while hanging out with one of the female collared trogons who perched happily on one of the visitor rails in the main walkthrough of Blackburn Pavilion, enabling me to get some great close ups which I'll post later.
The empty tank in the reptile house is still empty, however everything else was very showy, especially the snakes and giant salamanders, despite it being very busy in there.
I can't quite place where the African Pygmy Dormice are, are they in Night Life or in the Aye-Aye area? Either way I missed them on Saturday!
Madagascan Giant Jumping Rat
Thank you! It was all we could see in that enclosure but there was no nearby relevant signage!
They're just as you enter Night Life.
I think they are in the former lesser hedgehog tenrec enclosure, just opposite the first two Madagascar giant rat enclosures.
Thank you both! Don't think I looked at that side of the walkway (feels like it's been empty for so long)
Not any news per se, but I did just stumble across this one-hour documentary presenting a full-ish tour of London Zoo at the very peak of the collection (including a peek at their long-beaked echidnas!) around 1991, a couple of years before the infamous crisis and gutting of the collection, as presented in Molly Dineen's 1993 BBC series 'The Ark'. May be of interest to those folks who haven't seen before!
Poor old David Bellamy. Perhaps one day he’ll be posthumously welcomed back into the conservation fraternity
Really interesting to see what has/hasn't changed in 30+ years
The algorithm then recommended this from 1987:
Towards the end you get a view of the tall gibbon cages, which I remember from a visit around 1999/2000. Does anyone know when these were demolished?
Similar question about the very large aviary which I believe was called the Southern Aviary?
The algorithm then recommended this from 1987:
Towards the end you get a view of the tall gibbon cages, which I remember from a visit around 1999/2000. Does anyone know when these were demolished?
Similar question about the very large aviary which I believe was called the Southern Aviary?
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Did these cages ever have chimps in them? I have vague memories from my first visits to the zoo (so 2005 or earlier) around the Sobell Pavillon, where I swear the chimps were being kept in tall cages like these.
They definitely still had chimps until just before the Pavilion was closed and demolished, so I’m sure I saw them at the very least.
Chimps weren't kept in the gibbon cage, but you are right in that the chimps had a (relatively) tall cage attached to the Sobell Pavillion. I remember the cage having a hot air balloon basket suspended in it at one point.
Kalaw
Well-Known Member
Thanks to @Tea_and_Biology and @Crowthorne for sharing this very interesting footage. I also had a few more recommended by the algorithm after this which is very welcome, with this one proving particularly enjoyable.. I didn't visit London Zoo until the 2010s, so have little knowledge on what the zoo was like in its prime bar old guidebooks and memories passed down by parents and grandparents. I've often looked for good photos illustrating this era of the zoo but have scarcely had any luck, no idea how I failed to find any of these in the past.
There are a lot of things which I find myself quite surprised by. I had no idea that there used to be an Insect House behind the otters, or a breeding herd of gaur on the Cottons, or oryx in the canalside paddocks. A lot of these things leave me feeling very sad that I will never be able to see at my local zoo in my lifetime. If I ever get a time machine, I know for sure that the first thing I'm doing is going back to the early seventies and visiting the London Zoo that my father grew up with, when the Clore Pavilion had more mammal species than any other UK zoo had in its entire grounds.
Zootierliste claims that, across its entire, near 200 year history, London Zoo has held 8,088 vertebrate taxa at various instances, more than any other collection on the planet (Zoo Berlin comes closest with 5,615). But I wonder if anyone knows what the most it kept at any given time was, and roughly what time period was the zoo's collection at its absolute largest? Surely at some stage it was well past the thousand mark.
There are a lot of things which I find myself quite surprised by. I had no idea that there used to be an Insect House behind the otters, or a breeding herd of gaur on the Cottons, or oryx in the canalside paddocks. A lot of these things leave me feeling very sad that I will never be able to see at my local zoo in my lifetime. If I ever get a time machine, I know for sure that the first thing I'm doing is going back to the early seventies and visiting the London Zoo that my father grew up with, when the Clore Pavilion had more mammal species than any other UK zoo had in its entire grounds.
Zootierliste claims that, across its entire, near 200 year history, London Zoo has held 8,088 vertebrate taxa at various instances, more than any other collection on the planet (Zoo Berlin comes closest with 5,615). But I wonder if anyone knows what the most it kept at any given time was, and roughly what time period was the zoo's collection at its absolute largest? Surely at some stage it was well past the thousand mark.
I think London Zoo’s collection was at its peak during the 1930s
The gibbon cages and Insect House were always favourites of mine. The Insect House more or less got amalgamated into BUGS but I never quite understood the reasoning behind demolishing the gibbon cages.
When did the oryx leave, as I vaguely remember seeing them prior to the African wild dogs replacing them when I was younger.