Predator/prey immersion exhibits

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Al

Al

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Again i am looking for examples of these interesting exhibits! It is spectacular to see predators seemingly living along side their prey species but do you feel it benefits the animals? yes the predators are enriched but does it just frustrate them and stress the prey species. I have watched in awe at several pallas cat kittens scratching at glass to try and get at some mongolian gerbils beside them at rotterdam zoo!
 
Besides Rotterdam the only other exhibit like this that springs to mind is the African Plains at Leipzig, where the spotted hyena's seem to live together with the african plains mammals...
 
Omaha's Desert Dome: Cougars & peccaries, caracals & klipspringers. Frankly, I didn't like it: especially the exhibit size was extremely small and inapt, and the animals were obviously stressed. The Louisville rotation exhibit was already mentioned in another thread. Stuttgart's Rainforest House has a caiman exhibit where the grey-winged trumpeter birds have access to. This costed the life of the female bird...and I think Vancouver Aquarium as well as several other institutions have mixed species rainforest exhibits where animals, mostly birds, lost at least a limb to "friendly" neighbours like piranhas.
In several European zoos, there have been attempts to keep small animals like meerkats & parrot together with lions; sometimes, the combination worked, but quite often, the lions gained some extra snacks thorugh this...
 
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Oregon Zoo: opening a 2009 exhibit that will have clear glass tunnels running through the caracal enclosure, and they will have mongoose in the next exhibit that can utilize the transparent tunnels.

Detroit Zoo: aren't the seals swimming next to the polar bears, separated only by glass?
 
There's obviously some really famous older ones like the hagenbeck ones. The african one is the most famous, but there is also an arctic one, a photograph of which is in my gallery.

I do kind of agree with the people saying that the prey species is subject to undue stress. Perhaps it'd be ok if the prey can't see the predator, but the viewer can see both at once. That'd be quite hard to design I guess.

[photo=1411;500;hagenbacks_polar_bears_25.jpg]Hagenback's Zoo[/photo]
 
^Chris^ said:
I do kind of agree with the people saying that the prey species is subject to undue stress. Perhaps it'd be ok if the prey can't see the predator, but the viewer can see both at once. That'd be quite hard to design I guess
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure, I think the prey species would be even more unnerved if they can hear and smell the predators, yet cannot see them...
 
At both the Seattle Zoo and the Oregon Zoo the arctic wolf exhibit is adjacent to the elk enclosure...with a clear sightline between the two species.
 
For the puff adder+ harvest mice terrarium in Basel, see multi-species exhibit thread.

Many zoos have predators in adjacent paddocks to ungulates. Bronx zoo and Gelsenkirchen, for example.

Generally big cats quite often watch ungulates (some zoologist likened this to TV watching), but ungulates quickly learn and ignore them.

Basel has snow leopards and tahrs on two sides of rather fanciful artificial mountain. I observed once snow leopards watching tahrs and licking mouths, while tahrs grazed calmly maybe a meter away, behind the chainlink.
 
Schwerin Zoo's golden mongooses has access to the lion enclosure. This seems to work well though...
 
That's a shame. It was a cool idea though...

Copenhagen Zoo is currently considering building their new lion enclosure next to the okapi enclosure :confused:. That may just be the stupidest idea I have heard! I hope they realise that too
 
snowleopard said:
Oregon Zoo: opening a 2009 exhibit that will have clear glass tunnels running through the caracal enclosure, and they will have mongoose in the next exhibit that can utilize the transparent tunnels.

Detroit Zoo: aren't the seals swimming next to the polar bears, separated only by glass?
Click to expand...

We've all seen exhibits like this lots of times. Big cats pacing up and down past glass windows - little children on the other side just asking to be eaten :cool:

Alan
 
So let me get this straight, Zoos want to convey an educational message of predator prey relationships by having two species live right by one another in a seemingly peaceful way? I suspect these exhibits may even help promote the misconception of an "Idealistic, and peaceful" nature where cute baby birds or peccaries aren't consumed by predators .

Stress levels in wild organisms do rise appreciably in the close presence of predators and I doubt it would be any different in captivity. For welfare reasons the only way I would accept Predator/prey exhibits is if the prey species has the majority of its enclosure structured so it has sufficient privacy from the other species (at least from the prey species perspective) and if it was the prey species choice to be in close proximity to the predator species.
Additionally, the way these exhibits tend to be built is to have the predator species in good view of the public, requiring both enclosures to be reduced in depth.
 
I remember reading an interesting case of predator prey exhibits in a magazine covering the Montreal Biodome. The author and the rest of the tour group were enchanted by the beauty of a "freeflight" scarlet ibis that had flown to rest atop a visitor rail. In a blink of an eye a coatimundi grabbed the ibis and killed it right in front of the horrified spectators. All were left aghast and concerned, except for the author who "appreciated" the event as the ultimate expression of just how closely the Montreal Biodome approximated a naturally functioning ecosystem.
The Montreal Biodome no longer has coatimundis because of this incident and others like it.

If I was part of that tour group I would have complained vehemently to the staff, even though if I was in the wild I would be interested (although still unnerved) in seeing such interactions take place. Where and why I draw the line I can't discern.
 
Predator / Prey

I heard of somewhere ( possibly in Germany , but not 100% sure of the exact location ) of a zoo that experimented putting lions and meerkats together in the one enclosure .
The meerkats behaved just as they would in the wild, and were too quick for any lion that tried to attack .
The lions slowly learnt that the meerkats were just a little too fast for them
 
I think you mean Schwerin. See gallery on Zoolex website - it is described there.

As far as I know, lions always succeeded in killing other animals kept with them. Yellow mongoose in Basel, alexandrine parakeet in Zurich and jackals in Leipzig. Corsac foxes in Heidelberg survived by hiding in holes all the time until they were removed. Basel lions got also two hunting dogs which jumped into their exhibit.
 
Yeah, and the Schwerin lion have also seemed to adapt and started to kill the meerkats, like I already mentioned...
@Taccachantrieri: I'd say it depends on the animals (and their value) involved and the reactions of the visitors...
There are some people, even mentioned in "Ethics on the Ark" who propose that in the case You have animals You want to reintroduce, it'd advisable to let them go through a "survival/boot camp" scenario where they are also confronted with prey and natural predators-even if that meant animal losses. Critics of this suggestion point out that this might end in a cruel & unfair massacre, which, due to the restrictions of the exhibits, would not resemble the conditions in the natural habitat. This is still a heatly debated subject.

About the immersion of prey/predators closeby, but not within the same exhibit, I do think the chronic stress aspect is important to be observed (after all, You too wouldn't feel at ease if You knowingly had to live next to Dr. Hannibal Lecter...)as well as triggering panic & flight behaviour should be avoided, but I have also seen a few combinations where it worked, as the animals got accustomed to each other. However, the negative impression on the average zoo crowd by this peaceful "Disney"-like scenario mentioned by Taccachantrieri should not be neglected either; it could help if surplus ungulates of the closeby exhibit would be fed as whole carcasses to the big predators, like Nuremberg or Munich Zoo do, to underline that these predators are no tame & friendly cartoon characters, but dine on their "neighbours" in the wild.
 
I like Adelaide zoo's idea that the orang-utans can climb on an o-line into the lion cage and still be able to get out of site of the tigers by climbing back
 
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