Exhibits, enclosures in a dream zoo?

[Jurek7]

There is one thread about animals, so another one.

What exhibits, enclosures, attractions you would like to see in a zoo? Can be something great and expensive or tiny and nice. Can be huge complex or small thing. Anything.

Personally:
- desert paddock where you can take camel ride among gazelles and maned sheep.
- small pool where you can wet your legs and see e.g. ibis and turtles.

 

[Potto]

I'd like for there to be a feeding time for each specie of animal at the zoo where public visitors can feed any animal they want!

 

[taun]

A gibbon island complex,

Loads of decent sized island with as many different species of gibbons as possible to obtain. You could also add S.E.Asia primates to break it up. The whole complex could be viewed from a boat.

Walk over swamp/marsh,

This could obtain african animals, such as hippo's, flamingo's, cranes, etc... or an S.E.Asia theme with indian rhino as the main attration.

 

[Sun Wukong]

I'd like for there to be a feeding time for each specie of animal at the zoo where public visitors can feed any animal they want!

...with the result of overfed, wrongly fed and always begging animals. The "dream" of every zoo veterinarian...Yippee! And the zookeepers will surely also "like" this routine, too...

 

[Pygathrix]

A gibbon island complex,

Gibbon islands are a bit of a zoo cliche. They are very common and often present a rather impoverished environment, with a few telegraph poles and ropes supposed to replace a tropical jungle, and the animals often having little more than a hutch to shelter in. What you're proposing does sound better than the usual effort though. Chester's island (now home to ringtail lemurs) was an exception being extremely spacious and containing a dense woodland of mature trees.

 

[taun]

Gibbon islands are a bit of a zoo cliche. They are very common and often present a rather impoverished environment, with a few telegraph poles and ropes supposed to replace a tropical jungle, and the animals often having little more than a hutch to shelter in. What you're proposing does sound better than the usual effort though. Chester's island (now home to ringtail lemurs) was an exception being extremely spacious and containing a dense woodland of mature trees.

Yeah, thats is what i mean't the only man made structures would be inside sleeping dens, for the winter months and to try and make catching them easier for any treatement, etc....

 

[patrick]

a pet hate of mine (and i really really HATE IT) is telegraph poles in ape/primate exhibits, especially orangutan exhibits.

i consider creating a naturalistic orangutan exhibits to be the ultimate challenge in zoo design and so far i have only seen one zoo pull it off - singapore.

why? for the simple reason that most zoos are not smart enough to create the exhibit around a existing stand of matured trees, rather that select a site and try to "junglefy" it. you cant turn an orangutan enclosure into a forest, but you can turn a forest into an orangutan enclosure.

 

[Ara]

Wouldn't apes in zoos kill living trees? to avoid this, the enclosure would have to be many, many acres, and still the damage would be substantial. ( Just making a nice comfy bed each day would be enough.)

Tell me about Singapore's.

 

[patrick]

true, to a certain extent.

you can stop apes from killing live trees and yep its extremely difficult. other issues also arise from live trees. for example what's stopping a highly intelligent ape from stripping off a tall thin branch and using it as a makeshift escape ladder to freedom.

what works at singapore is just good logic. firstly the site had established tall trees. second the trees were draped in synthetic vines, that encourage the apes to use these to swing on rather than the branches, putting less stress on the trees. hotwires are used to protect more fragile sections of the trees and to stop the orangs from climbing to ground level. zooish explains it well in the appropriately named thread.

no doubt larger sizes (acres and acres) would work well also ara, but it isn't necessarily impossible without.

in any event it can be done, and there is nothing saying more zoos couldn't attempt more naturalistic exhibits. however it takes a bit of innovation, a good site to start with
(with a lot of tall matured trees)

 

[Chlidonias]

Gibbon islands are a bit of a zoo cliche. They are very common and often present a rather impoverished environment, with a few telegraph poles and ropes supposed to replace a tropical jungle, and the animals often having little more than a hutch to shelter in.

I hate ones like that. There's a zoo over here which I shall not name, but it recently won an ARAZPA exhibit-design award for exactly such an island. I can only assume there was no other competition in the field.

 

[Sun Wukong]

It also depends a lot on the trees You use; there have been accidents in European zoos f.e. with colobus monkeys escaping and crashing down from the height, as some European tree branches didn't seem to be elastic enough. Another subject is possible plant poisoning.

There are different variations of gibbon exhibits I have seen so far: the one in the Wilhelma f.e. is a rather extreme one(a tall ashlar shaped exhibit), and there are plenty of newer "bamboo variants" in many European zoos (f.e. Vienna). The aspect of bamboo is btw. an interesting one: according to a vet working in an Vietnamese primate center, the gibbons there all seemed to prefer the bamboo and not the ropes. She also remarked that a lot of the gibbon zoo exhibits are not long enough to allow the gibbons their brachiation at full speed.

Personally, I do consider the naturalistic tree version on an island the "best-looking" one; but beside the danger of drowning, the disadvantage in seasonal climate though is that the moats around these "islands" ice up in the cold-which means that You have constantly to destroy the ice or, what is more common, keep the gibbons inside all the time.
In a German book about primates, the author remarked something interesting: in old Chinese poems & pictures, gibbons are depicted as "living in the snow". While nowadays zoo are discouraged from keeping their gibbons outside in the winter, it seems as there might have been populations of Gibbons (species? hoolocks?) in China in former times inhabitating colder climates. Too bad they seem to be gone...

 

[PAT]

I'm sure that everyone in australia would have seen those dead gum trees along the side of the roads that are kind of white and leafless. Well i would build an orang utan exhibit like melbournes new one(The one that isn't netted) but replace all the climbing structures with the big dead trees and then have mature alive trees with electric wire planted around the place to green it up a bit and finally fake, unbreakable, low maintenance vines draped around. And definatley tree top level viewing.

 

[patrick]

I hate ones like that. There's a zoo over here which I shall not name, but it recently won an ARAZPA exhibit-design award for exactly such an island. I can only assume there was no other competition in the field.

i'll name it. orana park. and yes, from the photos it certainly didn't look remotely original, complex or esthetically-pleasing in design to me.

 

[patrick]

I'm sure that everyone in australia would have seen those dead gum trees along the side of the roads that are kind of white and leafless.....

it seems a completely obvious alternative doesn't it? one i have often hoped for myself. taronga used dead ironbarks just a few years ago in their chimp exhibit, so far without incident.

 

[patrick]

in old Chinese poems & pictures, gibbons are depicted as "living in the snow". While nowadays zoo are discouraged from keeping their gibbons outside in the winter, it seems as there might have been populations of Gibbons (species? hoolocks?) in China in former times inhabitating colder climates. Too bad they seem to be gone...

bah, i can't seem to find a link to it anywhere, but i am sure i read about an area in yunnan province, china where there are black crested gibbons that live in a region that occasionally receives snowfall. maybe i was imagining it?!!!

the region may be found on this great website:

Terrestrial Ecoregions: Indo-Malayan

i would suspect there are only 3 candidates for a potentially temperate population of gibbons:
black-crested gibbons, lar gibbons and as you say hoolock gibbons

 

[Sun Wukong]

i would suspect there are only 3 candidates for a potentially temperate population of gibbons:
black-crested gibbons, lar gibbons and as you say hoolock gibbons

Just like I assumed-and so did the author; however, he also remarked that the possible place of origin of these poems etc. seem to have been areas far more in the North than the current distribution of gibbons. He concluded that they might have been escaped or half-wild pets-or an extinct population of one of the three species mentioned.
I even found a link (btw: thanks for the NG link) where the author is cited-unfortunately, it's in German:
Die Gibbons (Hylobatidae): Die Gibbons in China
The last paragraph refers to the poem by Li Po (701-762)from the Anhui province:
"The glory of the mountains shivers under the heaps of snow
Like shadows the gibbons hang from the cold branches."

The author concludes that so far no one can say what species these gibbons of the poems & other works of arts might have belonged to.

 

[patrick]

the NG websites a good'n.... i'm a massive fan of prioritising global conservation projects into idenified hotspots. thus maximising biodiversity.

 

[zooman]

Great thread!

 

[Thonoir]

I'd like an extensive lemur walkthrough featuring several sympatric species. Maybe something like ring-tailed, Verreaux's sifaka and a mouse lemur species. Of course, I'm thinking something quite large...

Or an inter-connected series of prosimian themed walkthroughs containing lemurs, pottos, galagos, loris and tarsiers alongside other species found in the appropriate habitats.

 

[groundskeeper24]

I'd like to see an African forest mixed species exhibit with both okapis and pygmy hippos.