Mixed species exhibits

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as Jurek7 says, Jeremy Cherfas waxes lyrical in "Zoo 2000" about Tropical World. "Step through the automatic doors...and you are in Africa"; "Go through a beaded rope curtain, and the view is astonishing. Fully 60 metres away a waterfall thunders out of the cliffs, tumbling down to a broad stream 12 metres below. Leaves and fallen logs litter the ground, and thick bushes grow in profusion. Bare trees stretch 20 metres to the blue painted sky..."; "[the gorilla enclosure] is quite simply magnificent"; "The gorillas' enclosure is, I think, the finest in the world"; "The animals come first, with the zoo director's belief that the most natural setting possible will encourage natural behaviour..."

It sounds fantastic, but then you see the colour photo elsewhere in the book and you wonder if it's even the same exhibit Cherfas has just been describing. It really looks like there hasn't even been an attempt to make the rockwork look realistic. Its basically giant slabs plastered together. And it looks so bare and empty, about as rainforesty as a pile of Lego blocks.

To be fair it was probably one of the first real attempts to create a proper indoor rainforest rather than just a conservatory, and so for the time probably looked remarkable. But in real terms it just looks awful. I thought that when I first saw it (the book's from 1984) and I think so still.
 
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this is the photo from "Zoo 2000" of Tropic World Africa. Sorry for the quality. Also photobucket has changed the way the edit works and my computer doesn't like it so it may not have changed the size to small....
 
thanks chlidonias.

after viewing that image and many others that i googled my comments would be this.

it looks as though the exhibit isn't blessed with a lot of natural light? if so its probably its biggest problem long term. if those poor animals live under artificial lights then thats going to have to be rectified. i'm not a fan of the ceiling at all.

and yes the rockwork is pretty old-school.

however, if it did have more natural light, it could easily be jazzed up. for starters the poor primates would probably appreciate some natural surfaces underfoot and this means removing excess artificial logs and replacing them with natural deadfall timber structures. the great apes in particular deserve to have all their concrete jacked up and replaced with mulch and soil. all the smaller species as well as any plants outside of exhibit spaces should be live that would certainly make a massive difference.

essentially the place could probably be refurbed quite easily (though it may not be suitable for larger animals) to be okay.

could be just a lack of money or creativity?
 
Just shows how much zoos changed during the last 20-odd years. It was one of first trials/experiments of indoor rainforest halls.

What animals are in Asian part of Tropic World?
 
I suppose that we should all appreciate how far zoos have come over the past 20 or 30 years. It wasn't until Seattle opened their naturalistic gorilla exhibit in 1978 or '79 that gorillas had ever been kept on grass before...and now if the majority of progressive zoos do not have a grassy, wild enclosure for great apes it is regarded as a type of sin. Just imagine all of the improvements 20 or 30 years from today...
 
snowleopard said:
I suppose that we should all appreciate how far zoos have come over the past 20 or 30 years. It wasn't until Seattle opened their naturalistic gorilla exhibit in 1978 or '79 that gorillas had ever been kept on grass before...
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Maybe true for the USA, but Chester have kept all their apes on grass paddocks since the 1950s (although with no other live planting) starting with the original chimp islands and then with orangs and gorillas. By the early 70s grass was used for gorillas at London and Antwerp (and probably several other zoos if I could only remember). Seattle's great advance, if I understand correctly, was the use of living trees and a wider range of plants.

Alan
 
@gentle lemur: I'm sure that you are correct, and it's just that I'm constantly reading in wildlife books about how Seattle had the first ever "naturalistic" gorilla exhibit. The way that you worded it makes sense, as before the '70's there were great ape exhibits that were grassy and yet much more barren than present-day enclosures. Then live plants and different types of foliage was added to create a more realistic area.

On a side note, Seattle might have helped begun a trend with their gorillas but it wasn't until around 1995 that their orangutans received a multi-million dollar, beautifully naturalistic enclosure. I can remember visiting the zoo prior to '95 and seeing the orangs in a dark, barred cage. It's kind of sad that it took almost 20 years for the orangutans to catch up with the gorillas in terms of exhibit design.
 
same happened at melbourne there was over 15 years between the gorilla sgetting out of the crappy grottoes and the orangutans. by the time the orangs got a new exhibit, the flavour had gone back towards "simulation" rather than naturalistic exhibits. still a massive improvement.
 
gentle lemur said:
By the early 70s grass was used for gorillas at London and Antwerp (and probably several other zoos if I could only remember).
Alan
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Jersey was another early one. It took a while for Jambo to get used to the grass- he wouldn't step onto it initially. For a number of years it was just a hilly, open grassy enclosure. Much better nowadays.

London used grass through concrete blocks in the Sobell Ape cages- later they seemed to abandon that due to wear and tear, and covered the floors of them with straw bedding a la Howletts.

The grass in Antwerp's semicircular outdoor Ape enclosures also got very worn as they only very small. As well as the 2.2. Eastern Lowland gorillas, there was a pair of Western Lowlands living in that house. 'Gust' and 'Kora' lived indoors for about 27 years, NEVER going outside at all... Gust died and Kora ended up at Touroparc Romaneche in Southern France where she died recently( she was also for a while Europe's oldest gorilla)- but at least she had an outside enclosure there. And we think Melbourne's 'Rigo' had it rough....
 
urgh.... aweful.

did you read the latest issue of national geographic grant? there is a great article in there on animal minds - basically saying animals are a lot smarter than we give them credit for and that their minds are not unlike ours and capable of self-awareness and even relatively abstract concepts.

and its largely talking about rather "simple" animals such as dogs and parrots. it really puts into context just how smart great apes are and thus what our standards of care towards them should be....
 
there is a fantastic anecdote from Seattle about gorilla intelligence in David Hancocks book. my bible....
apparently, the keepers were spending alot of time hiding food out in the enclosure, which the silverback would race around and find in no time at all. the hiding places kept changing, but he always knew where they were, even though he had no view of the exhibit when locked in the dens...
then the penny dropped. the silverback was watching the keepers via a cctv located in the keepers staff room or wherever..anyway the gorilla was translating the grainy images into his mental map of the exhibit and thats how he found the food. bloody clever
 
did you read the NG article glyn?

in it it there was a dog who could do the same thing....a dog!!

she understood that a image was a representation of a real life object, and recognised what that object was. there is even mention of a bonabo who's minders suspect is speaking english - only too fast and high for humans to understand. the ultimate was a group of dolphins who not only understood the concept of "create" (when asked to create their own routine) but could somehow also communicate that with eachother and oraganise a flawlessly synchronised routine all by themselves.

amazing!
 
I have that issue of National Geographic, and the article on animal intelligence is extremely interesting. Of particular note is the assertion that bonobo chimpanzees can possibly be speaking English at an incredibly fast rate. That is a bold theory that many people would instantly shoot down, but perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye.

@glyn: the David Hancocks book is brilliant, and it deservedly gets mentioned numerous times here at ZooBeat. The exhibit design ideas are simply terrific.
 
glyn said:
then the penny dropped. the silverback was watching the keepers via a cctv located in the keepers staff room or wherever..anyway the gorilla was translating the grainy images into his mental map of the exhibit and thats how he found the food. bloody clever
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Patrick- no, I haven't read this article- but nothing would surprise me about animal minds nowadays. There have been some amazing findings...

Re. the silverback not just watching the cctv but interpreting it- that's pretty amazing too but its only when these creatures are put to the test that we can actually see what their minds are capable of. It wasn't that long ago it wasn't fully known if apes really understood what mirrors are, but this shows far more advanced capabilities.

regarding dogs- I have had several- the current one never strikes me as wildly intelligent but I am amazed by her memory. There are a couple of places where she has been walked occassionally we've passed one or more aggressive dogs barking at her through a fence- she always shows a particular behaviour on such occassions- becoming very tense and whining. Sometimes we won't visit one of those places for many months(even a year),and they are several miles away from my home, yet however long it is before we go there again, she will still show the same apprehensive behaviour exactly when we approach and pass that particular place- even if the other dog(s) is nowhere to be seen. Its quite uncanny....
 
Another gorilla story- in the early days at Jersey,the famous 'Jambo' (Motaba's father) used to live in a small enclosure (before the current one) with his two 'wives'. It was a simple affair with small inside dens with heavy sliding doors (that raised upwards) connecting to the outdoor enclosure.

Every day the routine was that Jambo & co were shut inside while the outdoor enclosure was cleaned- he was a fullgrown silverback and though very good natured, definately not safe to go in with. One day,(if I have it right) for some reason he was shut inside much longer than normal after cleaning was finished. Becoming impatient,he simply went to the slide door, pressed his hands against it to form a suction pad, and raised it up and crawled underneath to let himself out.... ln all the years previously no-one had the slightest idea he could do that and he had never tried to do it at any time while keepers were working in his outdoor area. (The door system was hastily redesigned after that!!)
 
no - and i was just about to say......MARK or BEN could we please move this most fascinating of conversations to a new thread entitled "animal intelligence" please?
 
dexter the dog.....

my family dog is highly intelligent. his one of those dogs we just let take himself for walks. he often walks over to my house on his own and bangs on the door to be let in. he started doing this the day after i moved some things from my mothers to my new place and took him with me.

my mother swears that he tries to mimic the word "hello" - something i would not have believed until i saw dogs on TV that do it. i'm still skeptical, but he certainly only does it when he first greets you, and never again.

his memory is excellent, the other day he couldn't find his ball and after exhausting every possible place it might be (including looking under every chair/couch), he ran
outside and looked down into the drain in the gutter outside my mothers house and barked for someone to lift the grill. because years ago it rolled down there and i had to
lift the grill to get it back. after my mum lifted it for him, he stuck his head in, saw it wasn't there and skampered back to the house in search.

he also plays quite complex games, and at the very least (if he doesn't have one himself) he reads my family's quirky sense of humour very well.

he hates baths and hates having his haircut or ears cleaned. if the words are spoken - and thats words in relation to him (he doesn't respond to the word "bath" but will to the quietest whisper of "dexter needs a bath") he disappears. and i mean hides in amazingly random places he never usually hides. that means he sees a place and thinks "thats a good hiding spot" and remembers it for the future.

but don't get on his bad side. if you give him a serious telling off, he will ignore you for days on end. to the extend where he will even refuse to take walks with you.

what breed is he? an unkempt bichon frise cross (probably poodle). the girliest dog on the planet. however, his brains have won over even the blokiest of my mates. who all say, "yeah dexter's a cool dog - his own man".
 
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