Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden News From the Cincinnati Zoo 2011 #2

There are now Coquerel's sifakas in the African building in Jungle Trails in the Diana monkey exhibit!! :)

I would guess this either means that the ruffed lemurs have left or the sifakis are here for a limited time.
 
Moebelle said:
There are now Coquerel's sifakas in the African building in Jungle Trails in the Diana monkey exhibit!! :)

I would guess this either means that the ruffed lemurs have left or the sifakis are here for a limited time.
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Sifakas are great. Hopefully they have plenty of room to bounce.

Would it be possible for you to post a picture of their exhibit in the gallery (and maybe the giraffe exhibit interpretive graphics also if you happen to wander by the giraffe exhibit:))?
 
DavidBrown said:
Sifakas are great. Hopefully they have plenty of room to bounce.

Would it be possible for you to post a picture of their exhibit in the gallery (and maybe the giraffe exhibit interpretive graphics also if you happen to wander by the giraffe exhibit:))?
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Certainly will. The only problem is that around this time I only visit the festival of lights and so it will be dark so I will try my best.
 
Kudu21 said:
The zoo has received a 5-million dollar donation from the Marge and Charles J. Schott Foundation to help with the construction of the African savannah.
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What is going to be in the new African savannah exhibit? Is it one big multi-species exhibit?
 
DavidBrown said:
What is going to be in the new African savannah exhibit? Is it one big multi-species exhibit?
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This will be an 8-acre area with many, many species and exhibits. By 2013, there will be one large exhibit for cranes, storks, gazelles, elands, zebras, ostriches, and many more hoofed animals. Behind the Cheetah Encounter will be another cheetah exhibit. To the very left will be a large walk-through aviary and next is olive baboons. Across from them is an empty exhibit on the map and I suspect it will be for meerkats. There will be a new restaurant looking out into Africa. A kojie exhibit that I believe will hold klipringers. African wild dogs will also be added. Lastly in 2014, there will be a 7 million dollar Nile hippo exhibit. It will be constructed by phases. 2 out of 4 phases are already complete with Giraffe Ridge and flamingos and a new cheetah encounter. Thane Maynard says in the video that there will also be lions, but the map doesn't show them. PepsiCo and Kroger have already donated $1,000,000 towards the project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL1FE63E215423535C&feature=player_embedded&v=dqqmDBfoQKI

This is where it will be.

http://www.zoochat.com/556/future-sight-african-savannah-224064/

Here's the map. Where it says Treetops, that is not an exhibit even though it would be perfect exhibit name for small primates and birds native to the canopies of rainforests.

http://images.wikia.com/travel/en/images/b/b0/Africa_cincinnati_zoo.png
 
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groundskeeper24 said:
Went to the zoo today. Awesome zoo weather and not much of a crowd. I saw Night Hunters for the first time and was disappointed to see that many of the cat displays remain pretty much the same. I did like some things, though. The aardwolves were very active, moreso than I've ever seen an aardwolf. The vampire bat exhibit was almost too big. The new cougar enclosure outside the building was a major improvement over the old indoor one. I't at the very least adequate and easy on the eyes. Can't wait to see the new snow leopard and tiger setups next year.

There was plenty of digging going on in the parking lot that is to become the new African exhibit. It will be really interesting to see what species end up in the hoofed stock exhibit. I also hope that baboons return to the zoo as tentatively planned. I'd kill to see a cape buffalo group as well, but this is not likely.

On my way out, I got to mingle with a red river hog on a leash. It was very cool as I'd never seen that species so socialized. He was like a 140lb dog. He even tried to make a meal of my boot laces.

Despite poor opinions of this zoo among many respected Zoochatters, I firmly believe that this zoo is slowly getting on track. I am very excited to see what the park will look like in 15 years.
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I can't help but agree with this. We're moving back to NYC next week from Cincinnati and I am quite eager to come back to visit the zoo. For a zoo with so little space and a phenomenal collection of species, this zoo is fast approaching it's former spot on the top 5 list with many of their newer plans.
 
New video on Rinaldo(7) from the LA Zoo and Wilhelmina(2) from the Duke Lemur Center

Coquerel's Sifaka - Cincinnati Zoo - YouTube

David: Sorry about not telling you that I did not go to the zoo last Sunday because of the rain, but I promise I am going tomorrow. I most likely will not get the giraffe graphics because of the dark, but I will definitely will get the insect exhibits(if my friend wants to go in there). I will also get pics of the sifaka exhibit.
 
Went to the zoo, there were a million changes.

Let's start with the Reptile House, there are 5 new residents and other creatures that have moved to other exhibits and the people who hated the Reptile House will now love it. All of the larger animals in the smaller exhibits, were moved to the larger ones. Most of the top exhibits are not enclosed by the tank walls but they were removed and dug back even more to make the dirt the animal's only barrier. also many of the exhibits now have beautiful flowers in them. There are now black milk snakes, some species of Amazonian frogs(they were in the new exhibit), a Dumeril's ground boa was in the cobra exhibit and now the cobras are in the beaded lizard/Burmese python exhibit. So anyways it looks much better, the zoo may have read the negative comments about it.

I saw the cute Pallas' cat kittens, the baby bearcat is a lot bigger and has a tail twice the size of it's body. The cougar exhibit looks in awful condition, it's mostly rock and there is currently no grass. I also saw the galagos for the first time ever in that building. And people, you say it looks bad, but take a closer look, I realized the exhibits that I thought were tiny, but they were actually very large. So please try it.

Now to Jungle Trails, the weasel is gone and the pottos are back in it's old exhibit. Where the bamboo lemurs used to be, is now where the large-spotted genet is. The Sifaka exhibit was great but sadly they were asleep. This is a shocker so hold on tight, first of all the aye-aye exhibit was bright and all we saw was the bamboo lemurs, but we looked at the signs and there were three of them, they said, gray bamboo lemur, aye-aye and a potto.

It was sad not seeing Illusion but I bet shes happy now. The seating area at the manatee tank was taken down.

When we were getting my friend the tickets, next to the line was a keeper holding Caspian who is actually a female Eurasian Eagle Owl that is the daughter of the one is Night Hunters. We could even pet her!!

David: Sorry I could only get one of your requirements done, but camera died while i was on the way the Insect House. And also it was too dark for the giraffe signs, very sorry. But I do have many other pics.
 
Thanks for the update Moebelle.

It's nice to hear about the changes made to the Reptile House. Nearly any changes made to that building would be welcome changes to me. It is, however, quite interesting to hear that they removed the glass in front of the terrariums.

I'm disappointed to hear that the African striped weasel is no longer on display. It was always quite active, and the visitors seemed to love watching it scurry around the enclosure. As a sucker for zoo rarities, it was always a highlight of a visit to the zoo for me during the short time it was on display. It's truly a shame that mustelids are so rarely exhibited.

I'm actually quite surprised to hear that they mixed the bamboo lemurs with the aye-aye and the potto. Neither aye-ayes nor bamboo lemurs are commonly exhibited with other species, so for the two species to be exhibited together is certainly something that I'd say is unique. (Though I'm ready to be proven wrong!) The previous bamboo lemur enclosure in nocturnal wing of the African building was not nearly as large as this one, so it will be interesting to see how they utilize the new space and the new, larger climbing structures. In their previous exhibit they had smaller branches and bamboo to climb and leap about on, but now they will have access to a large system of trunks and branches. It'll certainly be an interesting display combined with the Coquerel's sifakas nearby. If it wasn't for that darn, ever-present potto ;)

I'll be headed to the zoo within the next several weeks for my scheduled behind-the-scenes Elephant Encounter, and I'm very excited to see all of the changes for myself.
 
Kudu21 said:
Thanks for the update Moebelle.

It's nice to hear about the changes made to the Reptile House. Nearly any changes made to that building would be welcome changes to me. It is, however, quite interesting to hear that they removed the glass in front of the terrariums.

I'm disappointed to hear that the African striped weasel is no longer on display. It was always quite active, and the visitors seemed to love watching it scurry around the enclosure. As a sucker for zoo rarities, it was always a highlight of a visit to the zoo for me during the short time it was on display. It's truly a shame that mustelids are so rarely exhibited.

I'm actually quite surprised to hear that they mixed the bamboo lemurs with the aye-aye and the potto. Neither aye-ayes nor bamboo lemurs are commonly exhibited with other species, so for the two species to be exhibited together is certainly something that I'd say is unique. (Though I'm ready to be proven wrong!) The previous bamboo lemur enclosure in nocturnal wing of the African building was not nearly as large as this one, so it will be interesting to see how they utilize the new space and the new, larger climbing structures. In their previous exhibit they had smaller branches and bamboo to climb and leap about on, but now they will have access to a large system of trunks and branches. It'll certainly be an interesting display combined with the Coquerel's sifakas nearby. If it wasn't for that darn, ever-present potto ;)

I'll be headed to the zoo within the next several weeks for my scheduled behind-the-scenes Elephant Encounter, and I'm very excited to see all of the changes for myself.
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I don't get why they just don't mix all if the lemurs in the same exhibit. I should have been more clear. The viewing glass that we look through is still there but the side and back glass was taken out.
 
Moebelle said:
I don't get why they just don't mix all if the lemurs in the same exhibit. I should have been more clear. The viewing glass that we look through is still there but the side and back glass was taken out.
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Thank you for clearing that up. I truly wasn't sure exactly what you meant by that, and I was trying to imagine exactly what was done. That makes much more sense.

I know you said that you thought that the cougar enclosure looked in bad shape, well I'd say that is partially due to the sheer amount of rain we've had over the past several weeks. The combination of saturated soil and active cats is not one supportive of grass ;)

Also, while looking through some photo albums I've found some photographs of the zoo from the late 90's and early 2000's that I have yet to scan and upload. I will go through them and get the more interesting ones up as soon as possible.
 
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