@Cat-Man: you made my day with that comment...hilarious! I've seen photos before of this Dudley fiasco, and the zoo should be ashamed to still have this giant urinal on its grounds.
@Cat-Man: you made my day with that comment...hilarious! I've seen photos before of this Dudley fiasco, and the zoo should be ashamed to still have this giant urinal on its grounds.
I know Tecton's not everyone's taste, but that's a bit harsh!
Anywho, Tecton buildings are rare as hen's teeth so the zoo can't (and to my mind shouldn't) demolish it. I look forward to the day when the Orangs have a modern enclosure to move into, and this can be either turned to a museum piece or (preferably) reused for a smaller, more suitable species, but it would be a crime to get rid of this building (in both architectural and zoo historical terms).
I've been looking forward to that for about the last 35 years but it ain't happened yet and I wonder if it ever will.
In the 1960/70's era, this house used to contain all three Great Ape Species, a pair of Orangutan in the nearest enclosure, 1.3 Chimpanzee in the central one, a pair of Lowland Gorillas in the furthest one. By the way, I believe the original quote from Stefan Ormerod's book was a 'Giant's Urinal'....
Twycross' indoor area is certainly better but I think Dudley actually has a better outdoor enclosure once you disregard pure aesthetics. The Twycross enclosure cannot be subdivided, so if they need to separate animals then one will be stuck indoors. The climbing material is no better than adequate at both, but I think Dudley's probably covers more area and has better viewing. If they planted it up a bit it could be very nice, in fact (outdoors, anyway). I suspect, however, that this won't be done.
i don't think there is much to choose between the outdoor areas for Orangs at Twycross & Dudley- both date from a similar era and they show it... Its true that Dudley's allows for animals to be seperated though one of the dividing walls of the original three Ape enclosures has been partially removed(behind the birch tree) giving one larger and one smaller outdoor area. In this photo the door in the remaing dividing wall is open, but it must be closed again now as they currently have 2 pairs so need the seperation arrangement.
Dudley's is awful indoors though- much worse than Twycross.
Both enclosures (Dudley and Twycross) are long overdue for replacment but it doesn't happen.
Yes it was. In fact Dudley's Ape House was itself modelled on one at the New York Bronx Zoo but that one was altogether more spacious. With each architectural 'copy' (Bronx- Dudley-Chessington) the design got smaller, ending with Chessington's miniature version.
