This is on display around the zoo and on the leaflets you can get at the entrance. It isn't yet on the website. It's very good in my view although I think it could include some more animals. Still an improvement and very attractive.
This is on display around the zoo and on the leaflets you can get at the entrance. It isn\'t yet on the website. It\'s very good in my view although I think it could include some more animals. Still an improvement and very attractive.
Looks quite nice. A few small things bother me, like the position of the Mappins and some of the cartoons (is that really an aardvark??) but otherwise looks good.
I agree, the aardvark picture is the worst one. there's also a blue peafowl instead of green peafowl and the owl looks a bit generic, like an image they happened to have handy. I'd have added warthog, maybe an ibis on the Snowdon Aviary. Although the positioning of the Mappins is, I guess, a stylistic representation. On the whole I think it is very attractive.
I do remember that the San Diego zoo map from the same company has a really dodgy picture. If you didn't know the zoo layout you'd never guess that one of the animals is supposed to be a Japanese serow.
The next big project will be the total rebuild of the Lion Terraces, which date from 1976. They will show Asian lions, and one or two supporting species. The plans have been criticised, here, for (1) the further reduction in the zoo's animal inventory that they will entail and (2) the anthropological approach that is to be taken - temples and stuff. Both criticisms seem fair - but an area of the zoo that is currently pretty forlorn will be vastly improved.
Meanwhile, other smaller projects will no doubt continue - some of the aviaries at the bottom of this map are to be replaced soon.
Nightlife: not many! What was once a vast collection is now distinctly half-hearted, with a pretty small collection: brown rats, Malagasy jumping rats, galago, naked mole rats, Australian water rats, potto, loris, chinchilla, Seba's bats. And it's very dark!
Aquarium: not what it was in the distant past, but vastly better now than it has been at any time that I have known it (30 years or so). Strong collections of both saltwater and freshwater fish - pretty old-fashioned in its displays (lots of relatively small tanks rather than anything big) but good for seeing things (and they're all labelled - a rarity in aquariums!).
I dislike the orientation, viewing from the North, although I understand why it was chosen: but if it is used outside the Zoo, North should be shown clearly for first time visitors to orient themselves, particularly as London must be the only zoo in the world where the entrance is almost in the middle!
My old school-teacher's radar also immediately picked up the spelling mistake - which is disgraceful.
One other critical point: those areas of the site that are unused - the canal banks, the Events Lawn, the old Crane and Goose paddocks do seem obscured. A cynic might suppose that some posters' comments about too much unused space has touched a nerve!
And I agree with Alan: to have the orientation not illustrating a North-South axis does seem awkward. PS: what's the spelling mistake?
