Columbus Zoo - Indoor elephant exhibit

BlackRhino said:

This is actually the largest indoor elephant exhibit in the country. How naturalistic do you expect an indoor elephant area to be? It's indoors.

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Making something big does not necessarily make it naturalistic and it is not impossible to create a somewhat naturalistic indoor habitat. This exhibit just looks plain ugly and not like an Asian jungle at all.

I am thinking more along these lines as found in Rotterdam, only better. I have yet to see a truly fantastic indoor exhibit for elephants, but the one in Rotterdam at least makes an attempt to look like a rainforest. And there are way more plants around the exhibit than what you can see here.

Toddy said:

And there are way more plants around the exhibit than what you can see here.

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Unfortunately, no. There isn't any foliage in the building.

And I really like the Rotterdam exhibit. Unfortunately the foliage seems a little too fake for me.

ColumbusZoo001 said:

Unfortunately, no. There isn't any foliage in the building.

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Actually, I was refering to the Rotterdam exhibit in that comment

The indoor exhibit for elephants in Rotterdam is located within an Asian tropical house. And your are right, it is not the absolute optimal exhibit, but I would like to see more elephant exhibits along these lines. Only with more foliage around the exhibit, even more space and natural light, a large pool with underwater viewing and soft substrate for the elephants. You may say that I'm a dreamer

See the thread on Zurich's future Elephant exhibit--it might include all the things you've dreamed about

I still think that shifting the black rhinos at the Columbus Zoo to the future development of the African Savanna area would allow the elephants a hell of a lot more space both indoors and outdoors at this exhibit. I'm sure that idea has been tossed around at the zoo, and that would allow the elephants to have a HUGE area in the pachyderm building.

@ Snowleopard: Your idea is probably what will happen. Plus the elephants already have 73% of the indoor space (~30,000 sq.ft.) and three outdoor exhibits totaling almost 90,000 sq. ft. so any more room wouldn't hurt at all.

Does anyone know the square footage of San Diego's new barn in Elephant Odyssey? It is not as large as the Columbus facility, but how does it compare in size?

The Elephant Care Center at EO is about .5 acres which is between 21,000 and 22,000 square feet.

You have to remember any Southern zoo isnt going to need such a massive enclosed barn for their elephants due to the nicer weather.

Thats right. I visited the Columbus Zoo yesterday and I loved the whole pachyderm area. The one thing that disturbed me though was that the girls from Cleveland were crammed into a tiny yard next to the rhinos and all but one were showing stereotypical behavior. When they lived in Cleveland they were very active and they don't seem to be as active. Do you guys ever let the Cleveland girls into the large yard?