the earlier statement (made a year ago) was in relation to the many photos snowleopard had then-recently uploaded showing exactly these sorts of older exhibits. No implication was intended that they were all American zoos had to offer, any more than basic ugly cages are all UK zoos have to offer.
@Cinzoo man: you are probably driving everyone nuts asking "what kind of species are in here?" on countless photos...but I can help you out with this one. Here is an excerpt from my review of the zoo last year:
Small Mammal House – It was cool to see two aardvarks sharing the same habitat as meerkats, and another mixed-species exhibit had two-toed sloths with Brazilian agoutis. The rest of the small and fairly outdated building resembled the far superior “Mouse House” at the Bronx Zoo, and here are some of the species: chinchilla, Merriam’s kangaroo rat, European harvest mouse, short-eared elephant shrew, common tree shrew, bushy-tailed jird, pygmy marmoset, degu, damaraland mole rat, and Madagascar giant jumping rat. A very good but tiny nocturnal wing had these species, amongst others: African striped weasel, vampire bat, fruit bat, pygmy loris, sugar glider and echidna. Like much of the Philadelphia Zoo there is a great animal collection in average enclosures.
unless I am reading it wrong, in ThylacineAlive's recent review -- http://www.zoochat.com/22/thylos-philadelphia-zoo-review-373663/ -- he says that many of these cages are actually connected. It doesn't appear that was the case at the time the above photo was taken (going by each front having its own sign) but if they are now then that is better.
The appearance of the display is still hideously ugly though
On my visit, most of the species had access to multiple of these enclosures, yes.
It does indeed look quite ugly in this photo. It's also worst now as two of the enclosures are now covered and all the signs above the enclosures are off and blank, with just smaller signs attached to the walls in between, though.
You could also survive when permanently squeezed into a tiny room-doesn't mean you'd prefer to, does it? Want to know another fact? Nobody likes spammers. Nobody.
