Pittsburgh Zoo - Colobus Monkey Exhibit

July 2008. Terrible, terrible enclosure. All of the green plants are outside the cage, and there were 6 or 7 monkeys all sitting in one tree. There are only to large trees in the mesh cage, and zero access to outdoors. One of the most crowded enclosures for monkeys that I've ever seen, as it is more suited to marmosets or tamarins.

This section of the zoo received some of my most derogatory comments. Here is an excerpt from my 2008 review:

Tropical Forest - An utterly desultory, terrible, horrific, desolate, antiquated building. I teach English classes for a living and so could pile on the adjectives, but instead I'll halt there and instead give a breakdown of the atrocious exhibits on display. The colobus monkeys are trapped inside, with a single tree, a log, and a few vines for climbing. Since there is only the one tree, there were 7 of these beautiful monkeys basically sitting on top of each other in an attempt to get some space. A pair of mandrills was idly passed out in a rocky corner of their 100% fake enclosure, while 3 different species of lemur were jammed into a tiny, bare, fake-rock atrocity. The orangutans were crammed into a dark, plastic, all-indoor exhibit that makes the Toronto Zoo's indoor enclosure appear to be a masterpiece. Each one of these puny cages is back-dropped by either a vast mural or rows of thick foliage. There is the impression that the exhibits are lush rainforests, when in fact they are embarrassingly bare. The gorilla indoor pile of concrete looks very much like a type of primitive dungeon, and the whole place should be bulldozed tomorrow. The gorillas are the only one out of all the primate species on exhibit that can actually breathe fresh air in an outdoor meadow, and while that hilly paddock is large it is also bare of anything but grass. There were exactly two trees that provide shade, but they each had 10-foot high sections of electric wire barring the gorillas from approaching them. This "Tropical Forest" section of the zoo should be relabeled "Guantanamo Bay".

personally i think there better than cleveland's and Philadelphia's primate section.

jusko88 said:

personally i think there better than cleveland's and Philadelphia's primate section.

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We would no doubt agree with you on that

Team Tapir

jusko88 said:

personally i think there better than cleveland's and Philadelphia's primate section.

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Philly's indoor exhibits are on average, a bit better than Pittsburgh's, but without the nice rain forest in the background. Philly does have an outdoor exhibit for their oragutans and gibbons, though. Plus, they have the treetop trails and will soon have one for the Primate building.

jusko88 said:

personally i think there better than cleveland's and Philadelphia's primate section.

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You are probably right, but Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Philadelphia all have brutal primate houses. Philly's Primate Reserve opened in 1999 and yet is all cement and metal, but at least the Treetop Trail will give the monkeys and apes more options.

Philly's isn't brutal imo.