Yeah, that is a nice advantage of open viewing and that's why I like exhibits that feature both.
However, I think you'd agree that most zoo visitors seem to prefer glass viewing when the animals can come right up to them opposed to the open viewing that St. Louis has.
Even at exhibits that have really good open viewing, the windows are generally more popular than the open viewing in my experience.
Having a tiger,jaguar, gorilla,hippo, bear, or whatever right in front of you only separated by glass is a great experience imo.
For the average visitor, or for an animal lover, glass is a great asset. I prefer moated viewing, or even pits, but I do realize this is an unpopular opinion.
If you want to see both leopards and jaguars in HUGE open topped enclosures, visit Out Of Africa (USA) or Parc Des Felins (France). In fact, at the latter one you can see four different leopard enclosures (sri lanka, persian, amur, black).
Although I have not seen it in person, Minnesota Zoo is supposed to have a pretty good amur leopard exhibit (3 exhibits) that opened a few years ago.
We used to do live fish feed for our jaguars (Reid Park Zoo) as well when they were younger, but when they got older they refused to go in the water anymore.
Just to add a visual to my post number 13, here is what an excellent, large, open top leopard exhibit looks like. Sri Lanka leopard, Les Parc Des Felins (France).
For the average visitor, or for an animal lover, glass is a great asset. I prefer moated viewing, or even pits, but I do realize this is an unpopular opinion.
I do, in fact, like moated viewing, and the occasional grotto, but it's just that sometimes they're so barren and disgusting-looking; for example, San Diego's grottoes are plain pitiful, but many other zoos have decent moat exhibits with nice greenery, enrichment items, and other features (bodies of water, rock formations, etc). As long as they have those, and look pretty good, I'm in favor of them. So you're not alone.
