A question for Zoochatters in the zoo design world: are animal statues an emerging (or ongoing) trend in modern exhibit design, or are they particular to San Diego?
Between the entrance statues, the Pleistocene beasties in Elephant Odyssey, and the polar bears and seals in the polar area they have a whole zoo of animal statues.
I kind of like them because they give people a tangible feeling for how big the animals really are (or were in the case of EO). What do others think of them?
heaps of zoos have animal statues. I'm not sure its a trend as such and you probably couldn't draw any meaningful results from listing the places that do or don't have them.
Just a couple of examples, Singapore Zoo has loads of them (check out the gallery: proboscis monkeys, otters, etc) and Auckland Zoo has several in Te Wao Nui (albatross, shearwaters, giant penguin, etc); then there are all the dinosaurs which do seem to be a trend right now (but I guess continuing a very old trend, rather than being a brand new trend). There's a zoo in Europe of which Maguari uploaded photos recently (http://www.zoochat.com/gallery/zoo-chleby), and it has a great selection of extinct animal statues.
Life-size animal statues are hugely popular to the point of creating serious crowd congestion. Families get in line to get a snapshot of their little ones leaning against a statue, and from a toddler's perspective animal statues are amazing and probably more exciting than the actual live animals! Just check out Elephant Odyssey on a hot summer day and see how many folks are jammed around the statues and so to have excited children is a great thing from the vantage point of a zoo.
The number of temporary, summer-rental, dinosaur displays that have popped up at American zoos is amusing, as kiddies love dinosaurs and parents are willing to fork over a few bucks to walk past the animatronic beasties. Several zoos have even had dinosaur displays back for two or three summers during the past decade as a couple of hundred thousand dollars is created with the statues in a fairly short period of time.
