Always depressing to see an enclosure with no living vegetation. The cost of extending the enclosure towards the viewer to include the landscaped area would represent an insignificant investment and could be done in a few hours.It is not as if any secretive fishing cat is going to bite the finger of any visitor - that visitor should be so lucky!
You guys should see this exhibit now. Not only is it atrociously tiny for a fishing cat but it is almost empty of anything! Other than a couple of tree branches and a pile or rocks in one corner it has nothing but a bored cat. I would estimate that 90% of what is shown in this enclosure is now gone.
Inadequate enclosures for large animals are necessarily costly to improve and often imply reconversion for housing a smaller species. So there is a logic ( perhaps not a justification ) behind the fact that improvements are often a long time in materializing due to budgetary and other considerations.
What is far more difficult to understand is how often zoos do themselves , their stock and their visitors a great disservice by tolerating sub-standard enclosures for smaller animals.How often one can see a disgraceful enclosure at a supposedly high-profile collection that could be vastly improved by spending just a few hundred euros / dollars or even at no expense - just the use of a little imagination and consideration by adding enrichment items.Ironically , it is sometimes easier for a leading zoo to budget millions for a stunning new exhibit by a top architect ( corporate sponsorship dollars) than to budget a couple of hundred dollars for wire netting to extend an enclosure ( money taken from tightly-stretched current expenses ).We should always repeat the mantra that a zoo is only as good as its weakest exhibit as often as necessary until institutions become embarrasses over these scandals.
I think this cage is not suitable for fishing cat. Also I think there should be a pond for them
because it is related to the fishing cat's natural behavior and the pond can provides many enrichment programs so the fishing cat can make its stress down.
