Disappointing. The horizontal space is huge, but very little use is made of it vertically. The only climbing opportunities are these fake trees. I also don't like these very steep banks with extra drowning risks. For most zoo visitors it will look very pleasing aesthetically, but for the Orangs it is rather bad given all the missed opportunities. The indoor enclosure seems rather old, but is one of the worst I have seen...
Compared to the very basic pre-2016 enclosure, this exhibit is a vast improvement. There are 11 fake trees, as well as several natural ones, linked by cables. Some of the fake trees have feeding devices in them. I spent 3 days at the zoo earlier this month and took dozens of photos of the three younger orangs climbing the trees and swinging from the cables. The highlight for visitors is when they cross over the footpath using their cable bridge (see my ID picture to the left).
The keeper said that male, Sibu (now aged 39), initially lost weight when the exhibit opened and then put it back on as muscle. He and female, Leonie (aged 37) are probably a bit more sedentary now and I didn't see them cross over to the island this time. The house was renovated during the works and feeding is now done through the roof so the orangutans have to climb to reach their food. Short of knocking it down and starting again, there probably wasn't much else they could do with the house.
@snowleopard I think that our opinions do not differ that much in the end, but mine focuses more on all the missed opportunities, whereas @Gigit has seen all the improvements since the old enclosure. Outdoors it is not really bad, but with all the money spent on aesthetics they could have done so much more (which goes for the whole zoo....). Indoors is really bad though and imo they should have knocked it down,
