In terms of size and natural substrate, the indoor holding for gorillas is more impressive than major European zoos such as Apenheul, Blijdorp and tons of others. The outdoor gorilla yards at Pairi Daiza are adequate without being anything special, but the indoor exhibits are ones that I suspect are slightly above average.
@snowleopard The indoor housing for gorillas at Pairi Daiza is definitely not bad I would say, with the natural substrate, some natural lighting and in the first volcano even a living tree (or at least living vines) and fairly good structure.
I agree with you about the outdoor exhibits - they are not exceptional and they are probably too open for gorillas.
That said, the gorilla housing at Pairi Daiza is certainly decent, but they definitely went over the top when they came up with and built the two volcanoes. They could have built some very decent gorilla exhibits even without these excessive structures.
I would actually like to differ here. Very few options for privacy are present and in zoo's like Rotterdam and Antwerp the gorilla's have multiple indoor enclosures available allowing them to distance themselves from other gorilla's. I wouldn't be suprised if that's actually one of the mayor reasons why Pairi Daiza can not keep male gorilla's in a larger group like Ouwehands or Beekse Bergen. The natural substrate is great offcourse, and they do have some decent climbing structures but I wouldn't call it that exceptional. From the zoo's I've visited I found Duisburg's indoor enclosure to be the best so far, and Pairi Daiza's dangling at the bottom.
The outdoor enclosure is indeed far from exceptional. When it comes to the point of animal welfare even Antwerp and Artis can be considered at least as good if not better, and Blijdorp and Apenheul are way better.
I am surprised that you would like the gorilla indoor housing at Duisburg so much. I remember that exhibit as being certainly not badly furnished, but also being rather small, if not outright too small. The same in my opinion also goes for the indoor exhibits at Blijdorp and Apenheul.
I used to really dislike the exhibit at Antwerp, but after they added the outdoor exhibit I begun to see that indoor housing at Antwerp, while pretty unappealing looking for some parts, is actually not that bad.
You are right about the point of privacy and availability of multiple spaces though.
@KevinB The on-show exhibit is rather small in Duisburg, but if you look at the floorplans behind the scenes they have at least the same amount of space in two additional rooms. You can of-course not see that part, but it's still there. In Blijdorp the total area is not that small, even though the individual rooms aren't. My statement was however rather about the outdoor of Blijdorp and Apenheul being much better, which they really are.
@Jarne It's been 5.5 years since I've been to Duisburg and it is unlikely I will make it anytime soon under the current circumstances, so my memory may be a little rusty on that zoo. That said even with about the same space off-show as on show I would still find the housing on the small side.
I do agree with you on the outdoor exhibits at Blijdorp and Apenheul, and I should have made that clearer in my previous post.
As far as gorilla exhibits go, my personal favorite overall would likely be the one at GaiaZoo. The outdoor one at Apenheul would likely be the best outdoor one, but their indoor exhibit is very poor.
Indoor Gaiazoo is without doubt one of the best if not the best in Europe, sadly haven't been there myself. I would actually consider Gaiazoo in general one of the best enclosures for apes in Europe, alongside the bonobo's in Planckendael (both indoor and outdoor great exhibit). And seen as Gaia's cost less than Pairi Daiza's, it's a shame they didn't went with something like that.
Duisburg is indeed not very spacious, but the three rooms make it much better than a similar sized enclosure without dividers. I hope they will add the adjacent enclosure of the meerkats to it in the future.
It is Pairi Daiza and it seems they just have to do some crazy stuff because, well, they can. Stuff like the gorilla volcanoes and the orang-utan temple.
That said, they can actually construct exhibits that look nice, are decent habitats and have immersive elements without being over the top crazy. The prime example I can think of is the area "The Last Frontier" that opened in 2019. I personally really liked that area and I hope they will do exhibit complexes in the future in a similar way rather than going for over the top stuff like they did with the gorilla volcanoes or in the Kingdom of Ganesha.
