Like most of the Indianapolis Zoo, pleasant, nicely done, but a bit plain. I am at least glad to see the zoo expanding their rather underwhelming reptile collection. Orinoco crocs are a particularly nice addition.
@Moebelle How so? The herp collection is never been very impressive to me. The entire collection is in the Desert Dome (with the exception of the new addition pictured above) and most of them are snakes. Some admittedly very neat species present, but not much variety as there only about two or three species of turtles/tortoises, around five(ish) species of lizard, etc. One could argue the snake collection is impressive, which it is. However, as a whole the reptile selection at Indi feels a bit lackluster only displaying 30 species give or take, especially in comparison to other zoos of it's size.
@pachyderm pro While the zoo's size is decent, take away the small fish and their overall collection is small compared to most. They relatively give so much room to nearly every species, which lead to having so few animals per section. Which is also a small number, 64 acres and only 7 sections while Memphis is only 10 acres more with 17.
That being said, 30 or so reptiles is impressive to me simply because you wouldn't expect to see that many. Especially since it includes mambas, massive pythons, and the Grand cayman blue iguana.
Two phrases come to mind when I think of Indianapolis: "Dolphin dome, and a bunch of snakes".
I mean I agree. 30 species is a small collection of reptile. I mean Indianapolis has a small collection of birds as well, relative to its size/visitation. The snake collection is not really anything great in regards to size, although I do like how many of them are venomous. I mean they have a smaller overall reptile collection compared to plenty of zoos I have visited (that are smaller) such as Cameron Park, Greensboro Science Center, Gladys Porter Zoo, and Riverbanks Zoo. And an equal sized collection to far smaller zoos like Central Park and Prospect Park. I mean I even saw more reptiles at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.
Sections are really arbitrary imo. And betting on dolphins long-term is probably not a great investment in the 21st century. Most of the exhibits look nice, but I wouldn't say they are any more spacious than most other zoos.
@Moebelle I wouldn't call many of Indianapolis exhibits super large. Only the elephant complex seems exceptionally sizable. I could even argue there are some exhibits that are too small - lions, dolphins, pinnipeds and bears all seem a bit cramped imo. I think a big issue with the zoo is that they don't use their space very wisely. With the orangutan center for example, they created the main building and left a ton of space surrounding it to be used for unnecessary plazas and pavilions. I'm not here to turn this into another debate about that exhibit, it's just the most egregious example of the zoo not using a space to it's full potential.
The zoo has a big focus on charismatic megafauna, ABC animals if you will, and neglects the smaller aspects of it's collection (beside fish) such as birds and herps. I really don't see a way Indi can become one of Americas greatest zoos when they almost exclusively focus on popular animals.
