@snowleopard When the zoo first opened people were amazed that such a small city like Columbia had such an incredible zoo. People were blown away by the spacious exhibits, the only complaint was about the big cats in the small glass cages even though the zoo claimed they were well fed and did not suffer from space related stress and were well fed.
The pumas were actually young and orphaned but they had them until 1982. Clouded leopard and white cheeked gibbon were also housed in this enclosure as well as fruit bats.
The reason big cats were even in these enclosures was because the director wanted a wide array of animals and did not know where to put them as he wasn't very knowledgeable about mammals only knowing certain big cats could not be displayed outside. They got rid of most of the large cats by the early 1980s, snow leopards and amur leopards were there til 1986 though and clouded leopards til I think 2000 or 2001.
A professional zoo design firm from europe I believe actually designed every original exhibit at the zoo except for the two tunnels one of which still stands. The director designed it creating a miscellaneous hodge podge of random mammals which according to one keeper I know who worked there at the time said they never should have even had in the first place. He was more of a reptile person and only wanted some animals like brown hyenas because they were rare and didn't even have the space for them. I own a masterclass of what the zoo would like originally and the small mammal exhibits only had nine enclosures total.
