The indoor exhibit in my favorite elephant exhibit, the Elephant park. Lots of room for the elephants, and they also have their other stables backstage, which can't be seen by the visitors.
The indoor exhibit in my favorite elephant exhibit, the Elephant park. Lots of room for the elephants, and they also have their other stables backstage, which can\'t be seen by the visitors.
I am going to be totally controversial with this comment.This elephant enclosure is one of the best around in its class (hard substrate).However ,
watch the reaction of visitors.A huge proportion find this enclosure to be a long and tedious obstacle as they make their way to other areas of the zoo ( bonobos , etc). Cologne is one of my favourite zoos , but the elephant exhibit is "the gorilla in the room".It just takes a huge bite out of the zoo space , and excellent as it may be , can never be as good as a smaller space "on grass".The best decision would have been to give up on the species, leaving it to the "safari" type zoos , and use all that valuable space for smaller rare species who would benefit from the fantastic experience of the team at Cologne.This is a really ,really special zoo and any real zoo fan should make the effort to manage at least one visit.
Surely the site of the elephant enclosure was mostly a lake before it was constructed? So it is likely that if a major project didn't need the land, the expense of filling it in would never have been run to (and the pathways would have taken just the same routes).
@European Fauna: you make an interesting point. In the U.S. many zoos are building enormous, multi-acre elephant paddocks, but if they did not have elephants there could be hundreds of smaller animals located in the same amount of space. It must be a tough choice for many zoo directors, and I'm not sure what the right answer is. Are zoos caving to the public, who crave elephants more so than smaller, unknown animals?
I guess they need some big drawcard species. So many people say Bristol zoo is rubbish because it hasn't got giraffes, elephants, rhinos etc.
I guess if a zoo can afford it then it's good for that zoo to build a world class elephant exhibit because there are so many sub-standard ones. Same goes with bears.
