Southern cassowary enclosure at Fuengirola Zoo, 30 April 2009

This is a mixed enclosure for a Southern cassowary, mandarin ducks, radjah shellducks and African soft-shelled turtles

The poor cassowary, why the hell are they keeping such an animal in a barren pit without any vegetation?

Sorry that I sound so negative, but it really makes me angry that they are so sucessful in deluding their visitors.

It is strange - it's clearly not that vegetation struggles in the area - the space behind the exhibit is lush and green so it can clearly be done. Odd design.

Is the natural habitat of the cassowary the beach, don't think so

For a bird that lives in the humid rainforests of North-Eastern Queensland, this is like putting a baboon in Antarctica

This neither is a space for cassowary, nor for any other living being...

This is a horrible example of immersion gone terribly, terribly wrong. And I am sure that many visitors walk by this exhibit thinking that it must look pretty good because of all the tropical plants without looking at it thoroughly.

The worst part is that it showed a picture of this to a few of my fellow zookeeper trainees about a year ago and the really couldn't see what was wrong with this exhibit! And they were supposed to be part of the future of zoos.

kiang said:

Is the natural habitat of the cassowary the beach, don't think so

Click to expand...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLHu30kF2Ko]Cassowary on the beach at Etty Bay, Queensland, AU - YouTube[/ame]

It's the only place I have seen a wild individual (not my video).

This exhibit is complete crap no doubt, but can we just talk about how we have Australian and African animals in the same area?

@pachyderm pro and Asian (in fact, the species are mostly Asian, including the cassowary, with its large range in Indonesia and New Guinea). But really, don’t you think that the more pressing matter is animal welfare, rather than whether or not the animals are found in the same place?