Enjoyed the video. It’s nice to see an outsider’s perspective of my local zoo in video form.
A few points:
1) 36 acres, not 26
2) Personally, I really like the cyclical structure of SLoRA and find that it is much better for organisation than a linear building would be, but I definitely agree with buggies being a serious issue!
3) Blackburn Pavilion is not minor! Easily London’s best exhibit and one of the finest bird houses in Europe. I understand skipping it if birds aren’t your thing, but labelling it as ‘minor’…
4) To answer your question about whether or not the babirusas and camels are part of Tiger Territory - the camels definitely not, they are part of the Children’s Zoo, but with the pigs I’m not even sure if the zoo knows what exhibit they belong to. Their enclosure was actually built for elephants in the sixties, and it is a happy accident of sorts that it ended up with a Southeast Asian inhabitant to match the tigers.
5) Gorilla Kingdom opened in 2007, and I personally don’t think the gorilla enclosure is showing age at all. Definitely agree with you in regards to the other monkey enclosures however. Most of those predate GK and were part of the original Sobell Pavilion, some of London’s weakest exhibits. As mentioned in the news thread, GK renovations is the zoo’s next project - perhaps that will address these outdated enclosures.
6) ‘Extremely mid’ is a spot-on description for most of Into Africa (my least favourite part of the zoo as well) but I think the Pygmy Hippo enclosure is surely an exception. Very spacious, decently lush with deep pools, multiple separation options indoors and outdoors, a variety of substrates etc.
7) I too think that Rainforest Life needs free-flying birds to return to its former greatness. Although it barely counts, there is actually one free-flying bird in there - a single female Red-cowled Cardinal who, for whatever reason, was moved from Blackburn to the Clore after the male passed a way.
8) Worth noting that there is slightly more than a Ring-tailed Lemur walkthrough to In With the Lemurs - the dark room at the end, behind the lemurs’ indoors, holds Aye-aye!
I really like the format of rating each exhibit individually out of ten, although I can’t always agree with the ratings (for me, SLoRA is a 10 and LotL is closer to a 9).
Enjoyed the video, and very glad that you enjoyed your visit, best of luck with future ones!
