Swine House Interior at Berlin Zoo, 31/08/11

PAT said:

I'm pinning all of my hopes on Singapore in a couple of days.

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Best of luck!!

This house remains from 1901-and so it looks like an outdated, old house, whose best days were 70 years ago. The stalls are unbeliavbale tiny, ( and dirty ! ) also the outdoor exhibits. Pigs and hogs shouldn't be kept that way anymore ! The"museum" days of our zoos in present days should be over. I wonder, how the zoo got the permission to keep still animals in it. They should close it, because its impossible to create a modern house with a good welfare of animals in it, unfortunately, this house is protected by law, so its not allowed, to change the look of the building in,-and outside. We have indeed very strange laws in germany-we protect the buildings, but not the animals which have to live in outdated exhibits from the past.

I know, old zoobuildings are very poular in guys interested in zoohistory, and I have no problem with that fact, but I have a problem, if such buildings are still used for animals with the same living conditions as the times these houses were build. Sorry, I'm more interested in a good, modern care of animals.

I hope, humans will create a time machine as soon as possible, so these pepole can travel back in time, back to the old days of cage zoos with unbelivable, amazing collections ( this word gets a a completly new meaning then ! ), so we could end the museum days of some present zoos forever, and all humans ( and animals )were happy together.

I think that Fuzzball probably answered the question, but do the animals have decent outdoor exhibits? Their indoor space looks quite cramped and I'm assuming that they spend a significant stretch of the year inside when it gets cold?

DavidBrown said:

I think that Fuzzball probably answered the question, but do the animals have decent outdoor exhibits? Their indoor space looks quite cramped and I'm assuming that they spend a significant stretch of the year inside when it gets cold?

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Thats correct. As I said, to keep any animal in this old, dirty house with the tiny stalls and qutdoor exhibit isn't acceptable today. In Berlin its very, very cold since few days and all the animals in this house, are now inside.

I did see the the white-lipped peccaries outside on my visit in the middle of a winter cold spell (I think it was something like -5ºC on the day I visited). So maybe some of the hardier species (wild boars possibly?) are allowed out when it gets cold. I can't imagine babirusa being out in that sort of weather though.

p.s. I did see a few babirusa at Singapore Zoo.

PAT said:

p.s. I did see a few babirusa at Singapore Zoo.

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Glad you got there in the end - should certainly be fewer problems with cold in Singapore!

I visited Berlin in 2016 and 2019 and both times the pig house was closed. Is this now a permanent case?