I enjoyed your video tour of the Swamp. This was my favorite exhibit at Brookfield. When it first opened I think that it had American alligators instead of Orinoco crocodiles? It had a shrew species also on exhibit at some point.
@DavidBrown Glad you enjoyed it, it's one of my favorites as well. Every time I go, it doesn't matter the size of the zoo's overall crowd, it's always quiet and peaceful in here.
Yes, it had American alligators and Least Shrews. From my understanding it was almost entirely dedicated to the swamps in the Southeastern US until the Crocodile came along.
I visited Brookfield a number of times when the exhibit was specifically themed to a SE USA cypress swamp. It's very understandable why the zoo relaxed the theming but when it was specifically native-themed there were lots of cool species on display. The least shrew was held in one of the trio of adjacent tanks visible at 2:02 in the video. The other two also had small mammals -- Long-tailed weasel and a mouse species (either Golden or Eastern Harvest, can't remember which). There was also a hollow tree exhibit with Big Brown Bat, a broad selection of native herps and bugs (my favorite was Lubber Grasshopper), and some rarely exhibited native fish like dwarf livebearers and bluefin killifish.
