This exhibit is still home to Tonkean Macaques (Macaca tonkeana) and quite simply the worst primate enclosure in the park. Aside from it being ugly as hell (which I can live with) it is also pure concrete everywhere in the exhibit. Another place where a different bottom substrate (grass, dirt or woodchips) would do wonders as well as some more varied and natural climbing structures.
This cement pile of crap is just as bad as the zoo's polar bear enclosure, and hopefully the rest of the zoo is much more impressive! It is exhibits such as the one here that give zoos a bad new in the eyes of many people in the general population, and the concrete blocks are in stark contrast to the excellent natural exhibits at many other French zoos.
This cement pile of crap is just as bad as the zoo's polar bear enclosure, and hopefully the rest of the zoo is much more impressive! It is exhibits such as the one here that give zoos a bad new in the eyes of many people in the general population, and the concrete blocks are in stark contrast to the excellent natural exhibits at many other French zoos.
We are actually talking two different generations of French zoo exhibits so they will be different.
With animals like Macaques, enrichment and to have a large group is number one to keep them happy and breeding; recreating a Japanese or a Maroccoan mountain (which is only for the visual delight of us humans, not for the monkeys, and usually not worth the money spent) less so.
We are actually talking two different generations of French zoo exhibits so they will be different.
With animals like Macaques, enrichment and to have a large group is number one to keep them happy and breeding; recreating a Japanese or a Maroccoan mountain (which is only for the visual delight of us humans, not for the monkeys, and usually not worth the money spent) less so.
You have made an excellent point here, as a troop of macaques is a wonderful thing to see in a zoo and I agree that such an arrangement is beneficial to the primates. Old-style zoos would have these animals in cement bunkers while newfangled exhibits in American zoos would cost $15 million and have scenic but useless waterfalls...so we need to locate an exhibit somewhere in the middle!
You have made an excellent point here, as a troop of macaques is a wonderful thing to see in a zoo and I agree that such an arrangement is beneficial to the primates. Old-style zoos would have these animals in cement bunkers while newfangled exhibits in American zoos would cost $15 million and have scenic but useless waterfalls...so we need to locate an exhibit somewhere in the middle!
That happy medium is something like the elephant exhibit at Nashville or the chimp exhibit at Kansas City. Those two exhibits probably only cost a fraction of what is found in an exhibit like the Lied Jungle, yet probably a hundred times better than the small tapir or hippo exhibits in there. Zoos need the philosophy KISS: Keep it simple stupid!
