@CuseZoofan Thanks! I actually prefer this older map to the 2012 one that I uploaded. The 2012 one has cartoonish animals, while this one has more realistic drawings.
This zoo has an interesting collection plan and exhibit layout. It's like someone said "let's mainly keep animals from the Americas and Asia and randomly sprawl their exhibits through the zoo".
Rosamond Gifford Zoo is, in many ways, a smaller version of Minnesota Zoo. Rosamond Gifford used to advertise on their maps that "60% of the exhibits are indoors" and there's a whole series of animal enclosures at the covered entrance zone. Then there's a half-mile outdoor loop mostly featuring animals that can handle cold winters. Minnesota Zoo also has a series of covered animal enclosures all clustered near the entrance, plus a mile-long outdoor loop with cold-weather inhabitants.
The big draw at Rosamond Gifford these days are the elephants and last year the zoo made history by being the first American zoo EVER to have twin baby elephants that survived. The zoo has seen an incredible boost in attendance, but the catch is that both babies are males and so eventually they might have to leave the zoo. Here's an article about what could happen:
The once in a lifetime opportunity to see twin baby elephants is what drew me to Syracuse for the first time in August. There are other zoo animals people have gone on pilgrimages to see (like Sumatran Rhinos) but I never saw those before they left and so I wasn’t going to allow myself to also miss seeing the elephant twins while they were still little.
The Zoo originally when it re-opened in the 80's featured primarily all North American Animals on what was known as the Wild North Trail. There were Kodiak Bears instead of Andean Bears, Mountain Goats and Bighorn Sheep where the Markhor and Mouflon are now. There also were the smaller exhibits in the woods as seen on the map above, and the Bison took up the entire Elephant exhibit.
For the most part the indoor exhibits have remained relatively the same other than a few minor changes like adding the submarine theme to the Antiquity area and the "rainforest" in what was known as the Social Animal exhibits (Primates/Lions).
