Animals that deserve better exhibits

F

FrederickA

Active Member
I wanted to make this thread is discuss animals that seem to, on average, be given subpar exhibits in general. To start I would like to start off with the Giraffe yards that I feel on average are usually lacking compared to other megafauna exhibits, perhaps the best one I've seen so far is at the Living desert zoo where the enclosure seems to extend for quite a bit, while a subpar exhibit would be one like the San Deigo zoo's exhibit in urban jungle. A secondary one that's a little more broad would the bear grotto type of exhibit that has been present at most of the zoo's that I've been to at one time or another, but some have already phased it out or given their bears a more natural looking habitat. With that in mind what animals would you add?
 
I’ve learned that two popular animals that seem to get shafted in the US are hippos and orangutans.

Many hippo exhibits seem to forget that hippos have legs and focus mostly on the water portion of the exhibit, and it’s also somewhat rare for them to have plant material to graze on.

It also looks like orangutans don’t get enough shade or sufficient climbing structures.
 
I do wonder if Solomon Islands Monkey-Tailed Skink would greatly benefit from larger more open lush exhibits, especially those were family groups as in the wild could exist
 
Big cats are the first ones that spring to mind for me, less so tigers, snow leopards and clouded leopards, for whom the enclosure standard in zoos seems to be, with of course a few exceptions, rather high, but much more so for leopards and jaguars, with lions seeming not to have it all too good, either. I have seen lions at over 20 zoos, and I think that on only four occasions was I truly astonished by the enclosure, those being Longleat, Woburn, London and Burgers', with the former two both having the advantage of being safari parks, and therefore having the ability to just enclosure sprawling fields without worrying about viewing angles. For jaguars, there is the unbelievably good enclosure at Chester, but other than that I can't think of any that stood out to me, and I can think of a few that are shamelessly subpar, and I don't think I have ever seen a particularly good leopard enclosure (although I have seen a fair few decent ones, such as Colchester or Marwell, with the latter now holding cloudies). What is perhaps strangest is that the worst enclosures I have seen for these species tend to be at major, wealthy zoos. The leopards and jaguars at Beauval, and the lions at Hagenbeck and Prague, for example.

Another one is my favourite animal - the hornbill. And although not to the same extent, most large birds, such as parrots and even birds of prey, can probably make the same complaint. Huge and majestic animals that, at times, can hardly stretch their wings in the cramped, dilapidated pheasantries they have access to at zoos. That said, there are certainly some welcome exceptions here - even more so than the big cats. Chester has multiple, in the elephant house, Monsoon Forest and Tropical Realm, while Antwerp has some smaller hornbill species free-flight in the Buffalo Savannah, but the best by far is of course Burgers' Bush which has free-flying Wrinkled Hornbills. One of my all time best zoo experiences is surely when said hornbill swooped mere inches above my head.

My final example would be mole-rats. On only one instance (the Mechow's Mole-rat enclosure in Africa Up Close at Prague) do I recall ever seeing them given access to deep-packed soil, or for that matter any natural substrate, in which they can form their own burrows. It is usually those nasty glass tunnels where they cannot dig, but seem desperate to do so and can often be observed scratching mindlessly at their glass walls. Truly heartbraking, and one of the few tropes of modern zoo exhibitry which I truly disapprove of - it feels like something out of a science-fiction movie, or a testing lab, not a serious zoological, conservation-oriented institution, and is making animal rights activists' jobs far too easy. Kudos to Prague for bucking the trend.

(Nothing to do with the thread topic, but this is my 1,000th post!)
 
Kalaw said:
I have seen lions at over 20 zoos, and I think that on only four occasions was I truly astonished by the enclosure, those being Longleat, Woburn, London and Burgers',
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I'm surprised you were amazed by London's enclosure. While both parts as a whole are quite good, with the fenced enclosure being spacious and with hiding spaces I found them both to be nothing extraordinary and even found the moated enclosure to be a bit small.

I could be quite wrong since I didn't go back to the lions much, but that is what I remember.
 
Small active carnivores are often given correspondingly small enclosures, when I would suggest that something like a fox or a marten would actually make more use of a large space than something like a lion.
 
I would say suids.

Because they will dig and churn up any ground they have access to I have noticed there is a tendency to either give them smaller exhibits than another similar sized ungulate would have or give them a surface they can't dig through.
 
Small canids: foxes, jackals and mustelids: materns, wolverines and similar. They have huge territories in the wild and an instinctive desire to move.

Large parrots, hornbills and similar large arboreal birds, which only in the recent years begin to get huge aviaries.
 
Hello.

It seems some herbivores which do not do well in mixed exhibits tend to get the shorter end of the stick when it comes to exhibit quality.
 
Rohin said:
I'm surprised you were amazed by London's enclosure. While both parts as a whole are quite good, with the fenced enclosure being spacious and with hiding spaces I found them both to be nothing extraordinary and even found the moated enclosure to be a bit small.

I could be quite wrong since I didn't go back to the lions much, but that is what I remember.
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The moated enclosure is actually much bigger than the fenced one, at around 1,300 sqm compared to around 800 sqm for the fenced enclosure. ;)

The combined area of half-an-acre is quite big for any zoo, especially a city one, and I don't ever recall not seeing the lions given access to the entire thing, so space is hardly an issue here. It is one of the most densely vegetated and shaded lion enclosures that I have ever seen, the use of the slope in the moated enclosure is quite clever, and the overall amount of privacy is very commendable. Something that I noticed both ZSL zoos are quite good at is using multiple viewing angles to give you the best possible odds of seeing the animals, but even still offering the inhabitants retreats should they want some peace, and this enclosure is an example. But we are going quite off-topic here, apologies.
Jurek7 said:
Small canids: foxes, jackals and mustelids: materns, wolverines and similar. They have huge territories in the wild and an instinctive desire to move.
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I find this interesting - have only seen wolverines at six collections myself, but found that at all of them the enclosure standard is actually very high, and I always thought that they were amongst the luckiest animals in zoos in terms of their enclosure quality.

What wolverine enclosures have you seen that you consider to be subpar? Not doubting you, but quite curious as we have no doubt visited quite different selections of zoos, and I always assumed that this wolverines had it much better than most carnivores in Europe. :)
 
Jurek7 said:
Small canids: foxes, jackals and mustelids: materns, wolverines and similar. They have huge territories in the wild and an instinctive desire to move.

Large parrots, hornbills and similar large arboreal birds, which only in the recent years begin to get huge aviaries.
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Going to have to agree with the parrot one especially since the zoo I most visit most is Fresno Chaffee Zoo and one part of it that I've never been a fan of is this cage by the tropical rainforest aviary waterfall that I think is too small for the Hyacinth Macaw that is currently there. I've never really liked it even when it housed a smaller species of toucan. The cage by exit with the blue throated macaw is better in my opinion.
 
I feel large birds in general deserve better exhibits. Even when only looking at enclosed aviaries, many only allow for a few seconds of flight in a single direction.
 
The same could be said for some large snake species.

Especially pythons.

The best example I could find about pythons was the African Rock Python at the Bronx Zoo’s Congo Gorilla Forest where it’s presented in a nocturnal gallery where there’s a Pepper’s ghost effect of the way the snake sees it’s food through it’s vision, while the other python exhibits in the World of Reptiles… while not bad, apart from the Reticulated Python display which is decent, I feel like the Burmese Python and the Green Anaconda displays could’ve been done a little better.

That’s my thought for the python exhibit designs.
 
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