Zoo #44: Zoo Leipzig, 11/08/2017
So I had half-planned to do this as a double post with the Tierpark, but changed my mind. Rather carelessly, alas, as @TeaLovingDave points out.
Unlike the Tierpark, Leipzig was one of those dozen that I thought would be battling it out for top ten spots: indeed, it was one of perhaps five I thought might top the list. But whereas the Tierpark *is* going to be in the frame for a top ten spot, I’m not quite sure that Leipzig will make it, and top five is out of the question.
I mentioned that I would seem capricious, because Leipzig has much in common with Hanover, which I enjoyed, and yet Leipzig ranks as a disappointment despite being an objectively better zoo. The independent variable, as ever, is the expectations: Hanover nearly got cut, but Leipzig was never at risk of that because it was too eagerly anticipated.
Another reason it wasn’t at risk of being dropped from the list was that I booked my train here as a stopover from Berlin to my next destination. I made the booking before leaving home, when I was still entertaining the notion that I would have quite a few zoos that took all day. Accordingly, I’d allowed over eight hours in Leipzig, by the time I got to and from the Hauptbahnhof, but I needed barely half the time. This is a glorified ABC place, and I’m at the point in this trip where I’ve seen some of the ABCs more than 30 times. If they aren’t in cutting edge exhibits, or doing something interesting, I’m only waving as I walk past. And because I’d been unlucky with the weather, with steady rain and a cool 16 degrees, most of the animals were disinterested in being interesting.
Leipzig is most of the way through a master plan, and it’s quite easy to tell what is and isn’t new. The bulk of the non-mammal collection, at least those that are not in Gondwanaland, remain in pre-gold rush days. The aquarium is pleasant, but suffers from having come so soon after Copenhagen, Hamburg and Berlin: it’s more at the Antwerp level. The reptile house is similarly fine, but that’s all. I was surprised to find a relatively muted bird collection, and it’s lucky I found the small bird house just before leaving (I had missed it), or I would have been well and truly whelmed.
Now. The big dollar stuff. Like Hanover, it’s en route to becoming an American cuckoo in the European zoo nest, with hyper-expensive looking exhibits for primarily big mammals, and significant thematic elements, though the latter is much less all-enveloping. But all that money is paying mixed dividends.
The ‘Asia’ section – still not fully developed, I don’t think(?) is all decent, with the snow leopards being especially good (but not Zurich or Helsinki good). Like Hanover, Asia is where theming crosses a line into fetishising foreign culture, with the Buddhist prayer flags and the temple, but Leipzig’s not exactly on its own there, alas.
The African Savannah works well mostly because it takes full advantage of the wide open fields across the river, which I assume aren’t actually part of the zoo, but the illusion created is great. I sorta/kinda trust that the zoo knows what it’s doing, but the mix of rhinos, cheetahs and patas monkeys seems like a great new version of paper rock scissors, except that whoever plays the patas monkey automatically loses. One day a cheetah will get hold of one of the monkeys. What then? Incidentally, Leipzig seems rather fond of mixing monkeys: the sakis and silvery marmosets with the giant otters (more on them shortly), and the squirrel monkeys (I think? I’ve forgotten) with the bears too.
Now, the really, really big dollar stuff: Gondwanaland and Pongoland. I visited Gondwanaland first, and it was quite a homecoming after five whole months in Laurasia. This thing is an engineering marvel: not quite a football field, I don’t think, but perhaps a soccer field size (that one was for you, Sooty). But is it a zoo exhibit marvel? I’m afraid not. The enormous size means that many exhibits are bigger (which isn’t the same as ‘better’, but the two are positively correlated) than comparable ones in other rainforest houses. I’d sooner be a tapir in Leipzig than the Bronx, for example. But the exhibits here are still standard rainforest house exhibits. It doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, it just makes it bigger.
The exception I mentioned was the giant otter pool (although it’s a mix with the two monkey species, I’m willing to bet they hardly notice each other’s presence). I got lucky with this one. I arrived on the bridge overlooking the pool just a split second before an otter dived into the pool from an outcrop a good metre or so above the water. Such a simple thing – a dive, a splash, a ripple – but it was a moment of vibrancy that simply *made* the exhibit for me. And even sans splash, it’s a gorgeous exhibit, and I didn’t even find the underwater viewing until a quick second run-through before leaving.
Finally, Pongoland. I had mentioned how much I enjoyed the Tierpark to FunkyGibbon, including that I thought it was better than the Zoo (a snap early judgment that I’ve since hedged, on reflection, in the post above), and he suggested that I was ‘not an ape man’. No, I said. I like apes just fine, just not how they’re so often displayed in Europe. But Leipzig is a glorious exception to the rule. Because of the afore-mentioned crappy weather all five groups (chimps x2, bonobos, gorillas and orangs) were all inside, so I had to make do with imagining what those spacious, leapt outdoor exhibits would be like filled up with apes (in my imagination it looks pretty great). And unlike so many places, whilst the indoor exhibits are by necessity smaller and more functional than the outside ones, they’re still a reasonable size, and they still look more like zoo exhibits than car garages. And the best bit? Being in there for a scatter feed for the chimps. Two troops of chimps screaming in excitement? I might not need those $80 earplugs anymore. It was deafening. Exhilaratingly so.
I suspect that Leipzig will look better to me in hindsight than it did on the day, and chances are I will return next time I’m in Germany. Top ten it may be. Top five it ain’t.
So I had half-planned to do this as a double post with the Tierpark, but changed my mind. Rather carelessly, alas, as @TeaLovingDave points out.
Unlike the Tierpark, Leipzig was one of those dozen that I thought would be battling it out for top ten spots: indeed, it was one of perhaps five I thought might top the list. But whereas the Tierpark *is* going to be in the frame for a top ten spot, I’m not quite sure that Leipzig will make it, and top five is out of the question.
I mentioned that I would seem capricious, because Leipzig has much in common with Hanover, which I enjoyed, and yet Leipzig ranks as a disappointment despite being an objectively better zoo. The independent variable, as ever, is the expectations: Hanover nearly got cut, but Leipzig was never at risk of that because it was too eagerly anticipated.
Another reason it wasn’t at risk of being dropped from the list was that I booked my train here as a stopover from Berlin to my next destination. I made the booking before leaving home, when I was still entertaining the notion that I would have quite a few zoos that took all day. Accordingly, I’d allowed over eight hours in Leipzig, by the time I got to and from the Hauptbahnhof, but I needed barely half the time. This is a glorified ABC place, and I’m at the point in this trip where I’ve seen some of the ABCs more than 30 times. If they aren’t in cutting edge exhibits, or doing something interesting, I’m only waving as I walk past. And because I’d been unlucky with the weather, with steady rain and a cool 16 degrees, most of the animals were disinterested in being interesting.
Leipzig is most of the way through a master plan, and it’s quite easy to tell what is and isn’t new. The bulk of the non-mammal collection, at least those that are not in Gondwanaland, remain in pre-gold rush days. The aquarium is pleasant, but suffers from having come so soon after Copenhagen, Hamburg and Berlin: it’s more at the Antwerp level. The reptile house is similarly fine, but that’s all. I was surprised to find a relatively muted bird collection, and it’s lucky I found the small bird house just before leaving (I had missed it), or I would have been well and truly whelmed.
Now. The big dollar stuff. Like Hanover, it’s en route to becoming an American cuckoo in the European zoo nest, with hyper-expensive looking exhibits for primarily big mammals, and significant thematic elements, though the latter is much less all-enveloping. But all that money is paying mixed dividends.
The ‘Asia’ section – still not fully developed, I don’t think(?) is all decent, with the snow leopards being especially good (but not Zurich or Helsinki good). Like Hanover, Asia is where theming crosses a line into fetishising foreign culture, with the Buddhist prayer flags and the temple, but Leipzig’s not exactly on its own there, alas.
The African Savannah works well mostly because it takes full advantage of the wide open fields across the river, which I assume aren’t actually part of the zoo, but the illusion created is great. I sorta/kinda trust that the zoo knows what it’s doing, but the mix of rhinos, cheetahs and patas monkeys seems like a great new version of paper rock scissors, except that whoever plays the patas monkey automatically loses. One day a cheetah will get hold of one of the monkeys. What then? Incidentally, Leipzig seems rather fond of mixing monkeys: the sakis and silvery marmosets with the giant otters (more on them shortly), and the squirrel monkeys (I think? I’ve forgotten) with the bears too.
Now, the really, really big dollar stuff: Gondwanaland and Pongoland. I visited Gondwanaland first, and it was quite a homecoming after five whole months in Laurasia. This thing is an engineering marvel: not quite a football field, I don’t think, but perhaps a soccer field size (that one was for you, Sooty). But is it a zoo exhibit marvel? I’m afraid not. The enormous size means that many exhibits are bigger (which isn’t the same as ‘better’, but the two are positively correlated) than comparable ones in other rainforest houses. I’d sooner be a tapir in Leipzig than the Bronx, for example. But the exhibits here are still standard rainforest house exhibits. It doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, it just makes it bigger.
The exception I mentioned was the giant otter pool (although it’s a mix with the two monkey species, I’m willing to bet they hardly notice each other’s presence). I got lucky with this one. I arrived on the bridge overlooking the pool just a split second before an otter dived into the pool from an outcrop a good metre or so above the water. Such a simple thing – a dive, a splash, a ripple – but it was a moment of vibrancy that simply *made* the exhibit for me. And even sans splash, it’s a gorgeous exhibit, and I didn’t even find the underwater viewing until a quick second run-through before leaving.
Finally, Pongoland. I had mentioned how much I enjoyed the Tierpark to FunkyGibbon, including that I thought it was better than the Zoo (a snap early judgment that I’ve since hedged, on reflection, in the post above), and he suggested that I was ‘not an ape man’. No, I said. I like apes just fine, just not how they’re so often displayed in Europe. But Leipzig is a glorious exception to the rule. Because of the afore-mentioned crappy weather all five groups (chimps x2, bonobos, gorillas and orangs) were all inside, so I had to make do with imagining what those spacious, leapt outdoor exhibits would be like filled up with apes (in my imagination it looks pretty great). And unlike so many places, whilst the indoor exhibits are by necessity smaller and more functional than the outside ones, they’re still a reasonable size, and they still look more like zoo exhibits than car garages. And the best bit? Being in there for a scatter feed for the chimps. Two troops of chimps screaming in excitement? I might not need those $80 earplugs anymore. It was deafening. Exhilaratingly so.
I suspect that Leipzig will look better to me in hindsight than it did on the day, and chances are I will return next time I’m in Germany. Top ten it may be. Top five it ain’t.
though this may be because I *like* wildfowl and waders, and the selection in that aviary is pretty choice.
