Frankfurt visit, Walkthrough/Review/Observations, September 12th 2016
In we go.
The first thing you see after entering (for a very reasonable €10) are the Spectacled Bear enclosures. They are a reworking of some old grottos. You wouldn’t know it. It’s a really beautiful looking exhibit, with high walls at the front only giving you certain sight lines into it. No doubt this makes it seem bigger than it really is. The best thing on my visit was that one of the bears was foraging for berries, which had just ripened on a bush growing in the enclosure. Needless to say, I thought this was excellent.
After this is the Cat Jungle, a complex for Asiatic Lion, Sumatran Tiger, Fossa and Rusty-spotted Cat. I think that’s a striking line-up and it’s a striking house. The lions’ outdoor area is obviously leftover from a previous era and is a fairly cramped moated affair. Everything else is stellar. The tigers have two outdoor and indoor enclosures, all of which are beyond lushly planted. Viewing of the larger outdoor exhibit is from a bridge over the lake in the middle of the zoo, part of which the tigers have access to (the lake, not the bridge!). Both the fossa and the rusties have very tall indoor and outdoor enclosures that can be viewed from multiple levels, although I saw buggar all of the inhabitants! What was wonderful about this house was the presentation; although it was by no means immersive, there were plants, natural materials and soft substrate flooring everywhere that tied the visitor and animal areas together and created an almost astonishing effect. I would love to know if it regularly looks like this, or if I caught it the day after replanting or something. Verdant.
The next big thing on my route is the Grzimek House itself. Actually, because of some work on a new penguin enclosure, the House was shaded out on the map, which almost gave me a heart attack, but luckily it was preemptive and work had not started yet. I don’t know if it’s currently partly or totally closed. I’m going to list the species on-show in a separate post after this one; if you don’t know what’s coming it’ll blow your head off. You enter the house ‘below’ ground level, as it’s on a slope, and then follow a corridor that spirals up through (I think) 720° and then exits ‘above’ ground level. In the middle of the spiral is a tall exhibit for Two-toed Sloth, Green Acouchy and Golden Lion Tamarin that can be viewed as you enter and exit. Set into the walls of the spiral as you walk gently upwards are 45, that’s forty five, exhibits for a huge variety of species. Approximately the bottom half of the building is dark for nocturnal species and the rest is lit normally. There is often some distance between exhibits, which gives the whole thing a Tardis-like feel as it really doesn’t look that big from the outside. Here’s a taster of what’s on show: Kowari, Prehensile-tailed Porcupine, Eastern Quoll, Springhare, Aye-aye, Pygmy Glider, Australian Echidna, Tibesti Spiny Mouse, Blue-headed Waxbill, Yellow-spotted Hyrax and Komodo Dragon. If that doesn’t whet your appetite then you eat different food to me. Or you are
@Arizona Docent
The Grzimek House sees some criticism on here from those who feel that it is old-fashioned and that the exhibits are undersized. I disagree. Or rather, I disagree partially. I do think that a little reshuffling wouldn’t go amiss. If you moved the aardvarks out you could upgrade the night monkeys and porcupines into their exhibits and then ‘backfill’ with any number of cool LBJs (this is an accepted acronym for little brown jobs, right?). Other than that I would say this: the House is a towering monument to the display in captivity of small mammals and it would be a great shame to change it in any serious way. It is without doubt the best Nocturnal House I’ve ever seen. It is probably the finest anyone has ever seen (citation needed). I think any serious criticism of it is fundamentally a criticism of the way almost all zoos keep some nocturnal animals and, while that may be reasonable, it is also problematic to say the least.
From the GH I headed to Borgori-Wald, the ape house. At this point my visit was starting to feel like I was being punched in the face in a cartoon, but instead of anvils and dumbbells the boxing glove was stuffed with world-class zoo exhibits. Borgori-Wald is the bit where I stick my hand in a toaster and you see my skeleton. It holds Bonobo, Gorillas and Mantled Colobus in a mixed exhibit, Sumatran Orangutan and then there’s an aviary with I-really-don’t-remember-what in. The bonobos and orangs both have two netted indoor and outdoor enclosures; I assume this supports the fusion/fission social structure of the former and the naturally solitary nature of the latter. On the day of my visit I think all the orang spaces were connected. It was great to see one of them feeding through the netting at the top of the enclosure. Both these exhibits are amongst the best I’ve ever seen. The gorillas get one large day room and one small one, and a single large outdoor enclosure, which is partially walled and partially moated. I still prefer a good old Aspinall cage, but aside from that this is probably my favourite gorilla exhibit. As in the Cat Jungle, planting and naturalistic effects are ubiquitous without ever making the mistake of trying to convince you are in the wild, an almost impossible task that in its failure completely ruins the impression an exhibit makes on the viewer. Taken together, Borgori-Wald is the best ape house I’ve ever visited, although they seem less common these days, and Frankfurt is undoubtedly my favourite zoo for apes.
The ape house almost transects the zoo and separates the eastern half from the larger area to the west. Moving east from BW one comes to a nice little area featuring Kea, Goodfellow’s Tree-kangaroo and Northern Brown Kiwi. It would be a lot nicer if the kiwi were on show, but I enjoyed seeing the other two species anyway. Next to this is a smallish enclosure for African Hunting Dogs that did very little for me if I’m honest. Along the northeastern edge of the zoo is a (very?) old Bird House, and some pleasant adjoining walkthrough aviaries. The Bird House will allow me to make my next point about Frankfurt; despite the fantastic new developments, there are a lot of traditional enclosures here that look like they are straight out of the ‘70s. I liked this a lot. As long as animal welfare is not compromised I think the feeling of suddenly being thrown back forty years is a rather pleasant one. To be honest some of the aviaries set into the wall
were eye-wateringly small, but they contained small passerines (nice unusual ones of course), and these days I’m a bit more wary of criticizing exhibits on size. To the south is the Monkey House, which is basically the same in terms of being extremely old fasioned, but while the Bird House has a certain charm this just looks dated; it is full of shining metal bars and lime-green tiles (something of a Frankfurt staple) and is unfortunately an animal rights photo shoot waiting to happen. The end features a ‘baboon rock’ (Hamadryas), which attracted a lot of spectators due to the ‘intense’ social interaction within. A lot of the animals I saw there have subsequently made the journey to San Diego. I hope to follow them one day.
In the middle of the eastern half of the zoo is a small ‘savannah’ area that was under whelming when I visited, and has apparently become even more so since. I think it’s down to just Addax now.
Having seen everything to the east of Borgori-Wald I had the chance to enjoy it again as I returned to the western half of the zoo.
Next to the Grzimek House is the Exotarium. It is one of the oldest buildings in the zoo, I think. I assume I know this because Frankfurt has some really good signage explaining the history of the collection, however that may be some class-A bovine excrement. It was six months ago and I really don’t remember. In any case, it has an excellent collection of inverts, amphibians and reptiles upstairs and a nice, if slightly
poky, aquarium downstairs. The highlight of this building (and possibly the zoo) was watching the Colorado River Toads feeding. The zoo has a fairly big tank with a good half a dozen of them, and they were given a large handful of locusts. The toads hunted them down slowly and steadily, but it was when they got within tongue-shot of them that the magic happened. Their mouths grinned wider and wider and then their hind toes started to twitch or flick quite strongly. They’d sit in this position for quite some time, and the feeling of anticipation was inescapable and delightful. You really felt they were savouring the moment. I vividly remember reading about this exact phenomenon in “My Family and Other Animals”. I think Gerald Durrell had a pet toad named Augustus who did exactly the same thing. I must’ve spent a good twenty minutes watching them. It was, is, and will remain one of my fondest zoo memories.
Southwest of the Exotarium are two pools, one for Common Seal and the other for Cape Fur Seal. They are note-worthy for being there, being of a reasonably high quality and being in possession of some really good interpretive material whose exact nature escapes me. There is underwater viewing of course, and the ivy-covered backdrop of the Exotarium tower is incredibly picturesque.
The rest of the zoo, the southwest quadrant, is basically a collection of small- to medium-sized ungulate paddocks. These are all fairly dated in appearance, and the criticism that the (Black) Rhino House, which also has Common Hippo, receives seems pretty on point in my opinion. The Grevy’s Zebra and Bactrian Camel enclosures feature angular water moats which look manage to look quaint and iconic at the same time. It bears repeating that in this case, at least for this visitor, the dated look is again a most appealing one. With regards to the Giraffe House, I would make the same statement about Frankfurt’s that I would about London’s: a traditional piece of zoo heritage that would not and should not be copied today, and yet is still fit for purpose. Of course, here one can also find Klipspringer. Eat it London! Other noteworthy species in this last area of the zoo are the Mhor Gazelle, so elegant, and the Yellow-backed Duiker. These are huge! I’ve only ever seen red duiker before and I was expecting something similar, but in fact they are easily twice the height and probably ten times the weight.
Tucked away in the hoofstock section are the Vulture aviaries on the south wall. I suspect from what I’ve gleaned on here that this is actually the old Ape House. It’s another handsome building of stone, brick and iron arches. It fits very nicely in this older section of the zoo. Others might describe it as ugly and dated.
Missing from this walkthrough are the meerkats (next to the savannah), tur and wallabies (somewhat bizarrely in exhibits attached to the Exotarium), bongo and okapi (appropriately in the hoofstock area), flamingos and pelicans (hoofstock….), a small walkthrough exhibit for domestic goats (hoofstock) and then on the other side of the entrance to the bears are two South American paddocks, one for Maned Wolves and the other for Vicuna, Darwin’s Rhea and Mara. Last, but by no means least, is a handsome gibbon island opposite the tigers in the lake. This made less of an impression than it should have because I could not see the gibbons (Northern White-cheeked) inside or out. Nonetheless it is an appropriate place for us to finish.
So what did I think of Frankfurt Zoo?
As you can probably gather from what I’ve written so far I absolutely loved it. It would be folly to describe it as the best zoo I’ve ever visited, but it is surely my favourite. Occasionally a zoo visit transcends enjoyment into euphoria, and this was one of those occasions. The new stuff is all fantastic, at least to my untrained eye, and as I’ve reiterated a lot of the old exhibits carry a huge amount of charm. Frankfurt certainly isn’t perfect, but it is perfectly formed. I think I’d be labouring the point to heap any more praise on it, but I really hope my enthusiasm for this wonderful, wonderful zoo comes across in my writing.
