And keeping bigger animals in a nighthouse is not the best for the animals themself. They wouldn't get space to move. A Anteater, with its slow movement would be a great fit. But tapires or the nyala would not benefit from that type of enclosure
Mixed species enclosures and other changes for Burgers Zoo
- Thread starter Mr Gharial
- Start date
They take in elderly elephants from zoos all over Europe, they're basically an old folks home for elephants. New ones will keep coming in. And it's definitely better than their current lion and cheetah enclosures, which I do plan to change
They are getting a rather large space, and I'm going to be visiting Burger's zoo somewhere next month to compare measurements for the Nighthouses. I'll size up if the bongos and lowland tapirs don't have enough room. It's only a sketch for not
That is why I belive hyraxes don't fit in the space. The Burgers Bush can't realy be modefied much. Which is why I choosed the elephant shrew. It fits the space, and can't easyly escape. Not many other animals fit. The only other I belive could use are eccidnas, or maby mouse deer, (but their noctornal nature is a big problem).
Echidnas are Australian, and I've already got them planned for the new Outback region. And the whole point of the night house was to make the aardvarks more visible, as I've only seen them once during the evening ticket campaign. I can't really think of any other African animal to be able to fit there, maybe we could do another Asian or South American animal, though that would only leave African birds in the bush, and no enclosure animals
JurassicMax
Well-Known Member
I do believe that Artis kept a few African penguins together with California sea lions, however I can't recall seeing them swim together. Fun fact they later also added common eiders (Somateria mollissima) and great white pelicans (Pelecanus onocrotalus) to the sea lion enclosure, but removed all three species eventually.
JurassicMax
Well-Known Member
What about African pangolins or would they be a better fit for the nighthouse?
Maby...you know the Black and rufous elephant shrew. They are african. And woulf fit the size of the enclosure. Not to big, not to small. Not a danger to the birds, native to africa. Active st the day. Like I said. The perfect snimal for the space.
It could be replaced with the animals from the islands east to avoid the two areas from being separated. You could move the prairie dog to where the islands east would have been
maybe something like porcupines (not cape preferably like brush-tailed but I don't know they're prevalence in European zoos) If they haven't been used then maybe a black duiker or small species of hoofed mammal. Another possibility could be an African Civet or a species of mongoose or a fossa (don't know how they would react to the birds though).
Carnivores would... not be a very good idea
At Natuurpark Lelystad they keep European bison (Wisent) together with Przewalski's horses. In another enclosure they keep Red deer together with Mouflons. Both enclosures are also walk through.
I've seen multiple times that a rhino could pass these metal poles. They just squeeze through.
Pangolins are notoriously difficult to house, and only the black bellied pangolin (Which is my personal favourite) is active during the day. But black bellied pangolins aren't currently kept in captivity.
They're also incredibly effected by stress, and the aardvark exhibit is very open and gets a lot of peering eyes
I've already placed the Brush-tailed porcupines into the nighthouse, as they're nocturnal. The whole point of moving the aardvarks was because they weren't visible.
The species also has to be ground-based. Arboreal species would need climbing space and they could jump to the branches of the bush and escape. Maybe mongooses would work but I'm not sure if there's any ground-based mongooses in tropical Africa
Walkthrough, really? I'm guessing that'd have to be an enormous enclosure for that to happen. Do you have any pictures?
It is indeed an enormous enclosure. I meassured it from google earth: the part they share with the Przewalki's horses is about 295700 m2!!! The bisons can also be separated from the horses in another enclosure wich is about 127700 m2. The bison herd consists of about 25 animals and the herd of Przewalki's horse consists 5 animals. The walk through path is about 40 meters long.
At my last visit in July i made this photo of a mother bison with calf on the walk through path:
This is not a photo of mine but it's in the gallery of Natuurpark Lelystad here on ZooChat. (There are more photo's there of this and other enclosures). This is only a small part of the enclosure.
The enclosure for the red deer and mouflon is about 343100 m2. It contains a herd of about 45 red deer and about 12 mouflon.
Natuurpark Lelystad is a huge park wich houses European bison, Przewalki's horses, Red deer, Mouflon, European elk, European wild boar, Eurasian otters and Pere David's deer. The park also contains wild groups of European beavers, Eurasian otters and European white storks.
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Well, I suppose it makes sense since it's a natuurpark and not a zoo, there's no space to make it big enough to turn it into a safe walkthrough (Too small would mean they'd be forced closer together to both the other animals and the visitor which would make their territory smaller and make them more prone to attack).
I love walkthroughs, but that's too big a risk
I measured it out and their wisent enclosure is almost as big as burgers zoo itself
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JurassicMax
Well-Known Member
Good point, the enclosure could be modified to limit the stress on the pangolins. As you said keeping pangolins would be really cool, but isn't feasible.
The two aardvark enclosures that Burgers has aren't connected to eachother right? If this is the case do you want to connect the two enclosures with eachother?
You could house Fennec or bat-eared foxes, but they are mostly nocturnal and could attack the free-flying birds. However they aren't really found in the tropical part of Africa....
There are species of mongoose that live in tropical Africa like the long-nosed mongoose (Herpestes naso) and black-footed mongoose (Bdeogale nigripes). However according to Zootierliste they aren't in any European zoos, so it would be hard to get them.
Madagascar among others also has some species of mongoose which could be housed in the enclosure, if it's modified to house mongoose.
JurassicMax
Well-Known Member
Would thicker poles with less spacing in between them work better?