Numberof Zoos

chimpman said:
You live exceedingly close to me. How long does Tropical World take?

What does Tropical World have to offer? I've no doubt they've got a web site but you can't beat word of mouth.
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Tropical World is at Roundhay Park on the far side of the Leeds ring road. So from Manchester, once you've battled through the M62 roadworks, you then have to tackle the Leeds traffic.

It's nice (used to go there quite a lot when I lived in Leeds), and it's worth a visit....but it's too far away and too small for any non-zoofanatical folk to make the trek.;)
 
A very good review indeed, but it is worth bearing in mind that his identification of the armadillos as nine-banded in this review is incorrect - they are large hairy armadillos - and as such do not travel to the collection especially for this species ;)
 
The fact I took close-up photographs of them and spoke to the head keeper on the matter when I visited was pretty conclusive ;)

 
Maybe in that other photo we were debating over, it was wearing a 9-banded costume!:D
 
Hehe, that or the low light conditions distorting the shape of the animal in Mr Weasel's photo :p though I would much rather have discovered they *were* nine-banded, for obvious reasons!
 
Jackwow said:
I note that Glasgow had a zoo, but it probably wasn't very good.
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It was very bad, at least in its final years. I went once shortly before it closed- it was by then the most shabby and rundown Zoo I had ever visited- anywhere.

The strange thing was the Director was a highly educated and respected Zoo man, but funding and upkeep of the Zoo was obviously beyond his means entirely.
 
Pertinax said:
It was very bad, at least in its final years. I went once shortly before it closed- it was by then the most shabby and rundown Zoo I had ever visited- anywhere.

The strange thing was the Director was a highly educated and respected Zoo man, but funding and upkeep of the Zoo was obviously beyond his means entirely.
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This is a real can of worms - and there are some occasional posters on Zoochat who are much more knowledgeable than me, and highly vociferous, and will, I am sure, delight in rummaging around in that particular can given half a chance!

I think it would be unfair to say that Glasgow Zoo was 'very bad' - although there is no doubt that it had very bad elements. Its carnivore keeping was innovative and successful, with some excellent work with small cats in particular. Its Asian black bear husbandry was ground-breaking, at the time. Its reptile collection was good, and well done (without being massively exciting). There was quite a decent tiger set-up.

Against all of this, though, was a perennial struggle for money which showed itself in cheaply (and badly) put together enclosures, in corner-cutting management (I have heard - from a reliable source, but one with a particular axe to grind - that a camel died from malnutrition at one point), and in really crass ventures such as car boot sales in the zoo grounds.

The director you mention, Richard O'Grady, was, by some analyses, the root of the problem. This is perhaps unfair - whether a combination of Durrell, Bartlett, Hagenbeck and Grzimek could have made anything of the hand that O'Grady was dealt is debatable. But I think more could have been made of the zoo. The site was brilliant - even if it was in a less-than-lovely area of Glasgow. Glasgow is a city that really feels a sense of pride and identity. There are a large number of wealthy individuals in the city. Things might have worked.

On my last visit to the zoo, O'Grady literally tried to throw me out of the zoo (he grabbed hold of me and tried to manhandle me out of the gate). At other times, he could be quite charming. He was certainly not a straightforward fellow.
 
sooty mangabey said:
On my last visit to the zoo, O'Grady literally tried to throw me out of the zoo (he grabbed hold of me and tried to manhandle me out of the gate). At other times, he could be quite charming. He was certainly not a straightforward fellow.
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Randomly picking on a visitor and trying to throw him/her out is strange behaviour indeed?! :eek:
 
Sooty makes some interesting points! I really do not understand how Glasgow Zoo should have been allowed to fail. Was there not talk a few years ago of RZSS trying to open a new site in Glasgow?
In response to him manhandling you, should we not have some sort of ZooChat hit squad to deal with there kind of things? :D
 
sooty mangabey said:
I think it would be unfair to say that Glasgow Zoo was 'very bad'
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It may have been better in the past, but I was quite shocked at what I saw on my one and only visit not long before it closed- very rundown and in even worse repair than some of the other smaller 'shockers' I had visited in the past.

The contrast between O'Grady's interesting/educated writing style and the actuality of the Zoo as I saw it, was a real eye-opener.
 
Pertinax said:
It was very bad, at least in its final years. I went once shortly before it closed- it was by then the most shabby and rundown Zoo I had ever visited- anywhere.

The strange thing was the Director was a highly educated and respected Zoo man, but funding and upkeep of the Zoo was obviously beyond his means entirely.
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sooty mangabey said:
........I think it would be unfair to say that Glasgow Zoo was 'very bad' - although there is no doubt that it had very bad elements. Its carnivore keeping was innovative and successful, with some excellent work with small cats in particular. Its Asian black bear husbandry was ground-breaking, at the time. Its reptile collection was good, and well done (without being massively exciting). There was quite a decent tiger set-up.

........On my last visit to the zoo, O'Grady literally tried to throw me out of the zoo (he grabbed hold of me and tried to manhandle me out of the gate). At other times, he could be quite charming. He was certainly not a straightforward fellow.
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I visited Glasgow Zoo a few times; it was on an attractive site that made a lovely setting for a zoo but, sadly, it never lived up to its potential; presumably for financial reasons.

I tend to agree with “Sooty”. Glasgow Zoo wasn’t all bad; there were some good things too. The Asiatic black bear enclosure, for example, was very good and I was impressed by the way an old sterile polar bear exhibit was imaginatively landscaped to make a superb small cat enclosure.

However, I must also concur with “Pertinax” that, towards the end, it became extremely shabby and very badly run-down; I found my last visit there depressing.

Out of fairness to the late Richard O’Grady, I must conclude by saying that I found him very affable; always happy to stop and chat about zoos. There were several enjoyable occasions when I spent a long while in his office drinking coffee and exchanging zoo gossip. (Of course I realise that others had very different experiences.)
 
Tim May said:
However, I must also concur with “Pertinax” that, towards the end, it became extremely shabby and very badly run-down; I found my last visit there depressing.
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I am sure it had seen better days and wasn't always as bad as it was toward the end. Unfortunately I only ever visited that one time so couldn't make any comparisons with it previously.
 
My visit to Glasgow was very similar to Pertinax's, and probably at more or less the same time. It was a nice site, the animals that they had were in good condition and the enclosures were generally well designed and constructed, but empty and neglected. There were hardly any animals or visitors or staff. The only species that stuck in my mind were a pair of Burmese brown tortoises and a group of black and white capuchins, although there were probably some singletons and a few waterfowl too.

Alan
 
gentle lemur said:
The only species that stuck in my mind were a pair of Burmese brown tortoises and a group of black and white capuchins, although there were probably some singletons and a few waterfowl too.
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I remember the black & white Capuchin group. Also (from memory)at the time of my visit they still had; Himalayan bears(still at least two) Lions, a White rhino, Cheetahs(?) an onager or a kulan(?) camel and/or llama, some birds in the very dirty/uncleaned Bird/tropical house. I also remember a notice in front of the Lions saying they had applied to have Asian Lions but had been refused- judging by the general state of the Zoo I could see why.
 
Pertinax said:
I remember the black & white Capuchin group.
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I thought this was a typo the first time I read it, with colobus being actually meant. But obviously not, so I will ask, what is a black and white capuchin? Or is it a group of two species? :confused:
 
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