Rotterdam Zoo Rotterdam zoo

[Writhedhornbill]

Is there anyone who can tell me whether Rotterdam still has Emperor penguins. My friend went about 4 years ago and he said that they had some. Are there any other new or really endangered animals that they have there?

 

[jwer]

Yes Rotterdam Zoo still has a group of Emperor Pinguins, kept indoors in their Oceanarium building.

The collection of Rotterdam Zoo is easily the largest in Holland with a huge collection of rare animals. Some of the highlights, but there are many many more:
- Szechuan Takins
- Francois langurs
- Puffin's
- Tufted deer
- Temminck's golden cat
- Rusty spotted cat
- Komodo dragon
- short-beaked echidna
- Mhorr gazelle
- Sea-otters
- chinese alligator
- Okapis
- Indian Rhino
- Chinese giant salamander
- white-nosed guenon
- white-crowned mangabey
- Hammerhead shark (the smaller species..)

That's just out of the top of my head, but their curator has a thing for the rare and exotic, which imo is great. Their collection of reptiles is gigantic with a lot more exotic stuff... The aquarium is also huge with a lot of different fish.

 

[Writhedhornbill]

I also know that they have the largest breeding group of negros island warty pig. The 2 pairs at chester came from Rotterdam.

 

[Writhedhornbill]

They also have one of the only Yellow backed Duikers in Europe!!

A very nice species, it's very common in U.S Zoos.

 

[jwer]

Yellow-backed Duiker at Rotterdam Zoo? I've been gone for 2 days and haven't caught up with all the news yet but afaik only Wuppertal and Neurenberg Zoo (both Germany) have yellow-backed duikers...

confused with tufted deer?

 

[Writhedhornbill]

I ight be... I think I just got confused with the names. There are so many zoos in your region!!

 

[Toddy]

Sorry, but Rotterdam Zoo does not have emperor pinguins, but the more common king pinguins. It's a great exhibit though . And Rotterdam Zoo is the best zoo i have seen

 

[Coquinguy]

toddy your website is marvellous, although the language barrier is a bit difficult (i now know why Princess Mary found it so hard hey?) lol

 

[jay]

I love the pictures, it looks real good and I love the picture of the gibbon this page.
zoos.dk

Now if only I could read it. Well done!

 

[Toddy]

toddy your website is marvellous, although the language barrier is a bit difficult (i now know why Princess Mary found it so hard hey?) lol

Absolutely! Danish is a hard language to learn, unless you have grown up with it.

I love the pictures, it looks real good and I love the picture of the gibbon this page.
zoos.dk

Now if only I could read it. Well done!

Thanks so much for the nice words! I have been working on it for quite som time. Soon, i will be opening a new website with more photos and other stuff. It will still be called zoos.dk, and still be in danish though, but i hope to translate it to english some day. Maybe i should set up a gallery with some pictures from danish zoos and a little english tekst? What do you think?

 

[Coquinguy]

i think your website is easy enought to navigate now, even for english-speaking Aussies, and i can understand the point scale thingy etc. maybe just a translation of the zoo's name into english and in brackets the english name of the animals in the photos??? would help, then more people could enjoy your wonderful photos and site.

 

[Coquinguy]

i think the hippos and asian elephant in hannover zoo look amazing!

 

[Toddy]

Thank you! Since this is not the right place to discus this, i have made a new thread here

 

[jwer]

Damn mixed up Emperors and Kings

Good to see you liked Rotterdam, they are constantly expanding and recently started construction of a new Giraffe house after the recent completion of a new large aviary with bee-eaters and other migrating birds.

 

[Toddy]

That sounds great . How are they doing on the new "Artic" theme, with polar bears and stuff? And is the new Africa theme going to be the next project?

 

[jwer]

That sounds great . How are they doing on the new "Artic" theme, with polar bears and stuff? And is the new Africa theme going to be the next project?

First of all, Rotterdam is developing at an astonishing rate and they have multiple building sites at the moment...

Large constructions: Around the butterfly house in the Africa section they just completed a large outdoor aviary with migrating birds and are now starting on a large greenhouse with a african birds and a large pool with Nile crocodile. Adjacent to this greenhouse will be the new giraffe house and when finished the giraffes will be at the heart of africa near the other savanna animals and the okapi's will move into the old giraffe house near the gorilla's.

They wanted to complete the whole arctic area this year (Blijdorp is 150 years old this year) but they won't be able to so now they are focussing on just the polar bear enclosure. Everyone is highly doubting it'll be done this year, gonna be probably early spring next year.

Rebuilding the gorilla outdoor enclosure. The gorilla's will now get a deep empty moat with a large wall. Making the moat deeper or wider would end up in Bokito drowning so they decided to empty the moat, deepen it and create a large wall.

Small constructions: Near the new giraffe house construction will start shortly on a new exhibit for servals and colobus (both allready in the park).

In the Chinese garden a small house with outside pool is almost completed for the Chinese alligator (only 1 atm).

On the other side of the railwayline (near the aquarium) they are almost done with a large aviary for a large group of macaw's (red and yellow, i believe).

Inside the aquarium they are constructing a small column to house an octopus.

Long term (not started yet): Completing the arctic section with polar foxes, polar hares, lemmings and snowy owls. The new Steller's sea eagles (allready in the park) will get a large new aviary somewhere around there too...

shaky ideas for the very long term future: New large hippo enclosure in the Africa section. New building (probably greenhouse) added to the aquarium with a "Surinam" theme. And they are mentioning that they are wanting golden snub-nosed langurs, but i bet they wouldn't want to pay for them, maybe their sister zoo Shanghai might help them in their negotiations...

 

[Toddy]

Thank's so much! I cant wait to go back to Rotterdam Zoo . I love hearing about exhibits and future plans for zoos. If you have any other info about the zoos in your region, please tell me more

 

[Pertinax]

Rebuilding the gorilla outdoor enclosure. The gorilla's will now get a deep empty moat with a large wall. Making the moat deeper or wider would end up in Bokito drowning so they decided to empty the moat, deepen it and create a large wall.

I still don't understand why urban zoos with limited space still design Gorilla enclosures with moats, whether wet or dry. Water moats are always dangerous, and both types use up a lot of space. I think Glass walls are the best method of surrounding outdoor areas when space is limited. I suppose the overriding desire is to allow the visitors an uninterrupted view with no visible barrier between them and the animals.

A dry moat is more sensible -at least no danger that Bokito would drown from trying to jump an even bigger water moat now. I guess he will be living indoors until this is completed though....

 

[jwer]

@ Grantsmb: The moat of the gorilla's will be sloped on the gorilla side so they can walk down into it and touch the wall. I don't really think that putting glass windows in Bokito's exhibit would be sane atm...

@ Nigel: There are three sea-worlds in the USA, and as far as i found on the internet only San Diego hold Emperor's.

 

[Trebaruna]

Some of the new arrivals are 2 darwins rheas. Blijdorp once had the idea of replacing their common rheas with the darwin-species. There is still one common rhea left in the "south-american enclosure" (sounds great but its nothing more than a grassland with a simple fence inhabited by vicunas and a rhea..)

Some births;
a litter of swiftfoxes (Vulpes velox velox) (not yet clear how many offspring)
since a number of years finaly 2 red river hogs

Since last weekend the season of the flightshows began. Not much changed since last year, but still interesting.

The confiscated vultures are now in show (6 Gyps rueppelli, and 5 Necrosyrtes monachus). Temporarily in the big asian aviary. They should move to a (still to build) aviary in the africa-zone where they will live together with marabu-stork.

the rueppelli can be found in the inside-enclosure

the monachus are outside between the ibisses etc.

More pictures; Flickr: Svarta änkan's Photostream