Smallest enclosures in UK

Pertinax said:
Its true Drills and Mandrills are esentially terrestrial in the wild, but in zoos they tend to use all levels in the more limited space at their disposal. The Drills at Port Lympne have one of the older-style tall cages and they scuttle about along the topmost branches and beams as much as they use the ground. So I think the height/level of access between indoor/outdoor in the Edinburgh house is largely irrelevant.

More important perhaps is whether the house as a whole is still adequate for the occupants in this day and age, as its one of the few 'older style' Monkey Houses left in a mainstream UK Zoo. Hopefully revenue from the Pandas etc will allow for a revue/improvement/new build(?) for this house at some stage soon, as Edinburgh houses an important and eclectic Monkey collection- particularly the Drills and the several African Guenon species, which still breed successfully, despite the rather outdated surroundings.
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Just thinking of the age of the Edinburgh monkey house, I think it was built in the early seventies, making it about forty years old, although it is starting to look a little dated I would say it is still up to the job, there are other exhibits in need of updating at this zoo before the monkey house, all in good time!
 
TARZAN said:
Just thinking of the age of the Edinburgh monkey house, I think it was built in the early seventies, making it about forty years old, although it is starting to look a little dated I would say it is still up to the job, there are other exhibits in need of updating at this zoo before the monkey house, all in good time!
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It was built in 1972. I fear it takes me some time to get used to the fact that was 40 years ago!!:(
 
IanRRobinson said:
It was built in 1972. I fear it takes me some time to get used to the fact that was 40 years ago!!:(
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My thoughts exactly, great minds......., I Will have to try to stop recalling how old thing are or how long ago something happened, then thinking "was it that long ago,bloody hell!"
 
It's been some time since I went to Edinburgh, but the really odd thing that I recall was the ground level tunnels that led from indoors to outdoors; very odd for primates!

For some years now the access to all of the cages on the back row of the monkey house has been through overhead tunnels. It's only the bigger indoor enclosures where the drills and the barbary macaques are housed that have the ground level tunnel to the outdoor enclosure.
 
Colchester Zoo has just extended its Wilds of Asia complex to include Pileated Gibbons and two kinds of hornbill. But I thought these three new enclosures are rather on the small side. The gibbon enclosure doesn't allow for prolonged brachiation and the hornbill aviaries could have been taller. Colchester Zoo is definitely one of my all-time favourite zoos, so I can't understand why the opportunity wasn't taken to build much bigger enclosures for the gibbns and hornbills. "Patas Plains", although a much older development, is also inexplicably small for the group of Patas Monkeys. Most odd.
 
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