Unique zoo exhibits
- Thread starter Jurek7
- Start date
Am I the only one who is slightly interested in this concept?
Hot ZooChat topics of the future:
*Who has the best immersion toilet exhibit? San Diego's African savanna toilet, the Bronx's Arctic toilet, or Brookfield's Bornean dipterocarp forest toilet?
*Why do North American prefer toilet exhibits that make you feel like you are watching wildlife while using the toilet in their natural habitat while Europeans advocate a more economical approach that emphasizes basic husbandry and fewer immersion elements?
I think I'll sign off from this thread now.
zoogiraffe
Well-Known Member
Twycross Zoo is the only zoo that I know of that has,a Leaf Cutter Ant exhibit behind a window in the toilets,given how well they do at escaping out of exhibits it can only be a matter of time,before Twycross toilets in Himalaya become a very unique experience!!
What a great concept!
Odense zoo toilet has a series of glass "turdaria" on the walls, with samples from giraffe, lion, chimp, squirrel monkey etc complete with very informative signs. Thankfully it is not immersive.
Likewise, Randers Regnskov/Randers Tropical Zoo in Denmark often has a "theme of the month/year". Once the theme was "WC-viden" (toilet knowledge). It was not immersed in the exhibition itself, but in the hall there was some informative wall sheets about the, well, very natural habits of animals. The door to each toilet cubicle, at least in the males' room, also had some "interesting" info about how for example tapirs and bush dogs emptied their bowels. And in the café you could buy dessert shaped like animal crap.
Not really an exhibit but it was somewhat unique and it fits with your toilet discussion.
Not really an exhibit but it was somewhat unique and it fits with your toilet discussion.
What I also would call unique is the coral tank in Burgers Ocean. It is the second largest tank with living corals in the world (750.000 litres), but the circumstances created are completely artificial. The water is not real sea water but man made, 90% of the lightning comes through lamps and there even is a artificial moon. But the tank itself is managed as a little ecosystem with as little intervention as possible, so it houses apart from many kinds of fishes and corals also sea cucumbres, sea urchins, worms, anemons, shrimps, spunges and many others. And it works, they have to filter and to feed much less here then in the other tanks.
Though there is one tank in the world with living coral that is better, but this one is in Australia and has a direct flow of sea water out of the ocean and reveives all the light from the sun.
Though there is one tank in the world with living coral that is better, but this one is in Australia and has a direct flow of sea water out of the ocean and reveives all the light from the sun.
Burgers' Ocean is amazing and well worth a visit but only its size makes it unique. The nearest equivalent is probably the Tropical Diver tank in Georgia Aquarium (almost as big as Burgers') but if including smaller there are lots of aquariums with exhibits that successfully follow the exact same principles of mixing corals, fish and various other animals in self-made marine water and using artificial lighting. These principles are also similar to those used in most home warm water marine aquariums, excepting 'special tanks' (for vulnerable fish like seahorses) or fish-only tanks. The main limiting factor are the kind of animals you can put in such an aquarium because many, like most butterflyfish and larger anglefish, aren't 'reef safe' (feed on corals or crustaceans). To outsides it may sound remarkably but the golden rule is that the larger such a mixed coral-fish-other animals aquarium is the easier it is to maintain – less susciptible to changes in water chemistry.
Not really an exhibit but it was somewhat unique and it fits with your toilet discussion.
I said that I wasn't going to post on this topic anymore, but I found this picture in the Toledo Zoo gallery:
http://www.zoochat.com/618/aquarium-pollution-invasive-species-exhibit-161676/
There are many other coral displays, I know, but none with this type of non-intervention management. They are still adding species when new succession stages are reached and building a completer system. But they already had major sucesses with the sexual reproduction of several coral species, something quite unique in coral husbandry.
Amazing, they fully deserve to be applauded for this and it greatly limits the field of aquariums, but not unique. For people with an interest in sexual reproduction of corals, I recommend visting the page of SECORE (facebook). This organisation coordinating much of the science dealing with sexual reproduction of corals and many of the aquariums involved in trying to breed corals are members, including Burgers' (aquariums that are notable in this field and not members are mainly from Japan and Australia, e.g. Churaumi and ReefHQ, though at least the latter has shared data with SECORE).
cloudedleopard
Well-Known Member
Yep, definitely Toledo. That zoo is weird. I knew it was Toledo when I saw it. It is a nice concept, but junky.I said that I wasn't going to post on this topic anymore, but I found this picture in the Toledo Zoo gallery:
http://www.zoochat.com/618/aquarium-pollution-invasive-species-exhibit-161676/
Ohama Zoo have a exhibit with giraffes and penguins.
