Walk-through exhibits

BenFoxster said:
- Tree kangaroo walk-through
Same idea as regular wallaby or kangaroo walk-throughs but with tree kangaroos! I’m wondering if they can be paired alongside wallabies or kangaroos for a mixed species walk-through exhibit.
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Tierpark Berlin has a tree kangaroo walkthrough exhibit. As for your other suggestions: I think that you're overestimating the average zoo visitor's capability to behave around certain animals...;)
 
Coatis also invasive, so would expect zero chance in a Walthrough.

Longleats Koala exhibit is about as close to a walkthrough as you would get for them.

Quokka, Tasmanian Devils and Numbats, I highly doubt will be in the UK anytime soon, probably not in my lifetime !
 
BenFoxster said:
I’m also curious if an walk through with coatis, pademelons, numbats, or quolls could work (not in the same exhibit of course).
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Having been within arm's reach of a White-Nosed Coati (Monteverde, Costa Rica) they are an amazing animal to get close to, but also one that I am glad to have seen in the wild and not in an enclosed space. This specific individual was well accustomed to people but coatis are, for one; a primary "let's pet it!" animal due to their cute appearance and especially their long tail; and secondly, very unpredictable, similar to wild raccoons. These issues could potentially be avoided with a very skittish coati but as mentioned that somewhat defeats the point of the walk-through and wouldn't be great from an animal stress point of view.
 
BenFoxster said:
- Tree kangaroo walk-through
Same idea as regular wallaby or kangaroo walk-throughs but with tree kangaroos! I’m wondering if they can be paired alongside wallabies or kangaroos for a mixed species walk-through exhibit.

I’m also curious if an walk through with coatis, pademelons, numbats, or quolls could work (not in the same exhibit of course).
Click to expand...

Tierpark Berlin has a walkthrough exhibit for Goodfellow's tree kangaroos and dusky pademelons so that's definitely possible.
 
Batto said:
Tierpark Berlin has a tree kangaroo walkthrough exhibit. As for your other suggestions: I think that you're overestimating the average zoo visitor's capability to behave around certain animals...;)
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Thanks for letting me know, it's already on my bucket list to go to Tierpark Berlin someday, even better! Yeah I know the people can be especially hard to trust, I don't know how kangaroo/wallaby, meerkat, or penguin walk-throughs avoid that issue. At least with birds, herps, and small primates they have the ability to quickly get away from guests. My assumption with any existing or idea of a walk-through would have employees managing it and supervising.
 
Alwaysevergreen said:
Coatis also invasive, so would expect zero chance in a Walthrough.

Longleats Koala exhibit is about as close to a walkthrough as you would get for them.

Quokka, Tasmanian Devils and Numbats, I highly doubt will be in the UK anytime soon, probably not in my lifetime !
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Longleats' koala exhibit looks cool, how does it work? Do you have to pay or book ahead to be able to feed or pet them (if they still offer that)?

Yeah I know the others will be impossible to have in the UK anytime (unfortunately), just wondering theoretically, especially if someday they magically had a boom of population growth and became as common as meerkats! Won't happen but would be cool.
 
Crotalus said:
Having been within arm's reach of a White-Nosed Coati (Monteverde, Costa Rica) they are an amazing animal to get close to, but also one that I am glad to have seen in the wild and not in an enclosed space. This specific individual was well accustomed to people but coatis are, for one; a primary "let's pet it!" animal due to their cute appearance and especially their long tail; and secondly, very unpredictable, similar to wild raccoons. These issues could potentially be avoided with a very skittish coati but as mentioned that somewhat defeats the point of the walk-through and wouldn't be great from an animal stress point of view.
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Yeah doesn't sound like a good idea, thanks for sharing your experience, very fascinating read, felt like a passage from a novel or expedition diary, very intense!
 
BenFoxster said:
Longleats' koala exhibit looks cool, how does it work? Do you have to pay or book ahead to be able to feed or pet them (if they still offer that)?

Yeah I know the others will be impossible to have in the UK anytime (unfortunately), just wondering theoretically, especially if someday they magically had a boom of population growth and became as common as meerkats! Won't happen but would be cool.
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You can book a Koala Experience which is around £250 per person I think to feed them. I done it last year when was on offer with a discount during the lights festival.

You are not allowed to pet them, and quite rightly so.
 
I thought you could let their back since that’s what I saw people do on a YouTube video someone posted of the koala feedings
 
Detroit has an Australian Adventure walk-through, with the red kangaroos tending to congregate on the right side of the path and the wallabies usually over by the wall on the far left of the exhibit. It's nice, nothing special.

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zooman64 said:
As we all know, walk-through aviaries have been popular fixtures in zoos for decades now, and the last few years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of walk-through exhibits for other animals too, particularly lemurs, squirrel monkeys, callitrichids, fruit bats, sloths, wallabies, and butterflies, and occasionally penguins. I believe at least one UK zoo has a walk-through Meerkat enclosure. At Trentham Monkey Forest in Staffordshire, one can walk amongst free-roaming Barbary Macaques, something I would never have believed possible until a few years ago. But what other species, never previously considered, could theoretically make promising candidates for a walk-through exhibit if anyone had the initiative and courage to try it. How about Brazilian Tapirs? And are they any carnivores, besides Meerkats, that visitors could possibly walk amongst? How about small members of the Felidae? At the risk of getting shot down in flames, I reckon walk-through exhibits might even be possible for Cheetahs and wolves. What other species could be considered by a bold and unorthodox zoo-director?
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If I remember correctly there is somthing similar to a walk trough for european wild cats in Germany (Tierfreigelände des Nationalparks Bayerischer Wald). You can walk in the enclosure but you are seperated by the animals by a wooden wall which is about 1,3 m tall. But in theory the animals could jump into the visitor area. Also you don't go trough the middle of the enclosure but rather walk on the edge.

(picture from lintworm)
 
One idea that came in my mind...
ocelot walkthrough
Admittedly you wouldn't be able to have them with birds or fish but I guessed couldn't be entirely impossible?
 
dillotest0 said:
One idea that came in my mind...
ocelot walkthrough
Admittedly you wouldn't be able to have them with birds or fish but I guessed couldn't be entirely impossible?
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As written in the post above, a walk-in wild cat enclosure already exists and Magdeburg built a walk-in enclosure for sand cat (originally planned for black-footed cat), so this type of enclosure is possible to allow barrier-free views of a cat. But they will have to be spacious with plenty of room for the cats to disappear and fully walk-through is not desirable. While walk-in/walk-through is possible, it is probably at least as cost effective to work with a more standard enclosure. Walk-throughs work if you are in the middle of all the action, so that means holding e.g. larger groups, multiple species and/or not typically shy animals. So with solitary shy cats that isn't really the most effective way of display...
 
I am just now coming across this thread and immediately thought about the risk of theft of valuable species such as parrots, tropical songbirds, callitrichidae and, why not, small cats? Does anyone have any idea if this has already happened? I remember reading a few times somewhere that a particular bird was suddenly not found in a walk-through enclosure. Could be dead or stolen.
 
Philipine eagle said:
I am just now coming across this thread and immediately thought about the risk of theft of valuable species such as parrots, tropical songbirds, callitrichidae and, why not, small cats? Does anyone have any idea if this has already happened? I remember reading a few times somewhere that a particular bird was suddenly not found in a walk-through enclosure. Could be dead or stolen.
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I remeber the story in Rheine. There was a story about a group of mentally handicaped people living in a special care home comming to a visit. And one put one of the penguins in his backback. That was only realized when they went back to the home. They contacted the zoo, and after a time in carantine it was returned to the exhibit. Atleast this had a happy endining.
 
I don't know if anyone has mentioned it yet but Pairi Daiza in Belgium has a walkthrough aviary housing many birds of prey, including Long Crested Eagle, Secretary Bird, Egyptian Vulture, White Headed Vulture, and lots of other incredible species. Very cool walkthrough.
 
GiratinaIsGod said:
I remeber the story in Rheine. There was a story about a group of mentally handicaped people living in a special care home comming to a visit. And one put one of the penguins in his backback. That was only realized when they went back to the home. They contacted the zoo, and after a time in carantine it was returned to the exhibit. Atleast this had a happy endining.
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I'm just going to quote myself from an older thread:

Chlidonias said:
the "penguin in a backpack" is an urban legend, which has been around since at least the 1990s - it started out with the thief being a person with mental disabilities and morphed into a child in later versions, although it still commonly appears as a person with (for example) autism. It's always one of those typical stories where someone "knows someone" and it is "definitely true".

However, there are true stories of penguins being stolen as well, e.g. the following article from Australia is genuine: Nocookies
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