Walk-through primate enclosures

Z

zooman

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Walk-through colobus enclosure - Munster

Who has seen this exhibit? Sounds great for the monkeys.

It's actually the first time l have heard of a walk through Colobus enclosure

Other walk through primate enclosures l have seen are

ZSL
Squirrel Monkey. Small space with high volume of traffic. The monkeys seem to love it.

Howlettes
Lemurs

Apenheul
Barbary Macaque. Would never imagined this working after seeing "The Omen"
Squirrel Monkey. Aparentely the problem with the squirrel monkeys biteing visitors is getting out of hand.
Lemurs. A great show is putt on watching the ring tailed lemurs run over a roof top down a path towards a keeeper feeding 3 species of lemurs.

Pictures would be great of the barriers used to contain the monkeys :]
 
i visited monkey forest yesterday where they exhibit 60+ barbary macaques in a woodland walkthrough
 
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Barbary macaques are used for walk-through exhibits. Anyone who has visited the Rock of Gibraltar will know why!

There are quite a few UK zoos that have jumped on the lemur walkthrough bandwagon. Edinburgh have a walkthrough with Alaotran gentle lemurs, Whipsnade have ring-tailed lemurs "In With The Lemurs", Cotswold WP have "Madagascar" with various species and Woburn Safari Park have "Land of the Lemurs", again with mixed species.

I'm sure there are countless other examples in zoos worldwide - Prague Zoo and the Bronx Zoo come to mind.

Walkthroughs with free-ranging tamarins and marmosets are also pretty common. Twycross Zoo has common marmosets in its Tropical House. London Zoo's Clore Rainforest Lookout has several primate species in the biome: silvery marmosets, golden-headed lion tamarins, pygmy marmosets and titi monkeys. And Jersey's pied tamarins, silvery marmosets and black lion tamarins are free to roam the woodland areas of the zoo.
 
In all of North America there is exactly one walk-through monkey exhibit, and that is the squirrel monkey experience at the Phoenix Zoo. However, several zoos (Omaha, Montreal Biodome, Brookfield, etc) have marmosets and tamarins ranging above the heads of visitors.

The lemur enclosures at the Bronx are perhaps technically walk-through habitats, but there are clearly defined visitor and animal boundaries and zoogoers don't walk on anything but an outside path that looks into the enclosure.
 
snowleopard said:
In all of North America there is exactly one walk-through monkey exhibit, and that is the squirrel monkey experience at the Phoenix Zoo. The lemur enclosures at the Bronx are perhaps technically walk-through habitats, but there are clearly defined visitor and animal boundaries and zoogoers don't walk on anything but an outside path that looks into the enclosure.
Click to expand...

There is actually another North American zoo with a walk-through monkey exhibit and that is the Guadalajara Zoo in Mexico. They have a rainforest building where squirrel monkeys come to contact directly with the visitors. I've seen pics of people feeding the monkeys from some type of cup. Maybe they could buy some kind of food outside the exhibit to feed the monkeys.
 
Chris79 said:
There are quite a few UK zoos that have jumped on the lemur walkthrough bandwagon. Edinburgh have a walkthrough with Alaotran gentle lemurs, Whipsnade have ring-tailed lemurs "In With The Lemurs", Cotswold WP have "Madagascar" with various species and Woburn Safari Park have "Land of the Lemurs", again with mixed species.
Click to expand...

I think Blackpool may have been the first lemur walkthrough, originally with ringtails, black and white ruffed and black lemurs (although the last two are now at Cotswold). Bristol have red ruffed and ringtails in their small walkthrough. Edinburgh did have black and white ruffed with their Alaotrans, but they now have blue-eyed blacks. I believe South Lakes have ruffed too.

Blackpool also have squirrel monkeys in their Amazonia walkthrough.

The only other primate walkthrough I remember is the one at Thoiry in France in the early 1970s, shortly after the collection opened. It held a large group of moor macaques - I don't think I've seen one since.

Alan
 
Madagascar exhibit at Bioparc (Valencia) put you inside of "lemurs island" you can walk through with six lemur species all around.
 
It seems that there is only 1 walk through colobus?

I missed that Chris79 of course there are many free-ranging tamarins and marmosets exhibits.

Snowleopard, l thought l remmered that DC zoo had a area where golden lion tamarins were in a walk through area. I actually dont recall any forms of restraints? Just up from the seals.

It is interesting that US zoos have not embraced this wonder if it is to do with insurance?
 
Apenheul has also free-ranging wooly monkeys, but it is full of keepers who chase away monkeys and remind visitors.

I wonder if spider monkeys, langurs and gibbons could be kept free-range, if branches in their exhibit would be placed away and much above visitors, so that animals would find it unconvenient to come close to people?
 
The woolly monkeys at Apenheul are no longer free ranging but separated from the public by a moat
 
Hi i have been to munster and seen the walk through colobus enclosure, it is a very natural enclosure and all the colobus were busy sunbathing when i was there on a grass bank just feet away from me. the experience was amazing and this is oming from someone who works with them regularly getting the chance to observe them so close with no barriers is definately a plus! ive a photo or two in the gallery of them!:)
 
@mstickmanp: I often forget about Mexican zoos when discussing North American zoos in general, and so thanks for the reminder about the Guadalajara Zoo.

@zooman: The National Zoo, Zoo Atlanta and even I believe San Diego have at one time or another (among other U.S. zoos as well) have had free-ranging golden lion tamarins that are free to roam wooded areas with zero restraints. There was a thread on that subject a while ago and the consensus was that none of those zoos allow that now, and if and when they did it was only for a brief spell during the summer months.

When I was at the Phoenix Zoo this summer a keeper and I chatted for a good 10 minutes while my wife and I were inside the awesome squirrel monkey enclosure, and apparently there are at least 2 major concerns regarding walk-through exhibits. One is that the Phoenix Zoo tries to always have 2 employees at one time inside the habitat, and even though it is only open for a few hours per day that is costly for a zoo that has never received public funding. Secondly there is always the possibility that harm might be done to the animals, as when I was there the squirrel monkeys were brave and would come with a couple of feet of where I was standing. I think that they were curious! In Canada there have been at least 3-4 zoos that have had monkeys stolen in the last few years, and in the U.S. everyone sues each other all the time and so a third reason against walk-through exhibits is that a captive animal could bite one of the animals visiting the zoo!
 
can any other macaque species be kept in a walk throuigh enclosure other than barbary (and as i just found out moor) macaques?
 
snowleopard said:
In all of North America there is exactly one walk-through monkey exhibit, and that is the squirrel monkey experience at the Phoenix Zoo. However, several zoos (Omaha, Montreal Biodome, Brookfield, etc) have marmosets and tamarins ranging above the heads of visitors.

The lemur enclosures at the Bronx are perhaps technically walk-through habitats, but there are clearly defined visitor and animal boundaries and zoogoers don't walk on anything but an outside path that looks into the enclosure.
Click to expand...

I suppose the marmosets (or were they tamarins?) at TropicWorld in Brookfield Zoo would qualify.

What about the exhibits at Monkey Jungle in Florida? Visitors are in a mesh tunnel with monkeys all around them (the visitors were caged and the animals were "free")
Amazonian Rain Forest
 
thought everything was mentioned untill i remembered the night monkeys. Emmen Zoo has a night section where the visitors are seperated from the monkeys by a small fence. The lone douroucouli often climbed on this fence and interacted with the people, but fortunately he got a mate not so long ago and the behaviour stopped (as far as i heared at least). There's no other barrier though.

And in Amersfoort's "De Nacht" night-exhibit, they had galago's in with the people, but they got moved behind glass not so long ago. Why exactly i'm not sure, but i believe they figured out the doors and wandered outside of their enclosure. The douroucouli's in the next exhibit are still "in the open" so to speak. There are no barriers at all and the people walk straight through their exhibit.

Apart from that, there are walk-through lemur islands at Overloon, Apenheul, Aquazoo and Amsterdam. There's a squirrel monkey walk-through at Apenheul and the exhibits for saki's and golden lion tamarins there don't have any boundaries for the monkeys as far as i can remember.

Don't know the situation at Gaiapark, i believe their squirrel monkeys are also walk-through and the rest are on islands away from the visitors.

The lone elderly male golden lion tamarin at Emmen used to hop off his island and interact with the people a little not that long ago, but apparantly he has died and the island has remained empty sofar...
 
The squirrel monkey walkthrough in Phoenix was originally supervised almost completely volunteers (of which I was one) although now they've had a few incidents and there is always paid staff there as well.

When they first were planning the exhibit they sent people to Appenheul to learn how it works there. The original plans were to add black howlers and white-faced sakis but that got keiboshed by the USDA.
 
marwell has a glass walkthrough, which i a bit dissapointing as im sure they could make it a "no barriers" exhibits

also one of the best walkthroughs has to be at champrepus where they have a half desert and half rainforest ringtailed walkthrough!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top