What animals tend to have the worst exhibits?

Aardwolf said:
I understand that your facility is largely a venomous reptile collection. I'd be interested in hearing about how you strike a balance between natural, stimulating environments and managing handler safety.
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Feel free to come to Salzburg to see for yourself; it's easier demonstrated than explained.
 
Great Argus said:
In terms of what animal I think gets the worst exhibits, it is hands down snakes. There are numerous examples of terrible snake exhibits on here, ranging from ice coolers to holes in logs to near empty tanks. Some of these are even in fairly good zoos. I've seen some pretty lackluster snake exhibits myself even in AZA facilities. Many reptile houses display them in small boxes shorter in length/width than the total length of the snake. Snakes usually aren't the most needy of animals to be sure, but they often seem to be extorted for it by getting shorted on exhibit size and quality a lot.
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I agree. Snakes definitely need larger and more varying terrariums.
 
Most large amphibian enclosures (and i mean animals that live both on land and water, not the class Amphibia). It seems they always have too little water area or too little land, they'd need a larger enclosure than a land animal of similar size/activity due to their amphibic tendencies and, in my experience at least, zoos fail to recognize that or choose to ignore it to save space and money. I've seen more good amphibian enclosures than bad ones, but they get the short end of the stick a lot more often than their land-dwelling counterparts.
 
Aardvarks tend to get really crappy habitats. They're fairly large animals who love to dig, and really require larger habitats with at least some natural substrate. In most cases, I tend to see them in very small enclosures, sometimes mixed with birds or Meerkats, with only a small sand layer, if anything, to dig in.

The main outlier here is of course Detroit's fantastic habitat for them:
Jun. 2018 - African Grasslands - Massive Aardvark Exhibit - ZooChat

In my opinion, this species really needs to be kept similarly to Giant Anteaters.

~Thylo
 
Corangurilla said:
I’m surprised nobody’s taken a page out of Lincoln Park’s book when it comes to vertical ape habitats. They can get gorillas off the ground, so why hasn’t anyone tried that exhibit style with orangutans?
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Put simply, they have - and with significant success.

Mayki said:
Artis and Nuremberg spring to mind as some of the worst examples but they certainly weren't alone.
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Of course, the Nuremburg exhibit of the present day is very good indeed.
 
ThylacineAlive said:
Aardvarks tend to get really crappy habitats. They're fairly large animals who love to dig, and really require larger habitats with at least some natural substrate. In most cases, I tend to see them in very small enclosures, sometimes mixed with birds or Meerkats, with only a small sand layer, if anything, to dig in.

The main outlier here is of course Detroit's fantastic habitat for them:
Jun. 2018 - African Grasslands - Massive Aardvark Exhibit - ZooChat

In my opinion, this species really needs to be kept similarly to Giant Anteaters.

~Thylo
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Of course, while Detroit's Aardvark enclosure is fantastic from a husbandry standpoint it is an utter failure as an actual exhibit.
 
What is the success rate for seeing Aardvarks in outdoor enclosures? I haven't seen that enough times to have a good idea myself.
 
Corangurilla said:
It’s a pretty lazy exhibit. Just like the grizzly exhibit next-door, they just removed a wall and called it a day. At least we now have the grotto so the aardvarks can be seen during the winter.
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I don't think it's a "lazy exhibit", whatever that means. If anything, I kind of prefer simple exhibits, in a way.

This issue is what @Coelacanth18 is getting at here - visitors will simply never see the Aardvark in that enclosure.
 
birdsandbats said:
I don't think it's a "lazy exhibit", whatever that means. If anything, I kind of prefer simple exhibits, in a way.

This issue is what @Coelacanth18 is getting at here - visitors will simply never see the Aardvark in that enclosure.
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By “lazy” I mean it wasn’t made for aardvarks. It originally held a hippo, hence why it’s so massive. All the zoo did was remove the wall separating the old aardvark and hippo exhibits without modifying the hippo exhibit in any way. The end result is a pretty good home for the aardvarks, but the guests will never see the aardvarks because their home was made for a much larger, more easily-seen animal.
Another way of saying it could be that the zoo let the aardvarks design their habitat, if you know what I mean.
 
Re-using a habitat without modifying it isn't inherently lazy :p There are many species that could be easily interchanged in the same habitat without any modification, that doesn't make it lazy. There's an argument that a burrow with viewing inside would have been nice, but it is still probably the best Aardvark habitat from a husbandry standpoint in the US.

~Thylo
 
ThylacineAlive said:
Re-using a habitat without modifying it isn't inherently lazy :p There are many species that could be easily interchanged in the same habitat without any modification, that doesn't make it lazy. There's an argument that a burrow with viewing inside would have been nice, but it is still probably the best Aardvark habitat from a husbandry standpoint in the US.

~Thylo
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If they had just turned the empty pool and glass viewing into a shelter or something, maybe I wouldn’t have as many issues with this exhibit.
 
Emanuel Theodorus said:
Ditto on this one. So many of them have very little landspace and they tend to focus on crystal clear underwater viewing yet forgetting that these animals needed land as much as they needed water. Plus the size of the exhibit are generally really small as well, making a pod of them generally unfeasible.
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Out of all of the zoos I've seen only Disney's Animal Kingdom has a good hippo exhibit. Which zoo was it that had a an indoor disco exhibit for hippos? I know it was talked about here.
 
elefante said:
Out of all of the zoos I've seen only Disney's Animal Kingdom has a good hippo exhibit. Which zoo was it that had a an indoor disco exhibit for hippos? I know it was talked about here.
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Added to my post above, I think the only "true" Hippo exhibit in US, I've seen judging by the pictures is Disney's Animal Kingdom. Memphis and Cheyenne Mountain come in second place, but my god do so many zoos did hippos injustice by placing them in a rather small exhibit with small land area ratios. Frankly, I really don't care about the crystal clear underwater viewing anymore, I just want hippos in a proper size enclosure.

And yeah, disco Adventure Aquarium habitat is really just... eh.
 
Emanuel Theodorus said:
Added to my post above, I think the only "true" Hippo exhibit in US, I've seen judging by the pictures is Disney's Animal Kingdom. Memphis and Cheyenne Mountain come in second place, but my god do so many zoos did hippos injustice by placing them in a rather small exhibit with small land area ratios. Frankly, I really don't care about the crystal clear underwater viewing anymore, I just want hippos in a proper size enclosure.

And yeah, disco Adventure Aquarium habitat is really just... eh.
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Aren’t DAK’s hippo exhibits like 95% pool and 5% land?
 
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