What is the single worst zoo enclosure you have ever seen?

birdsandbats

birdsandbats

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
What is the single worst enclosure you have ever seen? Mine is the Eastern Spotted Skunk enclosure that used to be at Special Memories Zoo. It is thankfully no longer there. There used to be a good picture on the net (I don't have a photo), but I couldn't find it. But to sum it up, it looked like this, except made out of mesh:

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Quite probably this one.

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Appalling and disgraceful terrarium with lone meerkat (Aug 28th, 2018) - ZooChat

This appalling and disgraceful terrarium that housed a single meerkat, which I saw and photographed last year at Mondo Verde in Landgraaf, the Netherlands. There was no explanation as to why that poor meerkat was in that piece of crap terrarium and it wouldn't have been much of an excuse of having around and using this awful junk anyway. Also, the whole room this terrarium was in, which also held bird raising cages and a green iguana terrarium, was pretty nasty, as you seen in the Mondo Verde gallery.

Perhaps some of the old exhibits at the Olmense Zoo in Belgium, back when it first opened to the public in the late nineties, could have been worse, but I was a child at the time so my memory is very vague on the details, and there are few images available that I could find on short notice. Best I could do is below.
Zoo in beeld
 
For me it's Brookfield Zoos Orangutan enclosure, until they make an outdoor exhibit for them, I would rather go to other zoos to see their Orangutans
 
I think the worst zoo exhibit I've seen is probably a small cage no bigger then my old fridge for a single white-handed gibbon at African Lion Safari, with had ropes and hoses, as well as a cereal box if memory serves right. Thankfully, it was no longer there on my last visit, replaced by a decent squirrel monkey exhibit.
 
Probably the worst exhibit I've seen was the former glass box for ratel at Cologne last year, this would hardly have suited Meerkats yet their Meerkats had the biggest enclosure I've ever seen! Just knowing ratel had been kept there a year earlier was a black mark against Cologne for me and keeps it just outside my top 10 zoos
 
A lot of the primate exhibits at the Metro Richmond Zoo
Another contender might be the otter exhibit at ZooAmerica (some of the keepers even said they wanted to re-do it, add underwater viewing and everything.)
 
The sunbear enclosure at Bali zoo still stands out in my mind - horrible pit with no enrichment and iron bars over the top. Bizarre considering all the other work carried out to improve the place.
 
drill said:
Almost every exhibit at Waccatee Zoo.
Hamadryas baboon
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Red foxes (there are two in this enclosure)
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An enclosure for a sun bear (the largest animal there) in Morecombe Zoo on the seafront. The cages were the size of the sleeping quarters at Drayton Manor Park!!!
 
Probably the former orangutan enclosure at the Kansas City Zoo. It was extremely small and overcrowded for such a big animal. Fortunately, it is now gone and the zoo's orangutans have a much better home, but it was genuinely upsetting to look at and I have no idea why it was allowed to happen.
It won't let me attach a photo for reference but here's a link so you can see what I'm talking about: Tiger Trail - Orangutan Exhibit - ZooChat
 
Personally seen? If that's the case, well, I've only ever been to three zoos in my life, namely Toronto Zoo (one of the greatest zoos in the world, just sayin'), Buffalo Zoo and the former Zooz, which was reworked into the much better Safari Niagara. Zooz was a miserable experience all around, honestly. I mean, it was nice to spend time walking around on a lovely day with my beloved grandparents, but the animals all seemed inactive and a bit sad in their shabby enclosures. Buffalo Zoo used to kinda suck too, I went there as a kid on a school trip and just from a design standpoint, many of the enclosures were these archaic concrete pits. Judging by the photos I've seen in recent years though, they greatly improved too.
 
I remember a long, long time ago, goibg back about 20 years, the Lake District Wildlife Park in the North of England had an enclosure for black rats that was literally just a toilet bowl with no water sitting in a glass terrarium. Because it was so long ago I have no photos, and thankfully it's long gone now. I mean, I can kind of get what they were going for, the ick factor of seeing rats climbing out of a toilet, but in practice it wasn't a good enclosure.
 
A different take on the prompt:

The small African animals hut at the Peoria Zoo. The animal exhibits were fine. Standard terraria and whatever. The problem was on the first end. First, it wasn’t air conditioned and got super hot in the summer. Like, I was sweating buckets. Second, they thought it would be cool to make it so the exhibits could sometimes only be seen by climbing or getting on your hands and knees, or even just lying prone. This wouldn’t be a problem but, third, the entire thing was made of concrete and was brutally uncomfortably. 50-something zoos later that stands out as an absolutely miserable experience.

If we take the question from an animal welfare perspective, the former (?) lion enclosure at Greenville was way too small. Tropic World’s gorilla exhibit is bad, undeniably. Racine Zoo’s orang exhibit is worse, also being entirely indoors and much smaller than the orang exhibit at Brookfield.

Cleveland’s primate and cat complex is pretty bad. Miller Park’s cat exhibits were somehow worse, although I know they were planning to upgrade at one point.
 
The first row of primate village in Shenzhen Safari Park looks more like a prison compared to recent zoo enclosures. The floor was made by cement and no plants were planted in the enclosure, and most importantly, no renovations were made.
 
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