Not really a criticism of your list, but I do find it kind of funny that you dislike reptile houses and yet in your top three zoos you have: Brookfield, which has multiple reptile-focused buildings, San Diego which is arguably the best zoo in the US for reptiles and Atlanta, a zoo that's best exhibit is its reptile house.
Of course people can photograph what they like. Clarity is something I'm flawed at. What I mean is its cheating when people categorize it as wildlife photography, which believe it or not, has occurred.
On photography forums such as DPReview, social media, and articles on photography. (May DPReview rest in peace.)
A reptile house doesn't take away from a zoo for me, I just don't think it's worth seeing behavior wise. I might check one out if the exhibits are very well designed.
Zoo photography is cheating? How?
I specify this in some of my replies
As a photographer myself, I’ve not seen people claim it was wildlife photography. Sure the animals in a zoo setting are wild animals for the most part so I get why some refer to them as wildlife. But since it’s a captive setting, I wouldn’t qualify it as wildlife photography due to the setting it’s taken place at. I post photos frequently on my social media pages and Reddit, I always make it a point where I took the photos so viewers know where it took place.
But still that would only mean that you’ve only looked into a very narrow pool of zoos- and highlight them on doing things that practically most if not all major zoos participate in. Looking just at the zoos featured on a television show will not give you enough information to automatically rank ‘all the zoos in the country’.
I mean, it's opinion, there's no actual reward or really anything for what any random person ranks a zoo
I like the way reptiles look, but in fairness it's rare I spend a long time staring at any particular reptile. I really liked seeing the king cobra at Milwaukee active, and I enjoyed listening to the volunteer talk about the Gila Monsters, but... yeah for the most part, they don't do much.
That's just what they want you to think:
hehe. I do love them though, active or not.
No, there isn’t- and nowhere did I remotely imply that there was to be an ideal way to rank zoos. It’s clear from ZDP’s posts that she had her particular reasons for why she ranked the way she did. And while those reasons may be important to her- which is fine, we all value different things in different ways- it was apparent to me that those rankings were based off of very limited insight. And while, yes, I’m not in her mind, and I don’t know what knowledge she had, what was available to me on the forum was lacking, and was worth the scrutiny (for lack of a better word). After all, if one of the major criterion for a good ranking was contribution towards conservation, then why wouldn’t Bronx dominate that list? And more than that, if welfare were a big consideration, wouldn’t San Diego be ranked above Brookfield, since it is widely considered to have better welfare than the latter?
Also makes photography a heck of a lot easier, too!
For me it's more like I'm parading them through the street with pride saying "look at this little guy! and how he just sits there!!!"If we're throwing reptiles under the bus for inactivity, how about we criticize big cats and koalas for it too? Just saying.
Also reminded of a chuckwalla that went absolutely batty whenever he saw his food bowl coming.
It was not a top 5 list, though. It was a ranking of 'all the zoos in the country', and furthermore- some zoos that the maker had not even visited, which would make the 'personal experience' aspect of the ranking (not that there seemed to be one), questionable.
