Zoo Essentials

[Batto]

"If the zoo doesn't have *elephants / hippos / cats / birds etc.*, it's not a *real / good* zoo and I won't go! [fuss noises]

I wish some users were a bit more mature than my four-year-old...

Not every zoo needs to have the same kind of species. If zoos focus on their strengths and thus certain species, they're still zoos - and often good ones. The famous Weltvogelpark Walsrode specializes in birds and showcases only a few other taxa. Nevertheless, most Zoochatters will probably strongly agree that you should visit it when you are in the area - because it's a good zoo.

 

[Zoofan15]

It's strange to see Flamingos as a "luxury" or rare species. In France they can be seen in nearly all the zoos even the smallest (I add that in most cases they are only Caribbean or Chilean Flamingos, the other species are indeed rarely displayed, including the native Greater Flamingo).

Auckland Zoo’s flock are the only flock in the entire region. Adelaide Zoo used to have a single flamingo, now deceased.

It’s forbidden to import bird species into New Zealand or Australia so what we have is what we have. We’re down to our last few Andean condors, which are the offspring of a sibling pair hatched at Taronga Zoo in the late 70’s.

 

[Aardwolf]

I just visited Minnesota Zoo for the first time. It was a great zoo and I enjoyed it very much - but was struck by how strange it was to go to a very large US zoo with none of the large African mammals. No giraffe, zebra, lion, rhino, elephant, cheetah - the largest African mammal in the entire zoo were the red river hogs. Also, no kangaroos, ratites, macaws, or a lot of other species that you typically consider bread-and-butter species for zoos. It's not a complaint, mind you - I really enjoyed the animals that they did have, which made sense for the Minnesota climate. From what keepers told me, the zoo still remains very popular with the public, so it doesn't seem to hurt them too much. I feel like it would be great if more zoos varied their collections a bit, focusing on what they were in the best position to display to maximum benefit, instead of feeling that they needed the same "must haves."

 

[Aardwolf]

I just visited Minnesota Zoo for the first time. It was a great zoo and I enjoyed it very much - but was struck by how strange it was to go to a very large US zoo with none of the large African mammals. No giraffe, zebra, lion, rhino, elephant, cheetah - the largest African mammal in the entire zoo were the red river hogs. Also, no kangaroos, ratites, macaws, or a lot of other species that you typically consider bread-and-butter species for zoos. It's not a complaint, mind you - I really enjoyed the animals that they did have, which made sense for the Minnesota climate. From what keepers told me, the zoo still remains very popular with the public, so it doesn't seem to hurt them too much. I feel like it would be great if more zoos varied their collections a bit, focusing on what they were in the best position to display to maximum benefit, instead of feeling that they needed the same "must haves."

I do acknowledge that Minnesota's situation is a little different, too, because of the proximity to Como Zoo, which does have a lot more of those "typical" zoo animals

 

[birdsandbats]

Minnesota has been struggling financially for years, they've very nearly closed a few times over the past few years. This may or may not be attributed to their lack of African megafauna.

 

[Daniel Sörensen]

It could be a matter of climate in Sweden (need for heated aviaries to house most birds in winter.
French (but also German, Belgian...) zoos have much richer collections of birds.

That could possibly be one of the reasons, but many species also do perfectly fine without heated housing or similar. Especially in south Sweden.

I just think one of the main reasons is that the general people in Sweden are not that interested in birds (or zoos in general actually, we have a few - nothing that exciting though. And several zoos here have been talking about bankruptcy and similar for many years), so the zoos therefore don't really want to keep birds.
My closest zoo has a large tropical greenhouse that is heated all year round (it got several aroids and other tropical plants in it that would die otherwise) with some otters, tortoises, and more. But they don't have a single bird species in this greenhouse.
They also have several other heated buildings (desert house, Asian house etc).

They also turned their large walk-through aviary with tropical birds (parrots, toucans etc) into a flamingo aviary some years ago, and their old large aviary for storks are now a hippo enclosure. They recently got rid of their last parrots (congo greys) and the only birds they have today are flamingos.
When I asked them about this their response was that they keep animals that people want to see.

We sadly don't have any bird parks in Sweden (we had, but it's now a normal zoo).

 

[MurphyFox]

For me, I would like to have a zoo to have at least one otter species or one fox species. Even better, they could have both otters and foxes