If a zoo has a nocturnal house then it is a real treat for my wife and I, as often those buildings are one of the highlights of our zoo trip. Of the many such houses that we have visited, the following two are arguably the two biggest and quite possibly two of the best in the world. Animals & Exhibits | Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo The link above is to "Kingdoms of the Night" the world's largest and possibly best nocturnal house. It is found at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, which specializes in massive zoo buildings. With over 75 animal species, including 8 species of bat, the area is .75 of an acre in size and fantastic to visit. The pool of water in the photo is actually 16 feet deep, and the world's largest indoor swamp is also part of this spectacular exhibit. Alice Springs Desert Park - The Alice Springs Desert Park houses a terrific collection of Australian animals, and is located in the dead centre of Australia. It contains the largest nocturnal house in the southern hemisphere, and after visiting it in 2007 I've often compared the park to the equally small yet brilliant Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in the U.S. The nocturnal house at the Alice Springs Desert Park is more traditional in layout, as unlike the Henry Doorly Zoo visitors are not immersed into their surroundings. However, it is still fantastic and contains many reptiles, amphibians and mammals that are not found at any zoo outside of Australia. If you go to the "Park Map" page on the website and click on "Nocturnal House" there is a 31 second video of the building and its occupants. Does anyone have any more truly world class nocturnal houses to add to these two?
I would like to suggest Chester Zoo's Twilight Zone. Not a nocturnal house in the same sense as those you have listed Snowleopard, but a fantastic house. In the lobby area, there are a few tanks for turkish spiny mice (I believe) and madagascan hissing cockroaches. Visitors then enter the 'bat cave' which is home to hundreds of free-flying bats (Rodrigues Fruit Bats, Sebas Fruit Bats and Livingstone's fruit bats) and numerous species of nocturnal fish in a lake or in a large tank in the wall. For visitors, there are a number of bat moulds located in the house, so visitors can feel what a bat's face looks like and there are even holographic images located in holes in the rock face. As people leave the building, they are able to read messages about the conservation status of numerous species of bats. Chester Zoo - Twilight Zone
'La Noche' at Faunia in Madrid is the best and biggest nocturnal house I've been to. I can't remember most of the animals that were kept in there I can just remember that I had not seen a lot of them before. From what I can remember they had a species of Owl Monkey (Aotus), pygmy slow loris, 3 European Lynx and a few different species of bat. There are many more animals in there I just do not have photographic evidence to jog my memory! All the exhibits were behind glass walls but as the entire house was nearly pitch black with very few lights at all it gave the impression that there was no glass between you and some of the exhibits. Some of the building had been built into the style of a cave. The bat exhibit was like this but had a glass tunnel running through it so you could see the bats fly above you as well as on either side. That's all I can remember, I hope someone else who has been can remember more!
Instead of falling for the ever so provocative ranking of the "best" (a rather dubious undertaking with Omaha's zoo involved )-why not make a list of all nocturnal houses/exhibits worldwide in zoos instead? Off the top of my head, I would mention: -Grzimek House, Frankfurt -Nocturnal exhibits, Berlin Zoo -New Zoo, Poznan -Papiliorama-Nocturama, Kerzers (CH) -Indonesian Nocturnal Corridor, Prague -Nocturnal/Small Mammals House, Plsen -Some exhibits in the Reptillium, Landau -Small, but kinda 'cool': African Nocturnal Hut, Jihlava -Nocturama, Antwerp -Glossophaga bats in the rainforest house, Krefeld -Fruit Bat Cave in the Villa Dracula, Munich -Bat Cave in the Borneo House, Vienna -Bat Caves in the Biodome, Montreal -"Underground Zoo", Dresden and soon the new "Underground" zoo in Osnabrueck -World of Darkness, Bronx Zoo -Zoo Saarbruecken and Erfurt Zoo -Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus -The kiwi house at Wilhelma, Stuttgart, was quite interesting, but does no longer exist; the still existing nocturnal exhibits are, similiar to several others mentioned here, upgradable.. -Twilight Cave, West Midland Safari Park-never been there, so ? -Night Safari, Singapore Not to mention zoos like Salzburg, Dvur Kralove etc. offering zoo nights a few times a year...
As far as nocturnal houses in the UK go, I can think of 4 examples I've visited. Jimmy has mentioned the Chester Twilight Zone already, which is a fantastic exhibit, but lacks the species diversity that I think would make it a truly brilliant exhibit. London Zoo's night house is also a good one, which in my first visit (2001) had some brilliant animals on display including striped possum, greater and lesser bush baby, potto and loris and panay cloudrunner. Since then some of the rarer species have left, but it's still a fairly good exhibit, if not a little out of date. The bat cave for instance, is quite small compared to Chesters. Tropical World in Leeds is a tiny collection, but it is known for a fairly good nocturnal exhibit. When we went last month they had Slow loris, Dwarf (or mouse lemur) with jumping rats, Greater Bushbaby, Egyptian Fruit Bats and Douricouli. The best night world I've been to though is that of Bristol's. It has four zones, desert, forest, underground and urban. Great species- aye aye, sugar gliders, sloth, sand cat, dwarf mongoose, slender loris, potoroo and mouse deer. The only not-so-great thing is some of the pairings- a lot of the mixed species have unnatural pairings- but that was a personal grumble about Bristol as a whole. Still a fairly nice group of exhibits.
Other U.K collections with nocturnal exhibits are Newquay Zoo,Paignton Zoo,Longleat Safari Park,Five Sisters Zoo Park and Shepreth Wildlife Park,cannot think of any others that have not already been mentioned.
I can only think of two off the top of my head that are in Australia. Healesville Sanctuary and Taronga. Although I think I can remember one at Dreamworld on the Gold Coast. All three of these only keep Australian animals. Kyabram Fauna Parks reptile house has a nocturnal section for about 7 or 8 species of reptiles and amphibians if that counts.
I loved the one in Frankfurt, one of the best ones in my opinion Berlin's one is not bad at all as well also woodland park zoo had a realy nice one and Bronx zoo is defintly one that i will remember
Antwerp's zoo renovated night house is perhaps the best. With lots of space for each species. There is also demonstration of one-of-a-kind program of training Gambian giant pouched rats as sniffers of landmines. 2nd an 3rd place could go to Nocturnorama in Kerzers, Switzerland, and Grzimek house in Frankfurt. For the completeness: - Amersfoort has small night house realised as walk-thru rooms, but overall its small. - Emmen's night room is nice, but aged a little. Overall, I don't remember anything which really was outstanding. Maybe this type of exhibit could be reinvented?
Perth, Adelaide and Territory WP all have good-sized noc houses. The two older zoos held a nice range of exotics in the past that are sadly no longer in the country - hairy armadillo, thick-tailed and senegal bushbaby, european hedgehog, owl monkey, pallas cat, springhaas, slender loris. Now mostly native species, only slow loris and sloth (off the top of my head). Just remembered that there was (may still exist) a place in Northern Queensland which was called something like the Noctalarium. There was a large room with a number of species which you could walk-through aka. Chester's Bat Twilight room.
Marwell Zoo has a very small nocturnal house, but it has been closed for god knows how long now. From memory, the species I saw in there when it was last open (about early 2008) were African Dormice, Arabian Spiny Mice, Steppe Lemmings, Kowari, and one of my favourite animals at the park, Basil the Brush-Tailed Possum.
if that's the one that was at Kuranda, just out of Cairns, its gone now, apparently due to some sort of corruption scandal (so the local gossip-mongers told me). On the site now is the "Venom Zoo" displaying spiders, snakes, etc
It's interesting to see how rare nocturnal houses actually are in the U.S., even with hundreds of zoos all across the country. Not counting the odd bat cave here and there, I could only find 13 zoos with nocturnal houses. There might be a few more kicking around at minor zoos, but these buildings are difficult to come by. Bronx, Philadelphia (wing of small mammal house), Woodland Park, Omaha, Memphis, Fort Worth (small building in "Texas Wild!"), Brookfield (Aussie house is darkened), Cincinnati, Columbus (Aussie house), Milwaukee County, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (small number of species), Rio Grande Zoo and San Diego Zoo (kiwi birds). Of those 13 establishments I've actually visited 10 of them, and in reality the zoos with fairly large nocturnal houses equals these 5 zoos. I've ranked them in order of their nocturnal houses. #1 Omaha #2 Woodland Park #3 Bronx #4 Memphis #5 Cincinnati
The LA zoo has two dark buildings in the Children's Zoo. The "Desert Trail" and the cave by the ocelot and pelican exhibits. They are not necessarily nocturnal houses, but they are dark.
NZ has nocturnal houses all over the place, at least 15 of them (of which I've seen 9). Of course almost all of them house only kiwi and moreporks. The best (for both the kiwi's welfare and visitor viewing) is at the Southern Encounter Aquarium, the worst are surely (from the point of view of the welfare of the kiwi) Willowbank and (from the visitor viewpoint) Wellington Zoo. The nocturnal house at Nga Manu houses not only kiwi but also various other night beasties such as weasels, possums etc. Outside of NZ I've been to nocturnal houses at Healesville in Australia (very good with lots of nice native mammals), Jurong Bird Park in Singapore (VERY small enclosures for owls and other night birds: I'd rate it about 4 out of 10), Dusit Zoo in Bangkok (big enclosures but almost totally devoid of enrichment), Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand (good selection of small Asian mammals in reasonably-sized enclosures but most were asleep as the designers did not appear to have realised that being nocturnal meant being in the dark!). The best of all the nocturnal houses I've been to was the Grzimek House at Frankfurt in 2004 -- large selection of interesting species, mostly good enclosures, etc. My personal view on nocturnal houses is that while they are one of my favourite parts of a zoo (just because I love nocturnal animals) I always have to feel sorry for the houses' inhabitants. Nocturnal animals in general are of a much more nervous disposition than diurnal ones and get stressed very easily by too much noise, and very few nocturnal houses have any sort of visitor control other than a few signs asking people to keep quiet and not to use flash photography. And we all know how many visitors read signs (or obey them if they do). Apart from that there is also the issue of space. It is unfortunately very common to see nocturnal animals in completely inadequately-sized enclosures. An example mentioned a while ago on another thread was that if a similarly-sized diurnal lemur was kept in an enclosure the size of one that aye-ayes are often kept in then there would be an outcry. The attitude in zoos often seems to be that because the enclosure is dark then it can be much smaller because the size isn't so obvious to the average visitor. Just my opinions.
