As someone who has visited a tremendous number of zoos in the United States, it seems to me that great apes are fairly common inhabitants, and thus found in a great variety of zoos. Out of curiosity I decided to see which of the great apes is more common in major American zoos, and to no surprise the gorilla won the battle. My starting point was the book America's Best Zoos (2008: Nyhuis & Wassner), and I went through the 60 zoos to figure out which ones held either gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees or bonobos. I've visited 59 out of the top 60 zoos (only missing Honolulu) and so I've actually seen the exhibits with my own eyes, but please feel free to point out any errors in my calculations as animal collections are an ever-changing form. Some of the zoos below have tentative plans to add great apes to the collection in the near future, but I only included one (Indianapolis) that was already under construction and therefore guaranteed. Gorillas are found in 41 of America's top 60 zoos: National, Bronx, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, DAK, Miami, Busch Gardens, Atlanta, Louisville, North Carolina, Riverbanks, Knoxville, Memphis, Audubon, Oklahoma City, Gladys Porter, Dallas, Fort Worth, Brookfield, Lincoln Park, Detroit, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, Milwaukee County, Sedgwick County, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Omaha, Cheyenne Mountain, Denver, Rio Grande, Utah's Hogle, SDZ Safari Park, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Woodland Park. Orangutans are found in 36 of America's top 60 zoos: National, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Miami, Busch Gardens, Lowry Park, Atlanta, Louisville, Memphis, Audubon, Oklahoma City, Gladys Porter, Fort Worth, Houston, Brookfield, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis (2014), Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Milwaukee County, Sedgwick County, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Omaha, Phoenix, Cheyenne Mountain, Denver, Rio Grande, Utah's Hogle, Los Angeles, Oregon, San Diego, Honolulu and Woodland Park. Chimpanzees are found in 23 of America's top 60 zoos: Miami, Maryland, Montgomery, Busch Gardens, Lowry Park, North Carolina, Knoxville, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Gladys Porter, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Detroit, Lincoln Park, Sedgwick County, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Rio Grande, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco and Oregon. Bonobos are found in only 7 of America's top 60 zoos: Cincinnati, Columbus, Fort Worth, Jacksonville, Memphis, Milwaukee County and San Diego. There are 8 zoos out of the 60 with zero great apes: Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Binder Park, Caldwell, Minnesota, Nashville, Point Defiance, Roger Williams Park and San Antonio. (Minnesota has long-term plans to include orangutans in the collection.) There are 15 zoos that have gorillas, orangutans and either chimpanzees or bonobos: Miami, Busch Gardens, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Gladys Porter, Fort Worth, Cincinnati, Columbus, Milwaukee County, Sedgwick County, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Rio Grande, Los Angeles and San Diego. Lastly, there is a single zoo with gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos: Fort Worth.
Lowry Park has long-term plans to include Gorillas and Bonobos in addition to their current collection of Orangutans and Chimpanzees. On a side-note, in addition to these animal face-offs that you've been doing, to do a "Battle of the Bears", where you compare the numbers of each species of bear in U.S. zoos.
Wow, didn't know that Fort Worth had gorillas, orangs, chimps, and Bonobos! lol Binder Park has nothing! No Great Apes, no Lions or Tigers, and no Meerkats or otters! ~Thylo
We believe we read somewhere that Indianapolis eventually plans to exhibit more great apes in addition to Orangs. Team Tapir223
- I believe that the 7 zoos that I listed with bonobos are the only 7 in the United States with the species. - There are always rumors of zoos adding great apes to their collection, and Houston at least has announced with certainty that they will become the 42nd zoo to have gorillas out of the top 60 facilities. I don't think that any zoos are planning to phase out gorillas, and the only possibility in that category could be Cleveland as the Primate, Cat & Aquatics Building is for the most part an ancient disaster. What is interesting is that there is a grand total of 107 exhibits for either gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees or bonobos in the United States in the major 60 zoos, and only 6 of the enclosures are entirely indoors. How times have changed! Gorillas can be found with zero access to the great outdoors in only Brookfield and Buffalo, while orangutans can be found with zero access to an outdoor exhibit in Brookfield, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Cleveland. Chimpanzees and bonobos always have access to outdoor areas. It just goes to show how badly outdated the all-indoor enclosures are (especially Tropic World) but at least there are only 6 of them left out of 107. Birmingham, Racine and Toronto are other zoos that are in North America that have all-indoor orangutan exhibits, while Franklin Park has an all-indoor gorilla exhibit. At least the truly crappy great ape enclosures have been weeded out and these days around 95% of them offer an outdoor environment. The zoos that still keep gorillas and orangutans entirely indoors should be ashamed of themselves. Those zoos represent about 5% of the zoological establishments on the continent, and they should either send their great apes away or begin a capital campaign to modernize the habitats.
Although possible we would feel its highly unlikely that Cleveland would phase out Gorillas and or the rest of its vast primate collection. A-Primate Forest is part of the zoos masterplan which it appears as though they are continuing to follow. B-Newly appointed Zoo director Dr.Chris Kuhar has primate background. We agree with you that the Primate Cat and Aquatics Building is one one the worst facilities in North America and we're not sure why its not more of a priority.A new facility could however mean scaling back the collection and focusing on quality over quantity. Team Tapir223
It would be interesting to compare this breakdown of the US Ape-keeping Zoos with that of the European Zoos- I imagine there would be similarities. Without ISIS being available publicly anymore/at present, its not quite so easy to do as it would have been previously. Anyone prepared to do it?
I think i can do it using the "What Zoos Can Do" Book. The only problem is the date of the info, becuase the book was published in 2010.
This is the data according to ZIMS so it should be current. Institutions holding the different orangutan species as well as "generic" may be the same, for example the National Zoo in Washington DC has both generic and Bornean orangutans. North America Gorilla: 46 institutions (135.147.13) Orangutan (generic): 23 institutions (19.25) Orangutan (Bornean): 19 institutions (25.41) Orangutan (Sumatran): 24 institutions (31.38.2) Chimpanzee: 37 institutions (88.157.3) Bonobo: 7 institutions (30.43) Europe Gorilla: 60 institutions (186.234.2) Orangutan (generic): 10 institutions (6.11.1) Orangutan (Bornean): 30 institutions (57.87) Orangutan (Sumatran): 26 institutions (49.78) Chimpanzee: 80 institutions (177.300.1) Bonobo: 10 institutions (40.58.2)
From my zoo going experiece in mexico the great ape situation would be more or less the following: gorillas: Chapultepec 1 male bantu, born at Chapultepec, Zacango, 1 female arila, wild born, arrived young from Spain. Guadalajara, elder female chencha, wild born with 2 female young born at Guadalajara. Orangutan, Chapultepec, jambi and toto, hybrid males born at Chapultepec, Zooleon, 2 females, 1 male born at U.S. zoos, do not know which ones. Zacango, 1 male guero, a hybrid from Philadelphia, Guadalajara zoo, 2 females, 1 male, 1 juvenile, the adults are from the Taiwan zoo, Guadalajara has the only breeding group in Mexico. Chimpanzees, Africam safari, 9 chimps in mexico largest breeding group and the best exhibit, i do not know sex ratio, the founders came from U.S. zoos. Morelia zoo, 1 male, 2 females, one very elderly, 1 juvenile, this zoo has a very good breeding record for chimps. Chapultepec, 1 male, from frankfurt, 2 females, from U.S,, San Juan de Aragon, 2 males confiscated from mexican circus, Zacango, 2 males confiscated from mexican circus, ZooLeon, 1 male, 2 females, from U.S. zoos, Zoofari, cannot find information on their group. Guadalajara, 1 male and 1 female from AFRICAM, and 1 juvenile born at Guadalajara.There may still be elderly confiscated circus chimps at Culiacan or Merida zoos. Bonobos, Morelia zoo, 1 male and 1 female, i could not find information on their origen.
The Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary (formerly known as The Great Ape Trust) has 6 bonobos. They are now open to the public every Sunday and Monday for a 90 minute tour. It is limited to 25 people and you must make reservations. The sanctuary is home to the famous bonobo Kanzi, who uses lexigrams to communicate.
The Franklin Park Zoo ( in boston )has an all-indoor gorilla exhibit, but it isn't bad at all. That being said, it also isn't excellent either. It is the largest all-indoor gorilla exhibit in the US. The zoo used to have an outdoor area as well, but then a gorilla named Little Joe escaped 3 times so they had to close off the outdoor area and do construction on the indoor area. There were ideas to make a new outdoor area but the Franklin Park Zoo struggles a lot with budget. If the zoo got rid of their gorillas, their attendance would drop dramatically. Gorillas are basically the cornerstone of the zoo. Every bad online review of the Franklin Park Zoo says that everything was going downhill until they saw the gorillas. The gorillas area all very content and extremely well bonded. My only qualm is there are 3 silverbacks and only 2 adult females (and one is very geriatric). There are also 3 juveniles, 2 females and one who was born so recently that they still do not know its gender. The gorillas also seem to be much less arboreal than gorillas in other zoos (I know gorillas don't live in trees, but they still seem to climb on structures much less than gorillas I have seen at other zoos). I am confident that at some point the zoo will stop having all of these budget problems and build a new outdoor gorilla habitat.
That is faint praise considering the fact that only Franklin Park, Buffalo and Brookfield have all-indoor gorilla exhibits. Those are the last three holdouts and I agree that if I had to choose the best from the pitiful list I would go with Franklin Park. Considering that the United States has a wealth of above average outdoor gorilla habitats it seems particularly disappointing that those three zoos all keep the apes inside year-round. Buffalo also receives disdain for having one of the nation's absolute worst elephant exhibits as well!
It's not like the zoo thinks its ok to keep the gorillas in all year round. They wanted to build an outdoor facility but they always struggle with money for every project they have done. It took them 3 years to raise 6.6 million dollars for a children's zoo.
Does anybody know about the current situation with the chimpanzee and bonobo populations? Does it look like any facilities will add them/phase them out in the near future? The bonobo population is smaller than that of the other great apes, I would think the SSP wants to grow their numbers substantially.
Huh, I would've expected more zoos to have chimps than gorillas. I guess gorillas are more popular, but in captivity as a whole, (not just top zoos) chimps are more common. Well, I guess part of it is because you probably need to be a pretty high ranking zoo to take care of gorillas, and they're such popular animals, you might as well get them if you can have them.
I don't know about the chimpanzee populations. There are 84 bonobos in 7 zoos and 5 bonobos at the Iowa Primate Learning Center. Of the 36 males in the zoos, 19 are breeding, 6 are non breeders (4 are sterile), and 11 are not reproductive age. Of the females in zoos 19 are breeding, 15 are not breeding (2014 SSP recommendations, 1 sterile) and 14 are not reproductive age. One female was pregnant in 2014 so there might be 85 bonobos in zoos. Does anyone know if there is a new baby in Milwaukee?
