Just around the corner from the very good and modern Shanghai Ocean Aquarium is a place which is the exact opposite. If you want to see the kind of place people think of when they hear the words “Chinese zoo” but only have time to visit one city, then this is it. I just had a look on Tripadvisor and the phrase “horror show of helpless animals” was used to describe it. I've seen worse zoos before (Jong's Crocodile Farm in Borneo springs to mind first and foremost) but never a worse entirely-indoors collection. It has a nice entrance archway on the street; the cost of visiting is 60 Yuan which is considerably cheaper than the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium (160 Yuan) but also greatly more than it should be considering the state of the place. You know how some places start off with a good impression and then go downhill? This is not one of those places. The first exhibit is (rather bizarrely) a spotted seal swimming back and forth in a tiny dirty bathtub of a tank. It is actually the very worst of many bad exhibits in the zoo. I probably should have turned around right then but I kept on going. There's a sort of conservatory after the seal which looks like it should be filled with butterflies but isn't. If it was, and if the seal wasn't there beforehand, it would make a very good first exhibit. Instead there are koi and giant gouramis in pools along the walkway, another pool “literally” paved with freshwater stingrays, obscenely tiny pools for a saltwater crocodile and a common snapping turtle, and some weird little wooden “houses” with glass fronts for Madagascar day gecko, Carolina anole, veiled chameleon and Chinese flying frog, and small glass tanks for tiger salamanders and land hermit crabs. Then there is the snake section. Two tall glass cases but with little ground area for Burmese pythons (including an albino), a wall of tiny “pet-shop-style” tanks for about two dozen species and varieties of kingsnakes, milksnakes and cornsnakes, and some similar but larger tanks for pythons and boas (green tree boa, royal python and rainbow boa). All of these are those sort of tanks which have something like vermiculite on the floor and a bowl of water and that's it. Also here are not too small but not large cages for common marmosets which are sort of not horrible but not at all nice either, if that makes sense. Now you might be forgiven for thinking “seal, lizards, snakes, marmosets ..... Insect Kingdom?” But now you have come to the insect corridor.....er, fronted with two tiny cages for sugar gliders which did not look well! Some of the insects didn't look well either. One of the beetles was plainly dead and posed to look alive, and another (live one) was infested with mites. For an Insect Kingdom there was a distinct lack of invertebrates really. There was a selection of “horned beetles” (stag beetles, hercules beetles, that sort of thing), three species of field crickets behind magnifying glass which was a nice touch, diving beetles, stick insects, a scorpion and a tarantula and that was it. From memory the corridor had maybe 12 or 15 tanks. Here I was thinking that this was the end of the place, ten or fifteen minutes and I'm done, nothing more to see.....but at the end of the corridor was a set of stairs going down, the walls lined with model tree trunks and roots, and a sign saying “More Wonderful Downstairs”. The place just kept on going! I think they used a different dictionary than me to get the word “wonderful” though. At the bottom of the stairs was an unpleasant smell, an unclean mammal smell. To my left was a maze of tiny chelonian tanks. The sign proclaimed they had 80 species (I counted 43 which is still a hefty number!) but all of them, no matter what their size, were in near-identical tiny wood-and-glass display boxes consisting of a bit of shallow water and a cemented-gravel land area. It was so sad because you only need to watch a turtle or tortoise for ten minutes to see how active they can be and how they love roaming around exploring. Between the tanks there were often mirrored walls which was a little disorientating when sidling between them. I will put the species list at the end. One thing I will say is that the owner is obviously a real reptile enthusiast to have such a collection. Every species had a name label with additional information, and the scientific names were all accurate (although I have updated a couple) except for a couple of typos here and there (e.g. wentatus instead of cruentatus). Moving on past a goldfish-feeding pool and a display of stuffed former inmates (including five slow lorises and a giant flying squirrel!) I found a long corridor of lizard terrariums. Now these wouldn't necessarily be considered bad – they weren't too small, for example, and might even be typical of what are seen in many zoos – but very few of them were at all suitable for what they were housing and despite the tanks themselves mostly not being small the lizards inside them were often too large for the space (especially the monitors and tegus). Unfortunately, also, many of the lizards were not in the best of health. Some were clearly skinny, some had odd growths on them, a couple appeared to be having trouble shedding skin, and all the tegus were repulsively obese. At the end of the lizard corridor I was back at the bottom of the stairs where the turtles were. The mammal section was here (so when coming down those stairs, the turtles were to your left and the mammals to your right), and this of course is where the bad smell was coming from. This was a bit harder to stomach than any of the reptile sections simply because they are mammals and it is easier to empathise with mammals than reptiles. Tiny tiny cages for chinchillas and a Siberian chipmunk in a bird cage were the worst. Disgustingly the chipmunk had a sign on its cage where the English part of the translation read “The Siberian chipmunk has become a pet, but needs a lot of room for climbing and should have covered space to retreat.” Next to the chipmunk was a large aviary-style cage for a Pallas' squirrel, and there were two more of these for a slow loris and a European eagle owl of all things. At the end of the mammal section, past the guinea pig and rabbit pens and another little pen for two goats, was a long “aviary” for Leschenault's fruit bats which being a small species probably came off best out of every species in the Kingdom. Heading away from the mammals back towards the turtles I passed a miniscule tank for a baby saltwater crocodile and a row of frog tanks (which included a Budgett's frog, a species I don't recall having seen before in real life). Trying to find the exit I instead found another room of animals. The place was like a maze!! This room was part museum (lots of pinned insects) but also had a row of tanks for tarantulas, giant centipedes, glow-worms and giant cockroaches, and a really cool set of very nice aquariums for about a dozen different species of freshwater crayfish from around the world. Those crayfish tanks were probably the only nice thing in the building. Eventually I found the exit (through a gift shop) and ran away.
Chelonians: *Hermann's tortoise Testudo hermanni *Horsfield's tortoise Agrionemys horsfieldii *African spurred tortoise Geochelone sulcata *Indian star tortoise Geochelone elegans *Leopard tortoise Geochelone pardalis *Red-footed tortoise Geochelone carbonaria *Radiated tortoise Astrochelys radiata *Forsten's tortoise Indotestudo forstenii *Elongated tortoise Indotestudo elongata *Bell's hingeback tortoise Kinixys belliana *Bornean river turtle Orlitia borneensis *Giant Asian pond turtle Heosemys grandis *Yellow-margined box turtle Cuora flavomarginata *Indochinese box turtle Cuora galbinifrons *Stripe-necked leaf turtle Cyclemys tcheponensis (now C. oldhamii) *Painted wood turtle Rhinoclemmys pulcherrima *Indian black turtle Melanochelys trijuga *Beal's eyed turtle Sacalia bealei *Reeves' turtle Mauremys (Chinemys) reevesii *Yellow pond turtle Mauremys mutica *Pritchard's pond turtle Mauremys pritchardi *Caspian turtle Mauremys caspica *European pond turtle Emys orbicularis *Cuban slider Trachemys decussata *False map turtle Graptemys pseudogeographica *Eastern box turtle Terrapene carolina carolina *Three-toed box turtle Terrapene carolina triunguis *Mexican musk turtle Staurotypus triporcatus *Loggerhead musk turtle Sternotherus minor *Razor-backed musk turtle Sternotherus carinatus *Yellow mud turtle Kinosternon flavescens *Common musk turtle Kinosternon odoratum *Red-cheeked mud turtle Kinosternon scorpioides cruentatum *Alligator snapper Macrochelys temminckii *Common snapper Chelydra serpentina *African helmeted turtle Pelomedusa subrufa *Siebenrock's snakeneck turtle Chelodina siebenrocki *Twist-necked turtle Platemys platycephala *Jardine River turtle Emydura subglobosa *Toad-headed turtle Phrynops gibbus *Matamata Chelus fimbriatus *Pig-nosed turtle Carettochelys insculpta *Spiny softshell turtle Apalone spinifera Lizards: *Madagascar day gecko Phelsuma madagascariensis grandis *Standing's day gecko Phelsuma standingi *Leopard gecko Eublepharis macularius *White-spotted gecko Tarentola annularis *Bibron's gecko Pachydactylus bibronii *African fat-tailed gecko Hemitheconyx caudicinctus *Wonder gecko Teratoscincus scincus *Tokay gecko Gekko gecko *Golden gecko Gekko ulikovskii *Many-lined sun skink Eutropis (Mabuya) multifasciata *Common bluetongue Tiliqua scincoides *Green iguana Iguana iguana *Black spiny-tailed iguana Ctenosaura similes *Michoacan dwarf spiny-tailed iguana Ctenosaura clarki *Plumed basilisk Basiliscus plumifrons *Giant ameiva Ameiva ameiva *Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis *Long-nosed leopard lizard Gambelia wislizenii *Merrem's Madagascar swift Oplurus cyclurus *Black and white tegu Tupinambis merianae *Red tegu Tupinambis rufescens *Blue tegu Tupinambis sp. *Ocellated lizard Timon (Lacerta) lepidus *Niger uromastyx Uromastyx geyri *Sudan plated lizard Gerrhosaurus major *Bearded dragon Pogona vitticeps *Frill-necked lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii *Philippine sailfin lizard Hydrosaurus pustulatus *Common butterfly lizard Leiolepis belliana *Gould's monitor Varanus gouldii *Water monitor Varanus salvator *Crocodile monitor Varanus salvadorii *Timor monitor Varanus timorensis *Blue-tailed monitor Varanus doreanus *Savannah monitor Varanus exanthematicus *Veiled chameleon Chamaeleo calyptratus Snakes and others: *About two dozen species and colour morphs of milksnakes, kingsnakes and cornsnakes, but I didn't note the specific names. *Green tree python Morelia viridis *Royal (Ball) python Python regius *Burmese python Python bivittatus *Rainbow boa Epicrates cenchria *Chinese alligator Alligator sinensis *Saltwater crocodile Crocodylus porosus *Tiger salamander Ambystoma tigrinum *Chinese flying frog Polypedates dennysi *Asian toad Bufo gargarizans *Painted toad Kaloula pulchra *African bullfrog Pyxicephalus adspersus *Clawed toad Xenopus laevis *Horned frog Ceratophrys ornata *Budgett's frog Lepidobatrachus laevis *White's tree frog Litoria caerulea
I just realised that their chelonian collection is probably larger (in number of species) than the Live Turtle And Tortoise Museum in Singapore.
Thanks for taking one for the team and going where none of the rest of us will ever need to go now that we have you review. As China develops I wonder if there will eventually be a PETA type group there to shut places like this down?
I hope they don't get a PETA type group, but there are animal welfare groups in China. This is one place that needs to be not necessarily shut down, but certainly restricted in what and how it displays and keeps animals!! It would be fine as an actual insect zoo, such as on Sentosa Island in Singapore. Baboon might be able to tell us how the laws around displaying zoo animals work in China?
Thanks Chlidonias for this review and lets hope husbandry will inprove in this place because as TLD said, there are a lot of intresting animal kept there !
Thank you for the fascinating review, and the chelonian collection is outstanding. Unfortunately, as your photos show with clarity, the entire "zoo" is ramshackle at best.
Before seal, they used to have ferrets in the tank (even odder?). I've been there twice, and it looks more like a private collection to me-Most species they have can be seen in pet stores, and based on what I saw last time, at least part of their animals are bought directly from online pet stores. Well, if you think this is a “Chinese zoo”, then it seems you haven't seen a real “Chinese zoo”. The reptile houses in some zoos are far worse than here. And sadly, i don't think there is a law or group that could help them currently. (The law is probably more for public zoos and larger animals, and those animal welfare groups mainly focus on cats&dogs)
one thing I find unusual, is if you go to the Tripadvisor reviews for this place, the first three are terrible but below those there's a mix of awful and glowing! And from the same time periods so it isn't like the place has gone downhill in between. And the glowing reviews are from tourists from places like Australia!! They say things like "great place for kids" and go on about how it is great there is such a range of animals there..... Sad.
Had to check this claim out! You said they had 43 species, but listed 42, and that included two subspecies, so 41 species total. My list from Live Turtle & Tortoise Museum has 43 species! So its very close! Around half of the species (roughly) are at both collections.
I knew you would I have just been sitting here for ten minutes trying to figure out my number discrepancy! The 43 figure I got by counting up the list in my notebook, which was scientific names only, but there were indeed only 42 on the list I posted here. I went through my notebook list over and over trying to see where I had gone wrong -- turned out I had missed off elongated tortoise from the list here (because there was Geochelone elegans and Indotestudo elongata and my brain was obviously skipping over one because of the similarity of the specific names). So 43 taxa, 42 species. And both places claim much larger numbers than they actually have!
Haha! It seems almost all zoos claim that they have a larger number of species than they actually do (at least on display), guess its a marketing thing.
I visited yesterday. Thankfully the seals have been replaced with Chinese alligators. Other differences are an absence of live insects from the final gallery, the addition of Eurasian red squirrels (presumably where the Pallas's were before) and no lorises. I don't think it has improved since your visit, but somehow it was better than I expected. As @boar said above, it's really no worse than the reptile house of an averagely poor Chinese zoo (think Nanjing). Still atrocious in parts, but, perhaps sadly, not egregiously so.
Just as a little titbit whist I trawl the Chinese fora on a long coach trip, I noticed that at Tama's universally lauded Insectarium one can also find clearly dead insects still in enclosures (well, technically insect singular. It was a huge Hercules Beetle which I assume they hadn't been able to replace - no excuse of course).
Photos from this visit have finally made it to the gallery. Shanghai Natural Wild Insect Kingdom - ZooChat
