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Chiang Mai Zoo Chiang Mai Zoo visit 28 March 2014 (and Species List)

Discussion in 'Thailand' started by Chlidonias, 28 Mar 2014.

  1. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    My last visit to the Chiang Mai Zoo was in 2006 so I don't have any really clear recollections of it apart for bits and pieces like the steep sloping steps on the paths (still there!) and various individual animals like Fea's muntjac.

    Chiang Mai Zoo is a very large zoo, and very steep in places. Unfortunately there is a lot (and I mean A LOT!) of walking through totally animal-less parts. There would be signs that said things like “Orangutans, 3.862km”! You can take your own vehicles in to get around, and there is also a shuttle bus, but I did it on foot. There is a bit of construction and renovation work going on here and there so some animals were not visible, including the whole Small Cats area (it seems like every zoo I've been to lately has been in the middle of a construction phase!). It is also one of those zoos – common to most larger Asian zoos – where there is no good route to take without having to back-track constantly in order to see everything, and when you've finished you feel like you have surely missed something somewhere. The centre of the zoo is a real tangle of paths and even though there were quite a lot of visitors I was often the only person in some areas because they simply weren't marked well enough on either the paper map or the signboards. There were quite a lot of empty, blocked-off, abandoned, being-renovated enclosures everywhere, and sometimes I would feel like I was in an area I wasn't supposed to be.

    Entry to the zoo is 150 Baht (about NZ$6). If you want to see the giant pandas then that's an extra 100 Baht (I have seen plenty of boring pandas inChina so I did not take that option). There is a new Aquarium at the zoo (the small old one is closed up and blocked off), but that costs a whopping 450 Baht to enter so I passed on that with a little reluctance (I have little money left and for a comparison my room in Chiang Mai costs me 200 Baht per night).

    It is a pretty good zoo. Most of the enclosures and cages could benefit from being larger but few of them are too small. There is a large African Savannah exhibit with waterbuck, giraffes, ostriches and scimitar-horned oryx which is good. There are also large enclosure for Asian ungulates (banteng and deer) which have walkways overhead for viewing. The Big Cats are housed in average-sized enclosures (not too small); the bears are in quite small “pit-style” enclosures and same for the macaques (more “grotto-style” for them), and while not good neither are as bad as in many other Asian zoos. The orangutan enclosure was large and well-supplied with climbing structures and trees, and the gibbons were all on planted islands (although without a lot of proper brachiation structures for them). The worst mammal enclosures were in the Zoo Kid Zone. This is something that frustrates me – even when a zoo is professing to be providing excellent housing and developing the other enclosures, in the kids' zoos the animals are regularly housed in very small cages. What does that teach the children viewing them? Here the porcupines and meerkats were in tiny concrete pits, but much worse were a slow loris and (an unseen) small-toothed palm civet in cages which can only be described as hutches. The civet cage would have been little wider than the total body length of the animal. Just a terrible shame. On the hopeful side there is a lot of construction going on next to this area and on the fencing were artists' impressions of the future kids zoo which is being built. None of the pictures showed enclosures as far as I could interpret them, but fingers crossed for better conditions there. The koalas are also in the Zoo Kid Zone I might add, and they are housed fine (it appeared to be entirely indoors, and the viewing was through glass, but they might have had a section of open roof?). There were five koalas, including one born there.

    I realised as I was writing this that in 2006 I saw a Nocturnal House at the zoo (which from memory had mostly outside enclosures so not really a Nocturnal House at all!). I did not see this at all today. I can't remember where in the zoo it was situated.

    There are many extremely large aviaries scattered around the zoo. Some are walk-throughs (including the VERY large Nakhonping Bird Park) and others are not. Some seemed almost wasted – for example, there would be a whopping great aviary which could have housed something like hornbills and all that would be in it would be a few peafowl. The hornbills, I might add, were mostly in tall narrow cages (sort of “cylinder-style” but not quite). The storks and cranes all had very large aviaries and most appeared to be nesting which is good. The flamingoes had several juveniles in the flock so they are obviously breeding as well. Lots of pheasants in small bare aviaries as is common unfortunately. The aviaries labelled on the map signboards as being for “Wild Birds” (in 2006 these aviaries included rufous treepies amongst their inhabitants) were now just housing pheasants.

    There is a large new building being finished which will house king penguins. I'm not sure when exactly but there were banners up saying “coming soon”. Possibly the current Humboldt's penguins might move over there too. What was nice was that even though the building was still being furnished (construction itself has finished) visitors were allowed inside to view it. The ground floor is devoted to mammoths for some inexplicable reason, and the centre attraction is a not-even-nearly-life-size mammoth reconstruction. Upstairs is the above-water viewing for the penguins (through glass) and downstairs – basement level – is the underwater viewing. It looks good, but I really think they should have made the penguins' living space much larger.

    The reptile area is mostly the same as last visit, with outdoor concrete-walled enclosures. Lots of different chelonians on display.
     
  2. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    SPECIES LIST

    *Only what I saw when I was there, or which was labelled as being present in cages.

    *”[did not see]” means I could not see the animal in the enclosure (as opposed to seeing the name on the map but not being able to find the cage!)


    MAMMALS:

    *Asiatic Elephant

    *Indian Rhinoceros (just one, the only one in Thailand apparently)
    *Common Zebra
    *Domestic Pony

    *Giraffe
    *Common Hippopotamus
    *Pigmy Hippopotamus
    *Arabian Camel
    *Llama
    *Common Waterbuck
    *Common Eland
    *Scimitar-horned Oryx
    *Nilgai
    *Banteng
    *Domestic Goat
    *Domestic Sheep
    *Barbary Sheep
    *Serow [did not see]
    *Lesser Mouse Deer
    *Sambar
    *Rusa [I think; they were unlabelled but looked like rusa]
    *Eld's Deer
    *Fallow Deer
    *Spotted (Axis) Deer
    *Hog Deer [did not see]
    *Common Muntjac (including an albino)
    *Fea's Muntjac (still just one, possibly the same one I saw in 2006)

    *African Lion
    *Tiger (white and orange)
    *Jaguar
    *Leopard [did not see]
    *Clouded Leopard [off-display]
    *Asian Golden Cat [off-display]
    *Jungle Cat [off-display]
    *Fishing Cat [off-display]
    *Leopard Cat [off-display]
    *Giant Panda [did not pay extra to see them]
    *Malayan Sun Bear
    *Asiatic Black Bear
    *Spotted Hyaena [did not see]
    *Binturong [on a signboard map but I couldn't find the cage]
    *Small-toothed (Three-striped) Palm Civet [did not see]
    *Small-clawed Otter [did not see]
    *Meerkat [did not see (didn't really look to be honest!)]
    *Cape Fur Seal [only visible during show times]

    *Capybara
    *Mara
    *Lowland Paca [did not see]
    *Malayan Crested Porcupine
    *Domestic Rabbit

    *Orangutan [did not see]
    *White-handed Gibbon
    *White-cheeked Gibbon
    *Agile Gibbon
    *Red-shanked Douc
    *Assamese Macaque
    *Rhesus Macaque
    *Northern Pig-tailed Macaque
    *Crab-eating (Long-tailed) Macaque
    *Stump-tailed Macaque
    *Squirrel Monkey [on the map but I missed them]
    *Common Marmoset [on a signboard map but off-display due to construction]
    *Ring-tailed Lemur
    *Brown Lemur [did not see]
    *Slow Loris

    *Koala (five)


    BIRDS:

    *Ostrich
    *Emu (lots!!! – the Australian area houses at least 25 emus and nothing else!)

    *Humboldt's Penguin
    *[King Penguin (“coming soon”)]

    *Mute Swan
    *Black Swan
    *Chinese Goose (white)
    *Lesser Whistling Duck [did not see]

    *Greater Flamingo

    *Spot-billed Pelican

    *Grey Crowned Crane
    *Sarus Crane

    *Painted Stork
    *Woolly-necked Stork

    *Oriental Black-headed Ibis
    *Glossy Ibis

    *Grey Heron
    *Black-crowned Night Heron

    *Grey-headed Fish-eagle
    *White-bellied Sea Eagle
    *Changeable Hawk-eagle
    *Crested Serpent-eagle
    *Black Kite
    *Brahminy Kite

    *[looking back, I saw an owl drawing on a signboard map but never saw any owls!]

    *Green Peafowl
    *Blue Peafowl
    *Great Argus
    *Siamese Fireback
    *Ring-necked Pheasant
    *Kalij
    *Silver Pheasant
    *Golden Pheasant
    *Lady Amherst's Pheasant
    *Red Junglefowl
    *Domestic Chicken
    *Chestnut-necklaced Partridge (Arborophila chloropus) [did not see]
    *Vulturine Guineafowl

    *Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
    *Umbrella Cockatoo
    *Cockatiel [did not see]
    *Blue and Gold Macaw
    *Sun Conure [on a signboard map but off-display]
    *African Grey Parrot (LOTS! I counted at least sixty-eight of them, in five aviaries!!)
    *Peach-faced Lovebird (mutations)
    *Indian Ringneck (one blue one seen)
    *Alexandrine [did not see]
    *Chattering Lory
    *Green-naped Lorikeet

    *Victoria Crowned Pigeon
    *Nicobar Pigeon
    *Pied Imperial Pigeon [did not see]
    *Green Imperial Pigeon [did not see]
    *Emerald Dove [did not see]

    *Red-billed Hornbill
    *Trumpeter Hornbill
    *Great Hornbill
    *Rhinoceros Hornbill
    *Wreathed Hornbill
    *White-crowned Hornbill

    *some kind of Touraco flew past me in one of the walk-through aviaries

    *Black-naped Oriole
    *Hill Mynah [did not see]
    *Golden-crested Mynah [did not see]
    *Blue Whistling Thrush [did not see]


    *Jackwow has photos in the gallery from last year of Von der Decken's Hornbill, Chiloe Wigeon, White-cheeked Pintail, Moluccan Cockatoo, Red-billed Blue Magpie and a Pond Heron sp.


    REPTILES:

    (Several empty enclosures and tanks)

    *Siamese Crocodile
    *False Gharial
    *Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman

    *Water Monitor
    *Savannah Monitor
    *Green Iguana
    *Sudan Plated Lizard (Gerrhosaurus major)

    *Burmese Python
    *unlabelled tanks which looked like Corn and King Snakes
    *Monocled Cobra (Naja kaouthia)

    *Giant Tortoise
    *Asian Brown Tortoise (both emys and phayrei)
    *African Spurred Tortoise
    *Yellow (Elongated) Tortoise
    *Impressed Tortoise
    *Burmese Star Tortoise
    *Alligator Snapper
    *Big-headed Turtle
    *Yellow-headed Temple Turtle
    *Softshell Turtle (Amyda cartilaginea)
    *Amboina Box Turtle
    *Red-eared Slider

    *Asian Giant Toad (Bufo asper) (the only amphibian I saw)
     
    felis silvestris and iluvwhales like this.
  3. Jackwow

    Jackwow Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Entry fee is up 50% from last year. Still cheap but 50% in one hit? I wonder if the entry fee for Thais also went up?

    I visited Chiang Mai Zoo four times last year but only went into the aquarium once and that was only because I was with Devilfish. Good that I did see it but wouldn't pay Baht 450 to see it again.
     
  4. Jackwow

    Jackwow Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I never saw a small cats area on any of my visits last year (Jan, Jun and Sept). In fact I didn't even realise there was one!
     
  5. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    it was 100 Baht back in 2006, so the price has stayed constant for a long time if it was only raised this year.

    And because the zoo is so rambling I can't even remember where in the zoo it was!! It was on a hillside above one of the main roads but you couldn't view it from the road (you would have needed to go up a path to reach the enclosures) and it appeared to be designed as a complex (i.e. with walls) rather than just a group of cages. I think it was on the approach to the big cats, maybe....
     
  6. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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  7. Jackwow

    Jackwow Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    In comparison other Thai (Loas) zoo prices last year were,

    Dusit B100
    Korat B150
    Khao Keow B300 (I paid B160 on my second visit as they assumed that because I spoke to them in Thai I must work in Thailand)
    Laos B60 (Kip 15k)
     
  8. Jackwow

    Jackwow Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    This was under construction in 2013 so I didn't see the end result.
     
  9. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    it is quite large but also fairly basic, nothing to get excited about. Unfortunately the pigmy hippos are stuck over one end in what appeared to be very small pens.

    I did take a photo of it but it wasn't very illuminating so I haven't bothered uploading it.
     
  10. Pertinax

    Pertinax Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    I did see the Serow(s) here- the first and only(I think?) time I've seen this species.
     
  11. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I saw them here in 2006. This visit I saw their enclosure (next to the aoudads) but I didn't see the animals themselves.