SDZooMapRated

Elephant Odyssey (much maligned but with several very good sections) was built in 2009 and is obviously not going to be renovated at any point in the near future and so I wouldn't have bothered highlighting that section in red. After Africa Rocks opens in June then one could argue that San Diego Zoo will then have only Urban Jungle (what a ridiculous name!) and the handful of adjacent grottoes left before the entire zoo is of a relatively high quality. That red area you highlighted means that one more expensive, mega-complex and the whole zoo will be quite impressive with very limited areas that are of a poor quality. A trio of big American zoos (San Diego, Omaha and Saint Louis) will all reach the point in the next decade where there is very little wrong with any of them. Those zoos will continue to improve as the years go by but at least there will be nothing awful left at any of them.

I agree with both snowleopard's and your assessment of Elephant Odyssey. I truthfully don't see a glaring problem with it overall however. Don't get me wrong,it's not attractive,but from a size and welfare standpoint I think the elephant exhibit would,in my opinion, be a yellow. I can't honestly see what they'd do to it besides removes those utilitrees everyone loves to hate so much,or maybe demolishing the care center building,since some find that to be hideous as well. I do have to ask why you put the condor exhibit in the red? I'd put that in the yellow range myself. I think it'd be nice if it were a little more well-decorated,but the glass-fronted viewing is a really nice selling point,I think.

I'm also curious about your assessment of the waterfowl exhibits across from Eagle Trail. I thought those were rather nice exhibits,though it has been a while since I've seen them (I've not actually seen them since they added the mesh). Did they change the design when they added that?

The judgement on the utilitrees ought to be based not only on appearance (one doubts they were intended to be beautiful) but also on elephant health. They were put there to encourage natural behavior and active foraging, stretching, etc. I have not seen any evaluation on whether the animals' health is improved after exposure to them. In fact, I wonder how much they use the things.

@Zooplantman: A PhD student investigated the impact of hanging hay-nets from the utilitrees, which were only lowered for brief intervals throughout the day. Interestingly, they reported that stereotypic behaviour increased under this condition, whereas daily distance walked didn't change at all. Not a great result, really.

@Giant Panda Do you think this could be affected by the fact that all the elephants are quite old?

@tigris115 Good question. Possibly for the walking distance result, I don't know. As for the higher incidence of stereotypes, my own thoughts (and I believe the student's as well) are that this reflects frustration from being able to see the food but not reach it. Elsewhere, when timed feeders are used, the animals can only see the food when it's available. Perhaps that's a better approach welfare-wise?

The judgement on the condors was in error, as I overlooked it when rating the elephants; it should be a high yellow or low green as there is nothing particularly exceptional about it.

The waterfowl exhibits seems not too well kept and the westernmost half is rarely populated. However, it is still fairly nice.

The rating for EO is not entirely the fault of the zoo but partly due to the dwindling elephant population leading to large areas of unemployed dirt. I understand this exhibit was intended to give the elephants walking area but it is still quite ugly to look at. If elephants are added I would upgrade it to a yellow.

I wouldn't expect a full renovation of EO but maybe a minor touch up adding some scenery to the elephant areas.