Aardwolf; San Diego; October 1987

Image scanned from an old 35 mm slide

Remind which part of the zoo that San Diego kept their Aardwolves?

@UngulateNerd92 I know I’m late to this, but I just happened to see it.

I grew up going to SD Zoo, and I clearly remember seeing the aardwolves in Bear Canyon, or what was Bear Canyon prior to the ‘modernization’ of the zoo as we know it now. I don’t know how much it’s changed recently. Haven’t been since 2017.

Back in the day, like the 1980s-1990s (I was born in ‘86, lol), Bear Canyon had a few smaller exhibits positioned between the bears & lions. The first one, at the top of the canyon path near Elephant Mesa, was the exhibit with the aardwolves. I saw them several times, though they were clearly nocturnal. The exhibit was shaded & relatively private, with mostly a decomposed granite substrate, rocks and grasses, and a central ‘den’ that they slept in outside. Plus they had their off-exhibit sleeping areas.

As you walked down the canyon, they also had meerkats, I believe, as well as (at the time) Manchurian brown bears, Alaskan Peninsula brown bears, Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) sloth bears, striped hyena(s), Siberian yellow-throated marten, Transvaal lions, polar bears, Asian small-clawed otters (possibly a different species of otter though) and California sea lions. Of course this has all changed now. But at the bottom of Bear Canyon, the exhibits transitioned into Sun Bear Forest, where you could find the Malayan sun bears, lion-tailed macaques, etc. As far as I know that’s still the same. There are likely several Asian monkey exhibits also between BC and SBF.

@Seanamhach thank you for the very thorough description! It definitely helps me visualize the details and live vicariously through your visits. I also fondly remember the San Diego Zoo during my childhood visits in the 1990s and into the early 2000s. I was born in 1992. Some people won't like me for saying this, but in terms of exhibit designs and park layout, I much prefer the zoo the way it was in the 1980s and early 1990s and they should have stayed put where they were. One of my favorite sayings and this definitely applies to zoo exhibit design, "if it ain't broke don't fix it."

@UngulateNerd92 Why are you advocating that rows of small grottos is where things should have stayed? Quite arguably "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a really poor philosophy of exhibit design in the modern zoo age - zoos should be striving to be innovative.