Did this exhibit just debut to the public yesterday? It certainly appears to be quite large, penguins are natural crowd-pleasing animals, and the habitat arrives just in time for an early summer...but it is intriguing that the holding building with the prominent door is such an enormous feature of the exhibit. Also, the concrete "driveway" that leads to the building, the lack of texture on the land, the gravel & rocks combination for the penguins to walk on, etc. The biggest surprise is that the edge of the pool is obvious and not slanted all the way around in any attempt at creating a more naturalistic appearance, as here it seems like a regular swimming pool with 2 obvious cement pathways that lead first to a large building and secondly to some black metal fences in the background. Fairly new Humboldt penguin exhibits at Sedgwick County and Woodland Park are a hundred times more impressive, but I'm sure that they were also much more expensive to create than the latest hodge-podge enclosure at Toronto Zoo. The best thing that I can say about this exhibit, even though it does appear that I am being over-critical, is the beautiful backdrop of conifer trees. What a pity that they couldn't be included into the actual habitat, such as has been done in the small Magellanic penguin exhibit at Point Defiance Zoo.
Two points: this admittedly ugly "hodgepodge" is, I believe, a repurposing of an old fur seal exhibit, thus the large size of the exhibit and holding area. It was built, together with much of the Metro Toronto Zoo, in the 70s when this sort of basic concrete structure was much in vogue. As for the conifers, I'm not sure there is any place in nature where conifer forests and Humbolt penguins would be found anywhere near each other. This is clearly a "quick and dirty" fix, one that will not win any awards but will make visitors happy, because to paraphrase yet another zoo's ad campaign for THEIR new penguin exhibit, "who doesn't love penguins?"
I feel the exact same way reduakari. I think this exhibit was just to boost attendance and keep the zoo's popularity stable til next year when the pandas arrive (hopefully).
The conifers would definitely be out of place alongside the Peruvian coast (where as we know Humboldt penguins are found) but anything would look better than the cement building in the background. I just wish for once that the Toronto Zoo would unveil a knockout exhibit, but sadly the trend of mediocrity continues.
