In my opinion the best exhibit of the 5 is the leopard habitat, as it is extremely lush and packed with foliage. The tiger enclosure is also excellent and the other 3 are all decent as well. This revamped carnivore zone is not brilliant or trend-setting, but it is one of the best areas of the Philadelphia Zoo and it won the AZA best exhibit award a few years ago.
I agree about the leopard exhibit being the best. For seeing such small Snow Leopard exhibits in zoos, when I came to this exhibit and saw the snow leopard sleeping way up high by the waterfall, I realized how much space it had!
When I was there in September 2010, the three pumas were in the leopard habitat and a lone (newly arrived) snow leopard was in the puma habitat. So they do change those up at least sometimes. All five habitats are generic enough that any of the cats could go in any one. In fact, I believe they are all interconnected by overhead runs and sometimes for enrichment they let the lions go through all five before returning to their main exhibit. Another unique feature is the base camp, which is an indoor cat conservation and education center. The most complete educational exhibit I have seen devoted exclusively to cats.
The jaguar and especially puma exhibits should be larger imo. I say especially the puma exhibit because there's usually about 4 of them in there and I feel it should be bigger even if there were only 1. The exhibit overall is quite good imo, but the aforementioned size problem along with some other issues keep it from being great.
@snowleopard, blospz, AZDocent,mweb08, whoever else wants to chime in: What is your impression of this zoo? It is not fair to make judgements from photos, but I am seeing a lot of old, barren exhibits with spectacular species. Actually isn't the gorilla exhibit fairly new? Is the Philly Zoo like the Berlin Zoos, with a reputation for a good collection and not good exhibits?
I think I like it more than most on this forum. I also like the city of Philadelphia itself, lots to see and do in nearby downtown area. (I am starting to realize that this aspect - a zoo being near a nice, walkable downtown - affects my impression of the zoo as well. I think that is partly why I rate Memphis and Nashville as two of my favorites.) Of course being a cat fanatic and the fact that they have Big Cat Falls (as well as a decent cheetah and lynx exhibits elsewhere) affects my opinion. The primate building is very disappointing and the hoofstock collection is virtually non-existent, so if those were my favorite animals I would rate this zoo much lower. But the bear complex is nice and the wild dog exhibit is also good. So I guess this is mainly a good zoo for carnivore lovers. The new bird house looked quite good from the outside, but alas it was closed on my visit last year.
@DavidBrown: An excerpt from my 2010 review sums up my thoughts: Philadelphia Zoo is undoubtedly worth a visit just to see the wonderfully rare creatures that are found there and at very few other establishments in North America. On my visit I saw 2 Bornean bearded pigs, a Russian red squirrel, 2 blue-eyed lemurs, a baby Titi monkey, an Asiatic black bear, 2 aardvarks, 4 giant river otters, 2 species of elephant shrew, an echidna, an African striped weasel, Madagascar giant jumping rats, mongoose lemurs, 3 douc langurs (the only 3 on the continent) and an incredibly active aye-aye. What a list! The zoo displays its animals taxonomically and there are 9 cat species, 4 bear species, a large bird collection, around 120 species of reptiles and amphibians, and all sorts of primates, hoofstock and other creatures. The animal collection is superb, the historic element of the almost 150 year-old zoo (fountains, sculptures, buildings, plaques, etc) is impressive, and it is immensely popular as illustrated with about 1.3 million visitors per year. With so many terrific elements one would think that Philadelphia Zoo is one of the best in the United States, but the real reason why almost no one rates the zoo as a top contender is that the quality of exhibitry is lacking in many places. There are plenty of decent enclosures, but nothing that is a real knockout and several that are subpar. The zoo has renovated its old buildings over the years (such as the Reptile House and recently the Feline and Bird Houses) but the results, while good, are not as spectacular as what could have been achieved by constructing an entirely new piece of infrastructure. However, the zoo did build a brand new primate building about a decade ago but in my opinion it is a total disaster.
The Philadelphia Zoo is a very old zoo that has gone through some serious financial downturns. And yet it is always perfectly maintained and pleasant. There are cool animals and a nice park-like landscape. It is small, and so room for spectacular exhibits is hard to come by. Which is why innovative approaches like the new Treetop Trail are so perfect for this zoo. Perhaps fair comparisons would be to Lincoln Park Zoo and Central Park Zoo rather than the Bronx or Woodland Park or even Sedgwick County. Apples to apples. Central Park Zoo and Lincoln Park Zoo have seen much more funding in recent decades than Philadelphia Zoo. The average local zoogoer would be equally proud to visit any of them. Zoochatters, on the other hand, are a special bunch
