Bronx Zoo - Congo Gorilla Forest

Congo is an amazing exhibit and when reading the price-tag on zoolex, i must say i was rather suspicous considering some of the other exhibits constructed at that amount! Unfortunately, when I went we didn't see the okapi, colobus, mandrils, red river hogs or de brazzas (planting does have its down-sides, Zooplantman ), oh well, it was still astonishing and we watched the gorillas for ages.

For those of you who haven't seen the exhibit, YouTube is a wonderful thing!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mjPJDpu4fKA

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=i98AFgcsSsE&feature=related

Not just the summer, more like April-October, which is 7 months out of the year. That is a major plus though for the Southern Calif. zoos like LA and San Diego though that their gorillas can use their lush outdoor habitats year-round. I think San Diego has the second best gorilla habitat.

Zooplantman, do you know if the (outdoor) exhibit is given a head-start during the growing season before the gorillas are let out to ensure it reaches its "green potential"?

I had the fortune of getting a tour of the exhibit during construction, and was amazed at the proximity of the apartment buildings to the back wall of the habitat (I felt like I was almost looking into peoples' living rooms!). The huge hill in the first exhibit does wonders at shielding what is beyond!

I can't say what the practice is these days, but "in my day" we did not wait to put out the animals. I had annual renovation plans for many exhibits to keep them ahead of the damage.

How many months of the year were the gorillas off exhibit? I'm assuming that at times they were given the choice whether or not to enter their frosty outdoor habitat, and that some of the braver apes chose to venture outside.

I'd say there's 3-4 months when the gorillas would not go out at all. Depends on the weather that year, of course.

The indoor area must be huge to be able to accommodate more than 20 gorillas, and I wonder if tensions increase as the months inside slide on by. It must be a fantastic moment to see the great apes released back into the outdoor exhibits after the winter season ends!

As pointed out in an earlier message. there are 3 large outdoor cages (off exhibit) adjacent to the indoor day rooms which the animals can access on moderate days in the winter. Both dayrooms have areas where animals can get out of sight of one another, and lots of usable vertical space. No soft substrate though, which would certainly be an improvement.

One thing that has not been mentioned is the actual footage (or acreage) of either the gorilla enclosures or the entire Congo Gorilla Forest set of habitats. I'd be intrigued to see if the 4 gorilla enclosures at Zoo Atlanta compare to the Bronx in terms of overall size, or even how large Disney's Animal Kingdom ape habitats are in comparison.

As was mentioned, there's an indoor exhibit.

A map of the gorilla portion of Congo:
http://www.zoochat.com/547/congo-map-gorilla-territory-63368/

I got to Bronx pretty much every week of the year (for the last 2 - 3 years) and Congo is weather dependent. We've had A LOT of snow this year and so the gorillas have been in since about December. There have been a few days where they've been out, I just haven't been there for that (was told by staff).

Either last year or the year before, the winter was MUCH milder (think....we didn't drop below 30 more than a handful of days...) and I remember only a few times I didn't see them outside that year. It's ironic: this year there are new 'weather dependent' exhibit maps where the baboons, all of Africa and Congo have little snowflakes over them to indicate that their weather dependent and we've gotten SO much snow.

I swear I've heard that Congo as a whole is 6.5 acres.