Primates outdoor exhibit

Milwaukee County Zoo, a facility that has a ton of enclosures that were all built during the 1960s and 1970s, is starting to modernize its outdated primate complex. That all sounds exciting but why couldn't the zoo have come up with something better than big, black, metal cages?

@snowleopard If done right and for the right species there's nothing wrong with big black metal cages imo.

~Thylo

Plus, cages will always provide more brachiating opportunities for primates. I’m just happy to see improvements from a zoo that has stagnanted for so long.

@TZDugong: No they won't. Even in this photo, the trees would clearly offer more and more varied climbing opportunities, as well as being more natural.

@Giant Panda I shouldn’t have said that cages always have more climbing opportunities but they generally do. In a cage like this one, the primates can climb anywhere in the enclosure (except of course the bottom).

Now before you start thinking that I’m anti naturalism, I’ll say that I wish they had used the trees in the background as part of the exhibit! But I trust that the zoo had reasons for not including them. These may be that the trees in the background are going to be a part of a new exhibit area, the zoo didn’t have enough money to create a more naturalistic enclosure and so went for a more cost effective one, or maybe the area where the trees are didn’t connect as well to the indoor enclosures. Anyway, I have no idea why the trees weren’t included, but I bet the zoo has reasons why they weren’t.

After reading through my post I feel as if I’ve been a tad too lenient towards the Milwaukee Zoo, as the cages are incredibley ugly, but as I said in my first post, I’m just happy that they’re making improvements even if they aren’t what they could have been.

This new outdoor exhibit is scheduled to become the new indoor siamang exhibit in the master plan. This is pretty much a stop gap renovation, until the true renovation will turn this building into part of the future “jungle” complex. The Ape and other Primate exhibits will be renovated abd new ones will also be built.

While the primate renovations have been disappointing, this year looks very promising for the Milwaukee County Zoo. The new otter exhibit and West Entrance complex will finally open in less then 2 months, then the elephants will move to their new exhibit this fall. Then In 2019, the first phase of the African Exhibit will fully open, featuring the full elephant exhibit, a Savannah exhibit (Zebras, Impala, Crowned Crane and more), a forest exhibit (Bongo and Duiker) and an African Lodge. Exciting times!

@Giant Panda Naturalistic? No, but cages do indeed make for excellent climbing opportunities for primates. This cage is ugly and should have more going on inside of it as a single tree enclosed in bars does not a good enclosure make, but in my experience primates very readily utilize cage bars to climb and brachiate and I'd take a good cage over a "naturalistic" grass-filled open-topped enclosure which many zoos offer their primates nowadays.

~Thylo