View ASCO,Meerkat and Kookaburra exhibits

Would it be rather too obvious to say that it seems like a real shame that this excellent place has decided to display these three species, which appear to have no connection at all with the overarching theme of the zoo?

....and looking at your other pictures, there're eagle owls and cotton-topped tamarins too. Great!

I now see that my comments on Facebook need no answer!

I agree with Sooty Mangabey, surely there is no need to add very common mammal species to this collection when they seem to have cornered a (very popular) niche market. Surely the croc's alone would be a big enough draw without having to pander to the masses!

St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park (now that is a mouthful!) still advertises itself as the only facility on the planet to have all 23 crocodilian species. It is a wonderful establishment to visit, but in recent years has added lemurs, various bird species and even a zipline. Ring-tailed lemurs arrive this summer and so a future meerkat exhibit must be inching ever closer.

Sorry Sooty and Brum,while I have the utmost respect for both of you,this had to be done,last summer on the hot days visitors were leaving after only a couple of hours,because of the heat in the buildings,thus reducing the amount of secondary spend they spent at the place,what they have done is given the visitors 2 outdoor areas now where they can cool off and see something else,and from what we saw it has indeed increased the length of time people spend at the place and the amount of money they also spend!This place WILL NOT stay open from the entrances fee's from us zoonerds,it needs the money from the general public,so if this is the price I have to pay for me to continue to see some wonderful Crocodilians in this country,so be it I might not like it but if the places stays open because of it brilliant!

Yes, that's fair enough - and if the price of being able to have an excellent reptile collection is a meerkat or two, then so be it.

And I totally get the fact that for 99% of the public, whether an animal is a 'choice' species or not is largely irrelevant.

However, I still think it a real shame that a specialist collection can't retain its specialism, and I can't help feeling that there is inevitably going to be something rather half-hearted about the bits that are tagged on like this.

And if bits are going to be tagged on, why not go for something which is a bit more exciting: slender mongooses or cusimanses, rather than meerkats; smooth-coated otters, rather than ASCOs....?

None of these comments are to imply any criticism of CotW, which I think is an excellent place - more a disgruntlement with the reality of the way things need to be, without a big wedge of cash to support a place that doesn't necessarily appeal to the public to the extent that it needs to in order to make ends meet.

Alright I concur with the other posts, it is a small price to pay to keep a special collection open. But I agree with Sooty, cusimanse and (to a lesser extent) smooth-coated otters aren't impossible to source. I'm just hoping that they don't go down the route of ring-tailed lemurs and red-necked wallabies!

Basically, I don't want this to become a general collection with one area of specialty and all the extra filler species thrown in! I hope they start trying to provide something different if they do go in to birds and mammals in a bigger way.

At the end of the day, people are not going to Crocodiles of the world to see meerkat, but if it keeps punters in longer, we have to remember in the British climate any outdoor area for a reptile collection is either seasonal (a few months at most), or just not feasible.