A giant of the competition and... Twycross. The latter got here easily on its home ground against Wuppertal, winning 26-1 on primates. Plzen had to fight for it's life against Beauval on birds, winning 19-14 but only after being behind with mere hours left. I never really expected Twycross would be able to put up much of a fight, but I became even more concerned for their dignity when it drew carnivores. Let's get this over with. Tomorrow: Burgers v Pairi Daiza.
Well Twycross has only 7 species, compared with 27 listed for Plzen, but if they can house these 7 species consistently well, they could get my vote. Plzen has some lovely enclosures like the ones for Cheetah, Brown bear, Wolf, Lynx, Snowleopard and also for some of their mongoose. But on the other hand they have atrocious indoor only enclosures for Slender mongoose and Palawan binturong, which are completely indoors and extremely tiny, without an excuse of them being leftovers from a gone era. The Binturong enclosure used to hold Cloud rats before..... The Haussa genet, Malagasy carnivores and Palawan leopard cat are also not exactly blessed with nice housing....
Let's see..... BUSH DOG AND COATI AMUR LEOPARD SNOW LEOPARD ASCO MEERKAT No one seems to have posted photographs of the Marten exhibit
Mammals Both: Snow leopard Plzen Hausa genet; Philippine palm civet; Palawan binturong Common slender, dwarf, yellow and banded mongooses; dark cusimanse Eastern ring-tailed vontsira; northern narrow-striped boky Canadian lynx; bobcat; Missouri cougar; Sudan cheetah; Palawan leopard cat; Siberian tiger; Barbary lion Cape fox; East African bat-eared fox; maned wolf; wolf; southern black-backed jackal European brown bear Eurasian otter South Brazilian coati Nepalese red panda Twycross Meerkat Amur leopard Bush dog Asian small-clawed otter, northern yellow-throated marten Ring-tailed coati This is an easy win for Plzen, which has representatives of 9 families, compared with Twycross's 5. Twycross has 2 species of mustelid, including a yellow-throated marten, while Plzen has 1, but this is its only winning category.
Not amazing views of the marten enclosure but here it is on a youtube video I discovered. Plzen far and away knocks Twycross out JUST based off of their diversity and the bear enclosure that I've heard tons about. For now at least, looks like yet another of the seeded eight makes it through.
The only carnivore to get past average at Twycross is the Snow Leopard enclosure, which is very good - the only real problems with it being where they've put it. The rest are mostly very average for the animals and largely ugly for visitors. Most of the interesting species they had in recent years (including Arabian Striped Hyaena, Dhole, Bat-eared Fox and Aardwolf) are no longer kept - only the dogs and martens are zoo rarities. I will say they've had decent success lately breeding the leopards. That said, I think this one goes convincingly to Plzen - the open bear and lynx enclosures are excellent, the tall medium cat enclosures on the hillside are another memorable enclosure. And the diversity is in another league.
