Short video about the serval-kittens and also the recently born Common marmosets : https://www.facebook.com/wdrlokalzeitaachen/videos/728491167255456/
Again Servals born at Aachen : https://www.facebook.com/AachenerTierparkEuregiozoo/videos/892021357586454/
And again servals born - this time triplets which were born last sunday : https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1218994861555767
Recently a male North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) arrived at the zoo, I am not sure whether they still had this species. Source: Instagram of Aachener Tierpark (10/07/2022) Login • Instagram
Today i travelled in time when visiting the Aachener Zoo… It all started in recent years, when someone in the Aachener community thought that using the zoological parking lot as a Corona-quick test location would be a great idea. Normally perhaps not unlogical, but the zoo only has about 50 spots at best. So to say that congestion surrounding the zoo’s entrance would ensue, is an understatement. So after parking the car in front of of someone’s home around the corner (sorry about that), I fearsomely walked towards the entrance, family in tow. The little sign at the cash register should have been a bit of a warning what was to come. “Keine kartezahlung” meaning “cash only”. Seriously? Are these people trying to dodge income taxes or something? The last time I had cash in my pocket was 1990-something? Together with my wife, we managed to scrape the € 7 per person entrance fee out of our wallets and got in. We skipped buying the food for the animals though (yup, it was really 1990 apparantly). No zoo map on paper of course. But a helpfull sign at the entrance showed the plan of this little zoo at least. No. 16 on the map, coati’s, were promised from 2016 onwards! Red panda’s were expected from 2017 onwards. At least we were back from the 90’s to 2015ish. By this time we were hungry, so onwards to the kiosk for some “pommes” (fries). Because hey, this is Germany, a zoo without pommes is like a zoo without meerkats. Unthinkable. You wouldn’t have guessed it, but today I might have stumbled upon the only zoo in Germany without fries anywhere to be had. After scanning the map (I made a picture), I realized bockwurst would be it. Not counting on the fact that here, the tax evasion continued. Fully depleting any cash we had on us, we scraped together two icecream for the (by now screaming) kids and continued on our way. By this time, we had passed an empty exhibit with a building site behind it, which according to the map had held squirrel monkeys in the (recent?) past and not much else. So onto the exhibits then. This small zoo couldn’t be more quintessential German if it tried. Take a piece of woodland, buy stocks of the local concrete and chainlink-fence traders and you’re golden. Even with the typical old-skool german signage (outdated on about halve of the exhibits in the zoo). Does anyone know which company produced these, because I’ve seen them in quite a few zoo’s by now. Going counter clockwise, we encountered small but ok exhibits for north-american porcupines and prairiedogs. Then the typical chainlink fences for reeves muntjac and cassowary. Nothing to write home about. Same goes for the little concrete and sand exhibits for meerkats and banded mongoose. The following red panda exhibit (apparantly they had arrived) was decent enough though, with tall live trees. The following mixed exhibit with lama’s, ankole cattle, goats and bactrian camels was nice and large enough but could have done without the begging lama’s (you sell animal food on premise and animals show begging behaviour, who would have known?). The “African field”, which according to the map held “antilopes” actually held a single blesbok and two eland, next to a couple of grants zebra. I like blesbok, so I was happy enough. The paddock was not large enough to be grassy, so chainlink and sand it was. Onwards to a very nicely planted and furnished exhibit for serval, past the very large but barren paddock for rhea, alpaca and (you guessed it!) donkeys? The second unusual mix of the day. Past a small but ok exhibit for raccoons mixed with small-clawed otters (another unlikely mix) and onto a massive aviary for bearded vultures. I’m afraid that with “massive” i mean “a lof of steel” and not so much “roomy”, but it was ok for the birds. A decent aviary held bald ibis, red ibis and one of the white heron species. Then a ok, very bamboo-heavy chainlink-paddock for maned wolves, another species that seems to be phase-out for Dutch zoos and so I don’t mind seeing. A waterrich walk-through field-with-pond contained (I guess pioned) flamingo’s, pelicans and demoiselle cranes. Decent enough, but many zoo’s seem to be shifting their flamingo’s into aviaries in recent years. But we’re still in the 90’s, so Aachen is still about 15 years away from silliness like that. Three more small paddocks for what seems to be a single emu, a few porcupines and for raccoondogs (sadly in a paddock that according to the map should have contained alpine marmot) finish off this part. Sofar, it’s all mediocre. Nothing too shabby, nothing bad, but nothing jumping out at a zoo nerd. The upcoming lynx exhibit was very high level though. A part of a hill, with large trees was fenced off (chainlink, of course) and contained at least three active lynx. Not the best lynx exhibit ever, but close. The hilly exhibit for cheetah that followed was also very nice indeed. The seperation paddock was not that large, but especially the sloping terrain in the main paddock made it very viewable. The exhibit for african penguin seemed the newest exhibit there. But although aesthetically pleasing for visitors (white sands and tall grasses) the water section was too small to be great for the penguins themselves. A decent and well planted new style of aviary contained common marmoset, pygmy marmoset and rainbow lorikeet. Next to it, was a long, narrow and about 2,5 meter high aviary for wading birds. It was well planted and with common redshank, eurasian oystercatcher, black-winged stilt, sandpiper, ringed plover and pied avocet also well stocked. Zootierliste also mentions curlew, but I didn’t see any. I’m missing a few unnoteworthy exhibits for barbary macaque, capuchins, aldabra tortoises, eagle owl and little owl. The exhibit for coati seemed pretty nice, but the species was a no-show. The last thing to mention was a decent farmyard section, with a adequately sized aviary for siskin and european partridge. The siskin was a no-show, but a european partridge-hen with 6 chicks was the species of the day for me. So up to the conclusion. I guess the most important thing I learned today, is that (despite popular belief) it is entirely possible to have a zoo in this era without ring-tailed lemurs! Who would have thought eh? Despite everything, the weather was great, the kids enjoyed the playgrounds and I clocked another zoo for my list so I ain’t complaining. More things of note, when diving into rural Germany, bring cash and your own fries… Nothing there to take a de-tour for, but pleasant enough if you’re in Aachen, have seen the world-class Aachener Dom and don’t have a car to get yourself to Gaiapark next door (review of that to follow, but I need to visit it first )
Thanks very much for your review @jwer, and Aachener Zoo is one I visited on my 2019 European trip. None of its exhibits compare to the zoos I saw on my recently completed Scandinavian jaunt (check out the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian reviews), but I do recall paying cash there. You never know when you'll need some Euros in your pocket!
At the start of this month 20-year old 3-legged male Reeves' muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi) Jacky passed away. He was found near Aachen in 2000 with a broken leg which resulted in the amputation of this leg. Source: Instagram of Aachener Tierpark (09/09/2022)
A fire broke out at the raccoon and Asian small clawed otter enclosure at night three days ago. One of the sleeping boxes was one fire, luckly the fire brigade was quickly at the scene and could prevent further damage. No animals were injured during this incident. Source: Instagram of Aachener Tierpark (04/03/2023)
