Anyone have any high concept exhibit ideas?

It was indeed signed as Percnon gibbesi.

 

I once thought of a building showing history of life on Earth. Next to 'living fossils' would be dioramas and models of extinct animals, many touchable and climbable - e.g. swinging bank shaped like a giant centipede.

Among others:
Paleozoic:
-Cambrian sea: coral reef with invertebrates
-chambered nautilius
-horseshoe crabs in water and scorpions on land
-Australian lungfish
-Giant salamander in water, tuataras on land
Mesozoic:
-rainforest exhibit with saltwater crocodiles, komodo dragons, cassowaries and cuscus
-underwater exhibit with sharks and sea turtles
Cenozoic:
-rainforest with malayan tapirs, mousedeer, tree shrews, tarsiers
-Savanna with warthogs, antelope, white rhino
-Ice ages: shared paddock of musk oxen, reindeer, saiga, yak, Przewalski horses, bison, chamois, moose, red deer, waterfowl. Nearby lions and spotted hyenas, arctic foxes and brown bears.

Could be also cool to put some rarely seen animals if one can get them: Chilean monito del monte, long-beaked echidnas, tarsiers, hoatzins etc.

Difficult, perhaps, would be avoiding the contrast between live and dead exhibits. Either live animals would look insignificant, or models would look fake.

There used to be an exhibit like that, but much more basic, in Emmen. One small diorama showing Earth 200 mln years ago was astonishing. It was completely barren land and live horseshoe crabs underwater.

Another problem is that paleontology dates very fast. Every year there are new discoveries and our idea how extinct animals looked like changes.

 

Older zoos often have cramped historic buildings which they try to redevelop for small animals with mediocre results.

I thought it would be much better to leave old cages intact and put inside models of extinct animals: thylacine, quagga, dodo, Falkland wolf etc.

One could also put a model of Javan tiger - zoos wanted to save this subspecies, but were not allowed to import animals. Few years later, it was extinct in the wild. It would be powerful message, and the exhibit would perhaps make the zoo known in the world.

 

@Jurek7, your ideas are strange, but interesting.

 

Heh, this reminds me of an idea for a documentary mini-series I had. (I was trying to come up with program ideas for if Animal Planet wasn't garbage) The topic is recently extinct animals, with a zoo as a framing device. The narrator walks through a zoo, stopping at modern-style exhibits that contain recently extinct species. There aren't really a lot of documentaries focused on recently extinct species, and most people can't name many recently extinct animals other than the dodo and perhaps the thylacine. It's really a shame because a recently extinct species can show people that extinction is very much a threat. At the end of the final episode, the exhibits containing extinct species are empty. (maybe that's a bit heavy-handed, but whatever)

 

This idea, high concept due to cost: a very long underwater tunnel going through two very long tanks. The guest starts out walking through a beautiful coral reef with all sorts of brightly colored fish and other reef species. As the guest keeps walking, the coral starts to lose its color. If there's a way to encourage fish to stay on the bright side of the tank, it would be done, so as the guest keeps going there are fewer and fewer fish. Then they reach the second tank (separated by an acrylic panel to give the illusion that it's one big tank) and it's all bleached coral with little to no life. At the end of the tunnel, guests enter a room focused on the threat of coral bleaching.

Another would be three life-sized whale fall tanks, showing how an ecosystem can form around a dead whale. Each tank contains a life-size replica of a dead adult whale, perhaps a gray or humpback whale, at a different stage of whale fall. In the first stage, there are scavengers that consume the soft tissue, such as hagfish and sharks. The second stage has worms, crustaceans, and mollusks. The final stage has worms, snails, and perhaps some animals making a home inside the skeleton.

 

Some of mine are:

. A Safari Park/Conservation Center that focuses on creatures from the Ice Ages of Europe. It would be hundreds of acres in size and I can easily imagine it in the UK. It would be like a Pleistocene rewilding project in that it would include modern-day animals that would represent the creatures that became extinct at the end of the Ice Ages such as:

African Elephant (Straight-tusked Elephant)
Asian Elephant (Woolly Mammoth)
Black Rhinoceros (Woolly Rhinoceros)
Wood Bison (Steppe Bison)
Alaskan Moose (Broad-snouted Moose)
Altai Wapiti (Irish Elk)
Przewalski’s Horse (Equus sp.)
Common Hippopotamus (European Hippopotamus)
Amur Leopard (European Ice Age Leopard)
Asiatic Lion (European Cave Lion)
Giant Otter (Sardinian Giant Otter)
Kodiak Bear (Cave Bear)
Polar Bear (Giant Polar Bear)
Spectacled Bear (Etruscan Bear)
Spotted Hyena (Cave Hyena)
Iberian Lynx (Mediterranean Cave Lynx)
Ussuri Dhole (Sardinian Dhole)
Malayan Sun Bear (Pleistocene Small Cave Bear)
Masai Ostrich (Asian Ostrich)
Sumatran Tiger (Scimitar Cat)

As well as animals that did live with these extinct creatures:

Barbary Lion
Eurasian Grey Wolf
Wolverine
Barbary Macaque
Common Crane
Reindeer
Fallow Deer
Eastern Kiang
Snow Sheep
Grey Seal
European Otter
Musk Ox
Wisent
Persian Onager
Arctic Fox
Bharal
Himalayan Griffon Vulture

. A Jungle Book themed walking trailed exhibits where you start off on the top of a cliff over looking the whole “jungle” before walking down to the pack rock and its surrounding wilderness, home to Indian Wolves (Akela and Raskha). Visitors learn about how every animal has its place in the food chain, and how they adapt to it. The visitor then walks through a thick canopy that leads to an Indian Leopard Exhibit with at least one melanistic specimen (Bagheera). In this exhibit, there is, in print the written out “law of the jungle” that all animals must follow. Down this path leads to a massive cave where behind glass, visitors can see all of the four bear species native to Asia: Sun, Sloth, Asiatic Black, and Brown (Baloo). The path the goes down to a clearing where there is a massive pool of water with a single rock sticking out of it. This clearing, and any surrounding bush are home to Royal Bengal Tigers (Shere Khan). Visitors learn about the history of maneaters and what happens to them when they attack the “one forbidden prey”. The path from the clearing leads to more jungle where the visitor looks to see heavily forested enclosures home to a breeding herd and bachelor herd of Indian Elephants (Hathi). As the elephants created the jungle, visitors are expected to have them highly regarded. A massive mock-tree will stand as the visitor makes there way through an ever-increasingly thick batch of the jungle. In this tree will live an enormous Burmese Python (Kaa), as well as a host of smaller reptiles and amphibians. It will be littered by the clothes and cloths of the pythons latest “victems”, who looked into it’s eyes and trusted in it. The jungle leads to an enormous temple mimicking the Kandariya Mahadeva Temple. In this are displays on how the people of India revere animals and how that has shifted in time. The temple serves as the indoor enclosure of many species of primates that live in Asia, including an enormous old Bornean Orangutan (King Louie), who’s chambers show a picture of a burnt jungle, and telling all about the “red flower”. All along this jungle, a whole host of other birds and mammals will be view-able.

 

Very cool, I especially love the Jungle Book idea! I could totally picture Disney doing that as part of a theme park or something, ha ha.

 

Yeah, I know, but I thought having two exhibits on each side for the same species would produce a much more direct effect. But I suppose nobody goes to the zoo for a history lesson zoos.

I love the extinct animal exhibit idea and I think Colombus or Cincinatti has a few displays vaguely similar to that, but with plaques instead of models.

 

You should visit the Big cat complex at Zoo Schönbrunn, then...

 

I was thinking of a cool idea to expose these animals. Like this:

A large dome. Inside a beach with a lot of big rocks, where visitors pass by a wooden bridge. In some points have some glass walls with half-underwater half-out-of-water viewing. Blue-footed boobies (maybe other species), frigatebirds (probably Magnificent) and albatrosses (probably Waved) can fly free through the dome. Marine iguanas, Sally lightfoot crabs and Galápagos penguins live together in a spacious beach full of sand, rocks and water. Maybe Galápagos sea lions and/or fur seals also live in this dome, but separated from iguanas, crabs and penguins. In the water fishes and other animals, maybe some large as Green sea turtles and Galápagos sharks.

A large vivarium with small rivers, small forests and plains for finches, Galápagos tortoises (maybe endangered subspecies), Galápagos land iguanas (maybe Barrington iguana and Pink iguana), American flamingos and maybe some minor/unknown fauna (Galápagos doves, Lava lizards)... Galápagos hawks also live in this vivarium, but I'm not sure if they would be separated or not from the other animals. But I would like to make they live together with the tortoises and, if possible, with the iguanas.

So far I only mentioned the main fauna. Maybe would have some house to expose the unknown fauna as some reptiles (Barrington and Pink land iguanas, Lava lizards) and invertebrates (Darwin's giant centipede, Galápagos scorpion).

 

An underwater aquarium. As in, the buildings are underwater. Many of the walls and ceilings would be acrylic, allowing a view into the ocean. The buildings are connected by tunnels, so you're literally taking a journey through the ocean. The "outdoor" exhibits would be sea pens containing large sharks, like great whites and whale sharks, and large whales, like the humpback, and possibly some open-water cetacean species. And, of course, there would be plenty of viewing into straight-up open ocean, giving people the chance to view native wild species underwater. The aquarium could also set up "shipwrecks" and "abandoned oil rigs" outside to show how marine life takes it over, creating living exhibits. Perhaps if they get ahold of a real whale carcass, liked a dead beached specimen, they could do a "whale fall".

 

That's a great idea. Especially the last part.

 

I’d suggest genetically modified mako sharks for the sea pens; just don’t invite Samuel L. Jackson.

 

@Loxodonta Cobra
Jungle Book exhibit is strikingly similar to Indian part of Hannover zoo. There is no bears or wolves, but there is fake Indian temple with elephants, tigers, leopards, pythons and hanuman langurs.

Apparently, 60 or so years ago many zoos build exhibits themed after Kipling's Jungle Book. Monkey temple at Bristol zoo is one of the last remaining ones.

@The Mighty Orca
There are several places in the world where people can walk on the actual sea floor in underwater tunnel. One is in Eilat in Israel.

But your exhibits are much more complete

 

Although totally possible, a lot of zoos wouldn't do this: in the reptile house, a hall full of chameleons. As many species as possible that are easily obtained (10-20 at least shouldn't be a problem). The design would be unique for a reptile house setting. Instead of glass separating visitors and chameleons, there is open space to allow for ventilation (which chameleons need). There'd be a small wall to keep visitors out. I'm not sure what would separate each individual exhibit. I don't like the idea of solid walls, but I don't quite know what would make the design "naturalistic" (have we decided that's a better word than immersive?).

 

Chameleons are very territorial and will fight, even in a big space.

 

I didn't mean have all the chameleons in the same bush, or tree, or whatever. They will be separated, I just don't know how to do it.

 

Yep, I also have seen this before.
But they're all females of a single species (Chameleo calyptratus).