Bad exhibits in otherwise good zoos and good exhibits in otherwise bad zoos

Why?

 

Most of the exhibits seem a bit small and overcrowded. Also outside exhibit for orangutans could have more climbing structures I’ll elobarate in more detail later

 

Bad exhibits in good zoos.

Moonlit Samctuarys Emu exhibit, no offence to MRJ, the zoo overall is amazing but the emu exhibit is very small and has little enrichment, the worst emu exhibit.

Again I absolutely love Moonlit Sanctuary, not every zoo is perfect all of them have their flaws.


Good exhibits in bad zoos.

Ive only been to 2 bad zoos (philip island wildife park and Werribee zoo)

Werribee zoos vervet monkey and orange bellied enclosures are brilliant examples of what the zoo should have been like all throughout. I don’t hate Werribee for the enclosures though I hate it for other reasons.

Phillip Island Wildife Park has a surprisingly good Tasmanian Devil enclosures and although it’s no where as good as any other Tassie Devil enclosure I’ve seen, comparing it to the other enclosures in the park and it’s pretty good.

I would also place their Dingo exhibit but Dingoes are no longer at the park I assume (two visits in 7 months and both times off display, yeah something fishy is going on).

 

Yeah, PECO was underwhelming to me as well. I believe it was built not too long ago (late 90’s?), and yet it the exhibitors is fairly old-fashioned. Not the worst building ever - it has aye-ayes and Zoo360 - but probably the worst exhibit at the zoo.

 

What are your reasons for hating Werribee? It's one of the top zoos in the country.

 

It’s just extremely underwhelming, the safari is ok, it has some rare animals but guides and signage are poor.

The African trail is probably the worst part the wild dog exhibit is low quality, it’s impossible to find the Serval exhibit (I spent an hour looking for it and still couldn’t find it) and the Cheetah exhibit is too small. The worst of all is the hut with reptiles, it displays three very poorly kept Dumerils Boas with no signage whatsoever. The Australia section is okay but almost all Australian Animals can be seen in better enclosures at the other two Zoos Victoria Park.

It’s not an awful zoo, it’s just unimpressive even by Australian standards.

 

Bad exhibits in good zoos:
Lion enclosure in Hellabrunn Zoo
Owl-faced guenon exhibit in Sóstó Zoo

 

I’ve been to only 2 bad zoos but both had at least one good exhibit:

The panaiwa rainforest zoo (will never know if I’m spelling that right) has a pretty good tiger exhibit and American alligator exhibits.

The gulf breeze zoo was mostly bad but they had pretty good exhibits for rhinos, bongos, gorillas, orangutans, zebras, and mixed antelope exhibits.

I also went to the Alabama gulf coast zoo wich was pretty bad when I visited but they've moved to a new facility that looks great.

 

Bad exhibits in good zoos: the dark eclectus tank that keeps a parrot in all her lonesome at the Saginaw Children's Zoo, the Humboldt Penguins at the Columbus Zoo. (when I was there they weren't out, leaving me to just look at the barren concrete blandness compared to the rest of the zoo)
Good exhibits in bad zoos: the junkhole a mile away from my house, Timber Creek Petting Farm, has a real nice clear pond for domestic ducks, geese, and "fish" (maybe trout?) and the watusi and sulcata tortoises actually have pastures. The nilgai, while somewhat sad in her lonesome, had tons of goat, sheep, and turkey friends and was very sweet as she licked the salt off my hand. If only they treated their 6 by 6 foot caged alligator, similarly tight on space and stereotyping coatimundi duo, fighting all-male peacock flock, and pot bellied pig covered in red paint for some reason better, not to mention it was a whole $7 a person to go into this lady's small backyard.
???: I loved the Cindy Lou Zoo when I was a kid. It was mostly domestics and semi domestics, and the exotics were treated well as far I remember. (childhood nostalgia goggles could possibly be warping things, granted.) Then it got new owners and became the Roscommon Zoo. They must have wanted it to be a "real" zoo, because they got two Bengal tigers, one orange and one white, and after a lot of bottle feeding and essentially giving them free rein of the employee areas when they grew too big they moved them to these tiny cages.
Tiger Exhibit - ZooChat
I felt so bad for the tigers. Imagine being loved all your life, then shoved in here. This is the first year since I was born where I didn't go.

 

Worst at good zoos
San Diego Zoo - Asian Passage grottos, Horn and hoofstock mesa and the other miscellaneous animals in Northern frontier (They should have done something to that area when they built Elephant Odyssey or updated Northern Frontier)
San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park- African Woods (it feels like they didn't put the same amount of care when building it as compared to African Outpost)
Bronx Zoo- The World of Birds (I'm ok with nostalgia feel of the park, but the World of Birds Building ruins it), Birds of Prey exhibits (Definitely need to be updated and made larger)
Central Park Zoo- Sea lions (I hate it when zoos build lazy sea lion exhibits it just feels like they aren't trying)
Miami Zoo- Tiger Exhibit(it feels baren besides the temple)
Best at bad zoos and aquariums
L.A. Zoo- The LAIR, Rainforests of the Americas, and Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains
Santa Barbra Zoo- California Trails (Best California exhibit I have ever seen)
Seaworld San Diego(While not terrible many of their recent decisions to add roller coasters instead of exhibits has caused me to put them here)- Wild Arctic (Still holds up after 20 years), and Penguin encounter (possibly one of the largest penguin colonies in America with Emporer, King, Adelie, Gentoo, Chinstrap, and Macaroni penguins; also the outdoor exhibit with Magellanic penguins and misc. seabirds.

 

I wouldn’t say L.A zoo is that bad but it’s your opinion, not mine

 

While it isn't terrible my problem is how old the exhibits are. I feel like most of the zoo has been in need of a remodel for many years and we're just now receiving one that will not be in effect until 2023. I put it in the bad zoo category because the exhibits I talked about were much better than the other regular exhibits you would find at the zoo because all of the other exhibits (Except for elephants of Asia and campo reserve) are outdated.

 

Makes sense. Thanks for clarifying that.

 

St. Louis Zoo polar bear exhibit definitely falls short of the rest of the zoo.

 

Bad exhibits in good zoos:

At Roger Williams Park Zoo, there are like 3 or 4 weird box enclosures right outside the Marco Polo trail which I find extremely out of place. I believe they were once home to lemurs, and last time I visited I remember seeing a North American porcupine in one of them.

 

The bottlenose dolphins at Kyoto Aquarium. The tank seems pretty small, smaller than most dolphin exhibits, and isn't very clean (mostly uneaten fish). I didn't go to see the dolphin show (I'm not a fan of that kind of thing), but you could hear it a mile off (the music was VERY loud). The rest of the aquarium was really good, although a few tanks were questionably sized for their inhabitants.

 

That was the old Madagascar exhibit, had three or four lemur species (including mongoose lemurs) and the radiated tortoises now oddly placed in what was Australasia. Over the years there has been a number of out of place uses for the exhibit. Perhaps the worst was when there was north american river otters in it, but it has also had american alligators, great-horned owls, north american porcupine, and some other stuff. If I was to name a bad exhibit in the zoo though, I would probably say that World of Adaptations us a disappointment. The old Australasia was superior and had a lot of better animals. The king vultures are not a good use of the old aviary and I miss some of the unusual herps and fish species that were taken out when they got the Komodo dragon and when they made the new tree roo exhibit. The northern tree shrews were also a very interesting species removed from the exhibit.

 

How so? I was just there today (well now yesterday) and think they have a pretty good polar bear exhibit. A decent pool, maybe could be deeper, and plenty of natural substrate. Not a lot of trees or shade structures, but the same can be said for the Arctic.

 

I did not say that it was truly a bad exhibit, just that it falls short of the rest of the zoo. When you compare the polar bear exhibit to Penguin and Puffin Coast, River's Edge, Sea Lion Sound, etc. it definitely does not compare with the other newer exhibits at the zoo. It also is a little disappointing seeing that this is the new bear exhibit. It definitely does not compete in the same league with other polar bear exhibits, such as Polar Fronteir at Columbus or Arctic Ring of Life at Detroit.