My family are half considering visiting the UK this year, so i thought i'd find out which UK zoo has the widest array of bird and mammal species. As an Australian, the amount of species on offer to us is significantly less than that available to a resident of the UK (i notice that about half the mammal species in London Zoo are not to be found in any Australian zoos). I bet there have been countless threads on this subject before but if anyone could get back to me, i'd really appreciate it.
Lou, I'll offer my 2 cents despite being a fellow Australian. What we lack most is of course ungulates and birds... So Marwell and Blackbrook come to mind. After that, Twycross obviously has enormous primate diversity. Port Lympne for carnivores?
General mammal/bird collections - Chester and London probably still the best collection-wise, Cotswold a nice smaller one with a suprising variety of stuff. Carnivore-wise - Edinburgh, Port Lympne/Howletts. Ungulates - Whipsnade, Marwell, Highland. Primates - definitely Twycross, also Edinburgh and Colchester. Bird-specialist-wise, Blackbrook is the standout.
Funnily enough, Colchester is the only major zoo in the UK that I have absolutely no interest in visiting.
I would say my top picks for if I visited would be (in no particular order) London, Chester, Edinburgh, Bristol, Jersey, Blackbrook. I will also say Twycross even though it comes in for a lot of criticism here, because its a zoo I've always wanted to visit (the general consensus here does seem to be that it has a good species selection but management decisions and some of the enclosures are rather lacking in quality)
I notice that Paignton is the only major zoo that has yet to earn a mention in this thread. Is it just the one that's been overlooked, or is its collection somehow not up to scratch with the rest?
I'm not sure what it is with Paignton - it's got a decent collection, very few poor exhibits overall, but somehow it doesn't feel like a 'priority'. For UKers its main highlight is the echidna, but that's not something it's worth an Australian travelling down to Devon for! I've always found this with Paignton - there's nothing particularly wrong with it, but there's something about it that stops it getting into my favourite UK zoos. No idea what though. Actually, Living Coasts is probably more likely to be of interest - it's got a wonderful collection of coastal birds.
Bird wise:Blackbrook Mammal Wise:Chester and Marwell Pending when you visit Edinburgh are aquiring a pair of Giant Panda's and their sister park Highland have the only Polar bear's in a public collection.
I know what you mean, I have exactly the same feelings about Paignton. I always enjoy my visits there (especially playing "spot the Echidna") but it never excites me in the way some other places do. The nearest I can come to putting my finger on it is that it's a bit ABCish and (like WH Smiths, say) it doesn't really seem to do anything exceptionally better than anybody else. Having said all that I like Crocodile Swamp and when I think about it there's a number of other exhibits I really quite like but I still don't seem to feel excited about the place. Very weird. Call Mulder & Scully.
Best Species Diversity I like Paignton's Desert, the Brookside Aviary, and the way you suddenly come across big cats behind glass at the end of said aviary. These, the monkey and ape enclosures, and the quarry with Barbary Sheep, surely bear comparison anywhere.
For the most part just look in the International Zoo Yearbook[although some collections are not included ,for example Blackbrook].I did a big Australian zoo tour this summer and although the indigenous species count was incredible i dont envy any Australian zoo enthusiast due to the extremely limited amount of exotic species that are allowed.The lady at Brisbanes Alma Park Zoo told me that they couldnt even get rabbits!
I'd discount it on the basis that they've not got that many different species (I think less than 20) and most (at least half) of them aren't particularly unusual/rare in UK zoos. It's not a bad collection of primates but a number of other collections have similar amounts of species (Edinburgh and Chester spring immediately to mind) so in my opinion I would dismiss it as "stand out" in terms of diversity.
