CGSwans flies north for the winter

Bioparc was about 3.5, but I was slowed down by the silliness with the lemurs. I probably would have stayed longer at Oceanario if I wasn't feeling unwell that day, and certainly would have liked longer at Oceanografic.

It's true that I haven't been lingering a long time thus far on this trip, and as a rule I don't hang around simply for the sake of hanging around. But I haven't - yet - hit any of the really top tier traditional zoos. I expect some in the near future that will be rather longer visits.

 

Zoo #10 - Menagerie du Jardin des Plantes, France, 6/4/2017

Vienna is older and London is more famous, but the Menagerie may be the most important of the three co-founders of the zoo as an institution. I've been developing an interest in the social history of zoos since I noticed the strong correlation between the spread of urban zoos and of the industrial revolution. It's no coincidence, I think, that a majority of Europe's great urban zoos are found in the coal and steel belt that stretches from Scotland and the English Midlands, down through the Benelux and Ruhr to Bavaria and the former Prussia. By contrast Italy, Spain and to an extent France developed zoo traditions later, and they are much less widespread.

The Menagerie, though, belongs to a different, earlier revolution. Whilst there were imperial menageries before it - and Vienna was even open to the public from 1779 - this was the first zoo that was born of and by the people, as a genuinely public institution. Without the Menagerie, would London - a city that had rather less angst about class discrimination - ever have opened to the public, or could it have remained a plaything of the rich and middle classes? It's the history that meant this zoo - which might not have made the cut as a function of its outright quality - was always going to be part of this trip.

Whilst I assume that little to none of what is there now dates all the way back to 1792, it is very apparent that this is a living museum as much as it is a zoo. At a guess the cat and primate houses date from the 1930s or so? Hoofstock yards are small, aviaries are moderately sizeable - bigger than Lisbon, equivalent to Barcelona - but unadorned. The two reptile houses, too, must date back many decades. One is chokingly humid, which I understand was the rule for reptile houses of its time, before climate control was individualised to specific tanks.

And yet, for all that it's a creaking old vessel, I came away thinking that the Jardin might be close to the best zoo it can be without sacrificing what makes it important. With the exception of gaur the really large animals are all long gone. There's lots of caprids here, where vertical space can compensate for the pokiness of the hoofstock exhibits, though I don't think this advantage is fully realised in some of the enclosures.

The big cats on display - all three 'leopard' species - are ones that consistently get ripped off in zoos: I don't think they have generous spaces here but they are complex and no worse than anywhere else. The primate enclosures, though ugly, are also complex, enriched environments. The only species I have qualms about is the orangutans. Although a mixed enclosure for golden lion tamarins, long-nosed potoroos (unseen) and an Asian bird species I've since forgotten did seem a little idiosyncratic!

Some pilgrimages, I imagine, can be a chore. This visit wasn't one.

 

Zoo #11: Paris Zoo, 8/4/17

From the second oldest zoo in the world to one of the newest: Paris has both. I understand that this place re-opened to less than stellar reviews here on Zoochat, but I enjoyed my afternoon here very well. On the subject of the reconstruction, I flicked through a book of photos of the before, during and after phases in the gift shop that was very good. I might have bought if I were not a) living out of a backpack and b) not spending money if I can reasonably avoid it.

First let me provide some context for how I approach visiting zoos for the first time. I do just enough reading on Zoochat to identify whether a zoo is one I will go out of my way to visit, one that I will prioritise visiting if I'm nearby, one that will make the cut if time allows or one I will choose to pass on. But having done that, I tend to try to switch off from reading reviews and I certainly don't go looking through the gallery. To the maximum amount possible I want to see a zoo for the first time through my own lens, and not anybody else's. Apart from looking at the map and checking Zootierliste (for European collections) for key species I don't really do any further research once I've decided to visit a collection.

This is all my long-winded way of saying I didn't have much of an idea what to expect of Paris, other than a party-suppressed memory that many here didn't think much of it. and for Paris that worked very well for me. I think by dimming my expectations I enjoyed day more.

I don't think much, if anything, at Paris will have won any design awards. There's a rough-hewn look here that feels like they never quite applied the finishing touches, or perhaps to put it more prosaically that they ran over-budget and cut corners. I actually don't mind that, though, as the result is broadly consistent with how my taste in zoos is developing: I care deeply about complex, enriched environments for the animals but less and less about the 'naturalistic' - as opposed to 'natural' - aesthetic window-dressing (often it is literally window-dressing, in fact). As much as I like the concept of landscape immersion in principle, nothing was ever going to convince me yesterday that I was anywhere other than suburban Paris, so why spend millions pretending?

For the most part I think Paris does deliver on the internal spaces for the animals, though I don't think it does anything that's exceptional and there are some failures. Small and medium carnivores do pretty well here - I especially liked the wolverine exhibit with its varied topography and vegetation, and space to get away from visitors at the back. Fossas (unseen) and the Eurasian lynx also do pretty well. The ungulate exhibits, whilst mostly of a good size, are disappointing for the lack of grazing/browsing opportunities. Quite a lot of the Patagonian mixed exhibit (guanacos, llamas, rheas and maras) is composed of a substrate of large pebbles. What use is that to the animals within?

The bird exhibits are for the most part very good. The tropical house (which straddles the Guyana and Madagascar-themed areas) functions as an excellent walk-through aviary. I often feel, though, for the birds that are kept in small side aviaries within such buildings: could the hyacinth macaws and toco toucans not have had access to the entire building? One little note that I will give Paris lots of credit for here is that they had put stickers on signage to show which birds were temporarily off display. Anybody who has ever spent 20 minutes vainly looking for a species that isn't there will surely appreciate that small touch.

I thought rather less of the outdoor flight aviary, which was fine for wading birds, but little to offer the turaco, hornbill and other forest species I saw in there. It also had an ugly concrete wall wrapping around half the aviary; the only purpose I can think of for this is as a windbreak? I don't really have a lot to say about the reptile collection other than to say the choice to have a vivarium building entirely for European species was interesting. Unfortunately there's only so many species they can display though, so it was always going to be on the small side, and I didn't stay long in here because of a whirling dervish of screaming hellbeasts who I think were celebrating a birthday for one of their number.

Primate exhibits are mostly all of a piece, as other than the Guinea baboons (a life tick for me, I think) all the species here are lemurs or neotropical monkeys. Each had excellent climbing opportunities, but could do with some foliage. I did enjoy seeing the multi-species enclosure within the tropical house (four neotropical monkey species and a sloth), but again I wondered if at least some (the sloth, the tamarins and marmosets) could have been free-ranging within the building. Really the only thing that lets the building as a whole down is the terrible reflections on the glass looking into the interior enclosures. Other than that it's the best I've been to (a title it's not likely to keep very long, but nevertheless).

That's about all, other than to say I was struck by the absence of great apes, elephants and bears from the collection, despite the latter two making sense as centrepiece species for two of the five geographic themes (Europe and Sahel). These are, of course, along with cetaceans the biggest target groups for anti-zoo activists. Do I detect the faint odour of politics in this masterplan?

 

Thanks for alerting me to the unfinished sentence.

 

Zoo #12: Beauval Zoo, 10/4/2017

An ultimately rewarding but incredibly tiring and at times stressful day. Beauval was one of about 15 zoos that I thought was a contender for a top ten ranking from this trip, and one of perhaps ten in contention for the top five. So it was always going to make the cut, but in this case that cut involved leaving my Paris hostel at about 6:30AM for a bus to the train station, where a train would take me to Blois, from where I could get a bus that would deposit me at the zoo at about 10:30AM. The same bus then departed the zoo at 17:15, giving me a little over six hours to see everything. The whole day became a lot more draining when I woke up at 4:15AM and, conscious of the ticking alarm clock, couldn't get back to sleep.

It was as my bus was entering the village of Saint Aignan that I got my first inkling of what I was in for. The bus hit the village and traffic stopped. I had thought the timetable for getting to the zoo - Blois to Beauval in an hour - seemed excessive. A good quarter of that hour, though, was the last 3km as we inched closer and closer to the zoo. It. Was. Packed.

I knew Beauval to be popular, but I hadn't anticipated what looked and felt like a public holiday crowd on a Monday. As far as I know this isn't school holiday time in France, though that could be it. Anyway, for a zoo in a relatively rural part of France it is certainly pulling a crowd. I worry that it might be a success built on shallow foundations, though. I suspect this is a zoo that needs constant novelties to get the crowds - many of whom must be coming from long distances away - to keep showing up.

There are signs all around the zoo identifying the year that certain developments opened, and it's clear that they try to have something new and significant every year - probably times, as the lions were, for the beginning of the peak season in April. But where does one go when you've already added and built annual marketing campaigns around all of the ABCs? They already have elephants, giraffes, rhinos (2 species), zebras, hippos, gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, sea lions, penguins, brown bears, lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and snow leopards.

The next step, I guess, is to go for the rarer star attractions, but they already have okapis, koalas, manatees and, of course, black and white blob bears. I guess they can go into sharks and dolphins, but they're a long way from the ocean so it might be a struggle economically. They've also already got a lot of crowd-pulling 'white' animals: white lions, a white tiger, white alligators, Burmese pythons and wallabies.

That leaves building new exhibits for existing species housed in older enclosures, which has clearly been the thrust of most recent development. There's a couple of these left: the brown bears have a tiny enclosure and most of the big cats are in adequate, but unspectacular pens. But once they build new accommodation for them, what's left to do? What will bring people through the door again in 2021? I don't know.

Anyway, back to the zoo. For a while I thought covering the zoo in the time available might be tough, especially given the over-crowding, but it turned out to be fine. I think that with perhaps one or two exceptions I'm not going to be crunched for time at any zoo I visit along the way, which is a good thing. Nevertheless, I gave relatively short thrift to the section of the zoo housing the okapis, elephants and blob bears (among others). I was, as ever, bemused by the Australian house, which had koalas and tree kangaroos behind glass, with Outback-themed paint jobs and accompanied by a couple of reef tanks.

I really liked how Beauval has integrated aquatic (manatee and piranha) and reptilian exhibits into its two indoor great ape complexes. It's a smart use of structures that reduces the number of buildings cluttering up the open space, as the core of the zoo is already quite built up as it is.

The bird collection here is excellent, especially parrots, though many of the latter are in inadequate small aviaries. I'll hopefully get around to updating the two challenge threads soon but I had my best day for passerines thus far, not that that's saying a great deal.

I'd like to know their secret with the savannah exhibit, which has mostly decent sized groups of no fewer than seven species, allegedly on three hectares (I think it's quite a bit smaller than that). And yet, despite heavy cropping by large animals, the exhibit is covered in lush green grass. How do they do it?

I thought the (seemingly very new) hippopotamus complex was decent: it's netted over in its entirety, so that the exhibit doubles as a walk-through aviary for African water birds. The frustration, however, was the same one that I have with virtually every modern hippo exhibit I've seen: bountiful water space, but small land area and no access to pasture despite this being an integral part of a hippo's behaviour. Smaller pools + bigger paddocks = happier hippos.

The new lion complex is adjacent to the hippo one. It might be open but it's not yet finished: for example there is a shell of a soon-to-be naked mole-rat exhibit, but it's only a shell. I saw no sign of African hunting dogs and the lions seemed to be confined to their indoor quarters (visible through glass). There are some sub-adult males here that will only inhabit the new exhibit for a very short time, I think.

By the time I had seen the entire zoo I was impressed, but ever so slightly deflated as well. This was partly that I was exhausted, but it was also the same dynamic as I had at Bronx Zoo two years ago. The gap between a good and a great zoo is not that wide: Beauval has some great features, but also some weaker ones. In short, it's just another zoo: if you'll forgive the stats language, it's perhaps two standard deviations better than average but still within the normal, expected range for a zoo.

Well, normal and expected except for one thing. I hadn't planned to see the bird show but I had the time, and was near enough to where the amphitheatre was to make the second show. I was there about 15 minutes early, but if I had been 10 minutes early I doubt I would have had a seat.

The show starts sedately and familiarly enough, with a few owls buzzing the crowd. Then came a segment with a pair of crested seriemas, which just prowled about for a couple of minutes eating worms or something similar. The show was held up for a while as one of the seriemas played a long con on its handler. It stayed out when called to go inside, got a worm to coax it in, then waited, got another worm and waited again. Eventually the keeper literally chased it inside.

From here things started to pick up, with the usual raptors and vultures. But as new birds came out the ones that had been there stuck around. Soon there were five birds of prey, then ten, then twenty. Suddenly parrots emerged from all directions - macaws, cockatoos, conures, amazons and African greys. Marabou storks made an appearance, followed by cranes, then pelicans, then ibis. There must have been 100 birds zipping around in every direction. It was as if one - no, ten - of those posters you see featuring bird species of a given locality had come to life, Pixar style, before my eyes.

It was mesmerising. Just when I was starting to think there was nothing left in the zoo world to surprise me, along comes the Beauval Zoo bird department, to sucker punch me with a show so inconceivable that it upended the natural order of things. Up is down, left is right, down is left, right is up, a malign anthropomorphic carrot is President and Beauval Zoo can put on a bird show with at least 100 birds flapping about at once. Unbelievable.

 

This is a great thread CGS, I feel like I'm coming to it late, but it will no doubt turn out to near the beginning.

Its always fascinating to follow a travel blog like this, not only to hear a little about places I haven't been, but even more so to see places I'm familiar with through your eyes.

I may be one of few on here to have been to Parc Ornithologique in the Camargue, and I agree, I have it on my list of zoos visited too. No otters for me that day though, although I saw and photographed several Coypu/Nutria. You were lucky.

I didn't bother going inside the paid part of the Dubai aquarium - seems like that was a good decision.

Take it easy in the next week or so, Easter holidays seem to be the busiest of all in the zoo world in our part of the world. And keep writing

 

It sounds like Beauval may have been a bit of a disappointment, all things told?

Jurong's bird show also has a grand finale with many birds in the air, but it sounds like Beauval has it beat. (I think you haven't been to Singapore yet, right?). My favourite bird show is Banham's, but I imagine that won't be on your itinerary.

 

When they were redesigning and rebuilding the zoo they explicitly said that they didn't have room for elephant and bear exhibits in the relatively small urban zoo (30 acres I think?), so they were never part of the plan. There is a Congo biogeographic exhibit in the masterplan that was posted somewhere here that showed pygmy hippos and gorillas. Presumably that may still be planned as a future development?

 

I have been to Singapore. I don't remember seeing the bird show but if I did it obviously didn't make the same impression.

Let's not call it a 'disappointment' so much as a 'timely calibration of expectations'. I had the same thing at Bronx but I think it contributed to how much I enjoyed San Diego the next week.

 

They definitely could have done brown bears if they had sought to fit them. Just put them where the Guinea baboons went instread. I don't know if they have room for a further development.

 

You visited zoos on April 6th, 8th and 10th...but what did you do on your non-zoo days? I'm sure that some of us would be intrigued to find out what attractions you saw on those particular days. Are you touring any museums, art galleries, shopping districts?

Now that you've been to Singapore, San Diego, Bronx, Beauval, etc., with Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna surely on the upcoming itinerary, what major worldwide zoos will be on your bucket list after this trip is over? Omaha and Saint Louis would be the next best American zoos and I'm guessing that by late 2016 you will have seen most of the truly great European and Australian zoos.

 

I'm a little over a month in. As somebody once said "this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

To clarify, I am not counting it as a zoo. Though I can see how it meets the definition for some, it doesn't quite for me.

Depends on your budget - it is very expensive - but the 'Underwater Zoo' bit was decent.

That was only 33 days ago. It feels like a lifetime!

''Tis unavoidable. However, I have some truly atrocious weather for my next two visits, and they are on days that I can't really move other than at enormous, unjustifiable expense. So I shall make the best of it, and at least it should keep the crowds at bay.

 

Lots. I think I've been to about 12 museums, four galleries and maybe 10 world heritage sites so far. I don't go in for shopping but I do love just wandering about cities, and I'll fossick through book shops wherever there's a chance. I also try to visit a supermarket and produce market everywhere I go - obviously to buy supplies but also to just look and see what's different.

I won't get to *quite* every major European zoo. There are a couple of major ones that simply don't work for whatever reason. The one I've missed so far that I regret the most is Cabercino in Spain. That looks fascinating, but the distance out of my way was unjustifiable.

Setting Europe aside, most of the remaining big names after this trip will be in the USA. My next trip there will be in 2020 to help rid that poor benighted country of the afore-mentioned malign anthropomorphic carrot. Fighting fascism will take precedence, but hopefully there'll be room for some zoos as well.

Beyond the US, though I haven't been to Perth, the NT or New Zealand in my own region yet. And Birds of Eden in South Africa is a bucket list item. I'd love to see Churaumi too, but it didn't work for my 2016 Japan trip and it's likely to be some years before I might be back. There's a decent smattering of zoos across Asia that aren't bucket list places in and of themselves, but are in countries that I'd like to visit anyway, so I would visit them too.

I will never top the Zoochat league table for most zoos visited, but I'd like to have visited 200 zoos in 40 countries one day. As this thread stands the relevant figures are 70 in nine.

 

Zoo #13, Zoo Antwerp, and #14, Planckendael. April 14-15

Apologies for the double shot post, but I'm in the middle of one of the most hectic weeks of the entire trip and it's either this, or fall further behind on writing. But hopefully the 'compare andbb contrast' style works.

Antwerp Zoo is my 71st zoo, and it has rocketed into my top ten or so favourites. It's a delight.

I only stayed about 10 minutes walk away, but as usual I didn't have my act together in time to be there for the opening. By the time I arrived at perhaps 10:30 it was already quite busy, though not unmanageably so apart from one section, which I'll come to later.

I had one very important target species here: to see the only Eastern lowland gorilla left in captivity, and thus have seen all six non-human great ape species. As I approached the great ape area, though, I just about fell dead from a heart attack when I saw that it was in a state of redevelopment. Surely I couldn't have come all this way to miss out. Surely not.

Thankfully I hadn't: the zoo is building the new exhibit around the apes' indoor enclosures, to which they are unfortunately confined for the duration, but allows them to still be on show. I went back twice to observe the only Eastern gorilla I'm ever likely to see; the chances that they go extinct in my lifetime are tragically high and, with this in mind, watching her was a troubling and emotional experience.

So when I came back later and found half a dozen children banging the glass next to her head, as their parents watched on without any concerns about their behaviour I had to step in.

"STOP."

Shocked, they all stopped. They turned. They stared, disbelievingly. So did their parents. I held their gaze, without moving other than to raise an eyebrow, first at the children, and then their parents. The entire group stayed and watched the gorilla, without harassing her further. At least for the time I was there.

Unfortunately this was just one of two absolutely abysmal displays of poor visitor behaviour whilst I was at Antwerp. The other was a group effort in the nocturnal house, where I again intervened, physically covering a woman's phone with my hand when she attempted to use the torch function to find the sloth. I explained why, and she apologised. But then I turned the corner and heard her sarcastically repeating my words as she and her friends laughed.

That was just the most egregious example, but the standard of behaviour in the nocturnal house was poor as a whole. I expect children to be loud - although I also expect their parents to control them - but adults can and should know better. I addition to the torch attempt I - and more importantly the animals - endured shouting, loud laughter, and tapping on glass.

It's a terrible shame because it's one of the best nocturnal houses I've ever seen. It's not massive and the species list isn't super noteworthy, but the level of lighting is perfect and the enclosures are all generous in size - something that is so often compromised on for nocturnal buildings. This visit afforded me my best ever viewing of aardvarks, and I managed to see every species present except the lesser bushbabies.

It's just one of six significant indoor display halls at Antwerp, and all but one are of very high quality. The exception is the small monkey house, which is antiquated at best, and has some unacceptably small, entirely indoor habitats (notably for lemurs). One highlight here, though, were my first sighting of elephant shrews: they're much bigger than I imagined.

Of the other four, I lavished attention on the bird house and reptile house, gave rather less time to the aquarium and very short thrift to the butterfly house. The latter is simply because I - mostly, not always - find insect exhibits uninteresting, but it's a very nice exhibit. The aquarium was very over-crowded when I went through, and it was well past lunch time so I was looking to get out of the zoo and eat something. But again, it's the best 'zoo' aquaria I've been to, with more charm than Madrid's larger offering, and it's not an obvious after-thought like the one in Canberra. I'm trying to think of others I've been to but am drawing a blank, so maybe Antwerp is only winning in a field of three.

I was quite taken by the species line-up in the reptile house because I can't think of another I've been to that places such an emphasis on small lizard species, which are so often an after-thought. The curator must have a particular passion for day geckos, as there's about five species (though I only managed to find two).

One of my favourite exhibits in the whole zoo was the 'dark corridor' for a variety of finches. The birds may well avoid going into the void sufficiently to stop them escaping, but that doesn't mean they won't dart in and out of the darkness to get from one 'enclosure' to another. The result isn't a series of cabinet-sized boxes for pairs of finches, but a complex set of habitats making up a communal flight aviary. An example of the animals, themselves, innovating and creating a better exhibit.

Most of the outside exhibits are not particularly noteworthy, though there are few that would qualify as 'bad' (perhaps the mandrills). But what made this such a very satisfying visit is the sheer beauty of the place. Manicured lawns dotted with tulip beds, and trees in the midst of their spring bloom. Spring must surely be the best time to visit this zoo. As I was visiting on Good Friday there were a lot of Easter decorations about the place: wooden rabbits dotted the lawns and Easter eggs hung from the trees like Christmas baubles.

The entire visit felt like I was seeing my own Melbourne Zoo in its full pomp and splendour as a 'zoological garden', as opposed to the dumbed-down zoo it has since become, but without the egregious animal welfare standards that prevailed into the mid-20th century.

Antwerp's a gem. I will finish with this note of caution, though: there has obviously been a series of recent developments that are taking the zoo in a much more contemporary architectural direction. This is a mistake. Development and renewal are essential, but I fear for Antwerp's heritage value if they continue to go down this path. They should take inspiration the train station next door: a beautiful, historic facade that hides cutting edge modernity inside.

I headed out to Planckendael the next day. I like how the RZSA (which I'm guessing stands for Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp) have gone for quite different approaches at their two sites. Whereas Antwerp is perhaps the epitome of the traditional European zoological garden, Planckendael hints at some American influences, with defined paths through geographic zones, thematic elements that at times become heavy-handed (more on that below), and a lot of interactive 'play' elements that aren't necessarily anything to do with animals.

I even had a go at one of them - an elevated ropes course thing near the elephants - only to have it dawn on me halfway along that I was climbing a ropes course in the rain with an untrustworthy knee and another 160+ days of travel to not get hurt in. So as the Romans say, I hurried to finish... slowly.

I headed straight for the rainforest building because a) I am feeling super-competitive about this damn passerines challenge and b) it was raining a lot and being dry sounded nice. I lavished a fair bit of time in here but didn't manage to add any new passerines - my only addition came from an outdoor aviary later.

I wasn't a fan of the nocturnal animals space within this building. It consisted of a couple of enclosures for brown rats, pygmy slow loris, Prevost's squirrels and a Burmese python, apparently known to Belgians as a 'tiger python'. The latter had a wonderfully massive exhibit except it was entirely hard surfaces, of which I am not at all a fan.

The mammal exhibits here were badly let down by a poor choice of interpretative feature. Adjacent to the exhibits is one of those walls where you press buttons to answer questions. The problem here is that guessing the wrong answer plays an electronic beeping tone. And when you have lots of young children who love nothing more than pressing buttons that play electronic beeping tones, you get a lot of electronic beeping tones. I found it so unbearable I had to leave: the animals, especially the loris with its great hearing, must suffer terribly.

Planckendael has a surprisingly substantial Australian section, with the obligatory kangaroos and emus, the drawcard koalas but also an echidna, wombat (unseen), dusky pademelon and cassowary, along with an aviary and small reptile house.

By small I really do mean 'tiny', as they only had bearded dragons, a Children's python and a blue-tongue skink, which along with the so-called tiger python are the only reptiles on display. One of the least substantial reptile collections I've ever seen.

There's not a lot to say about the vast bulk of the enclosures here, which are for the most part the standard sort of thing for the standard sorts of big mammals. But they are mostly generous to the inhabitants, which is the main thing. I did like the walkthrough aviary/penguin pool, though.

Now, let me return to the theming and the interpretative/educational elements for a moment. I have recently posted on some other thread that 'cultural' theming in zoos makes me increasingly uncomfortable. In a time when far too many of us are retreating into our tribes (be they partisan, national, ethnic or religious), I am not wild about using exotic cultures as a prop to display wild animals.

However. I think for the bulk of the park Planckendael gets it just on the right side. The Indian theming in the Asia section seems to be highlighting the intersection between Indian society and its endangered wildlife. Very well. And the tepees outside the bison enclosure are also appropriate given that the bison's significance to Plains Native Americans is so central to both their story as a culture, and the bison's as a species.

There was one thing that revolted me, however. Unfortunately I couldn't read the signage, which was either only in Dutch or in Flemish. But there is a small model of a San Bushman and a couple of artefacts directly adjacent to the bonobo enclosure. Given the long, and ongoing, history of black people being subjected to 'ape' and 'monkey' as terms of racial abuse, I found this to be wholly inappropriate.

Setting that aside, I reckon Planckendael is a pretty good zoo. By conventional metrics it might be considered better than Antwerp, but ultimately these things are subjective, and I simply adored Antwerp too much not to place it ahead.

 

Wait until you see other European aquarium buildings in zoos, given your love for city zoos you will love Berlin and Amsterdam, but more immersive ones like in Arnhem and Rotterdam, will also be impressive

you saw black-and-rufous sengi which are among the largest, over twice the size of other species you will see in Europe

missed the devils? though they are probably not very interesting for you as an Aussie .

Pairi Daiza next?

 

I've been following this thread since the start and have just thought of a discrepancy. How are you travelling around the UK? You can't use an Inter Rail card and our trains are a rip off compared to the rest of Europe. Would hiring a car be cheaper? Also, our zoos tend to be awkward to reach by public transport so have you got a plan?

All this is based on the assumption you're coming to the UK, if you're skipping us then ignore this message!☺

 

Yes, you can travel in the UK with Inter Rail - but you can't buy a UK-specific card if you are a UK citizen: Interrail Great Britain Pass

In any case, unless CGSwans has any form of European citizenship we don't know about then that's no help, as non-European citizens can only buy Eurail, not Inter Rail, and that doesn't include the UK as far as I can see.