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Chiang Mai Zoo Chiang Mai Zoo, Thailand

Discussion in 'Thailand' started by Chlidonias, 16 Jun 2007.

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  1. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    This is from my blog from last year's trip through Asia...

    My first stop in Chiang Mai, as for that of any sensible person when coming into a new town, was the zoo. I took a songthaew for just 30 Baht, for a distance that further south probably would have garnered an argument for 300 Baht. The zoo is very good but with many old cages. There's lots of construction work going on all over the place, so it looks like they're renovating everything. The zoo is also very big, and very steep, which makes walking round very tiresome. There is a shuttle system but you have to pay for it, so I just used my legs. Like everywhere in Asia, when the way is steep they accomodate by just putting in an equally steep concrete path that then gets covered in a film of moss and algae and when wet becomes a deathtrap. They do have some steps here and there but whoever made them displayed the common Asian predilection for having the flat bit of each step sloping downwards and, well, you can imagine the scenario when wet. To sum up, you need to be careful walking the paths in Chiang Mai Zoo! The zoo is most famous for having giant pandas but you have to pay extra to see them (100 Baht, which is the same price as entry to the whole rest of the zoo) so I gave them a miss. I'll wait till I go to China to see pandas. They've also got koalas now but what with all the walking it wasn't till after I left that I realised I'd missed them as well. That's the problem with big zoos -- you almost invariably miss things, even if you try your best to follow everything on the map (and the map for Chiang Mai Zoo is next to useless for directions!). It wasn't pandas or koalas that had brought me to the zoo, however, it was the aquarium, because the aquarium has Mekong giant catfish, the pla buk, on display. It was up behind the penguin house apparently. I found the penguin house. Couldn't find the aquarium. I walked further and found the Cape fur seal house, so knew I'd gone too far. I walked back. Penguin house, no aquarium. I looked till my eyes bled, but still no aquarium. Either I was a complete ***** or something fishy was going on. I gave up and wandered all the way back to the start. It turned out the aquarium was closed. No pla buk for me. With no giant catfish, the best animal at the zoo was a rufous treepie which is a species of magpie. Very very attractive. The reptile section was very good, even if some of the smaller tanks were positioned so that all you could see was your own reflection looking back at you. The nocturnal house also was very good. I'm not entirely sure that the zoo designers were fully aware of what being nocturnal entails (ie, being in the dark), but it was still good seeing half-dozy civets and so on. The best animals in the nocturnal house were the three-striped palm civet (although that one was fully asleep) and the ferret badger which looks like a ferret pretending to be a badger. So cute.
     
    Chlidonias, 16 Jun 2007
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  2. patrick

    patrick Well-Known Member

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    your missed the pandas? thats the whole reason i went. i agree with pretty much everything you say here. chang-mai zoo is big and very difficult to navigate. like any zoo it has some lousy enclosures and some not so lousy ones, but all in all i found it pretty ordinary. the cape fur seals, which are incedently the same warm temperate species we have here in australia, were in a disgustingly small indoor, natural light deprived "antarctic" themed pool which did little to impress. all in all i find asian zoos particuarly prone to tackiness with a penchant for all things concrete (why use a real log when you can scult a concrete one?) and chang-mai zoo was no exception. there was also, like most asian zoos some pretty clear examples of overcrowding. of particular concern to me was the sun and black bears. in the case of one group all animals were violently picking on one individual who was clearly very stressed and threatened and no ability to escape.

    certainly not the worst of asias zoos but at least when i visited certainly nothing outstanding either. pandas or not.
     
    patrick, 25 Jun 2007
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  3. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    pandas are over-rated in my opinion. I prefer the smaller critters, the birds, the ugly overlooked rodents, the fish...

    The fur seal house was actually one of the things that was closed for renovations when I was there so I didn't see the inside, but it did look very poky from the outside.
     
    Chlidonias, 25 Jun 2007
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  4. jwer

    jwer Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Can you remember which zoo's held Douc Langurs (and perhaps which subspecies?). I love these animals but i read on the notice at Cologne Zoo that they estimated the world's Zoo population of this species to be around 50 to 60 animals.

    Since i only know of the 1.3 in the USA, the 2.3 in Cologne, the primate rescue centre in northern vietnam and the group at Singapore Zoo i wonder what other institutions would keep this species...
     
    jwer, 28 Jun 2007
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  5. patrick

    patrick Well-Known Member

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    i'm pretty sure i saw one in the hiddeous saigon zoo - red shanked i think. i was told at the EPRC that the saigon zoo animal(s) got it lucky compared with the douc langurs at hanoi zoo. so theres two more institutions (if you can call them that) with at least one or two. not supprised if theres no animals left in saigon now the conditions there were APPALING! worst i've ever seen.
     
    patrick, 29 Jun 2007
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  6. Pertinax

    Pertinax Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    I visited Bangkok and Changmai Zoos about 1990. Can't remember much now about ChangMai Zoo(except a big single tusked elephant bull) but the Dusit Zoo in Bangkok had a pretty big number of Douc Kangurs(probably Red-shanked but possibly others too) Probably 12-20 of them. They were in pretty basic mesh enclosures but looked fit and well( due no doubt to climate and diet similar to wild) I don't kow if they have them nowadays though.
     
    Pertinax, 29 Jun 2007
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  7. Zooish

    Zooish Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    > on doucs: I'm pretty sure most Indochinese zoos have them, even the most awful ones since they could be caught from the wild. Many of these zoos are not registered with any organisation (SEAZA, ISIS etc), so their populations go virtually unknown to the larger zoo community.

    > on Thai zoos: Khao Kheow Zoo in Pattaya is supposedly the best zoo in thailand, with fairly decent enclosures for the animals. Anyone been there before?
     
    Zooish, 30 Jun 2007
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  8. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I have another thread on Khao Kheow Open Zoo in this same "other Asian zoos" section (its outside Chonburi in fact, not Pattaya). It is very big (spread thinly over 2000 acres) but the cages are actually standard zoo-sized ones despite what their publicity would have you believe. The cat cages are small, and the cages in the visitor centre for smallish mammals are truly awful. However it may be 'the best' zoo in Thailand. I guess it depends on what you're expectations are. I didn't think too highly of it myself. (Of course I was in rather a bad mood at the time, and half expecting to end the day being arrested, but that's a whole other story!)

    On doucs, I have seen the ones at Singapore in 2004 (Singapore Zoo was claiming to have the world's largest primate collection, which I don't quite believe), while in 2006 they had them at Dusit Zoo in Bangkok, and they may possibly have also been at Zoo Negara in Kuala Lumpur as well (the zoos tended to run into one another in my memory, so I can't quite remember). As Zooish says, doucs are probably commonly kept at many Asian zoos.

    here's a link about a 'zoo' in Thailand that includes a mention of doucs
    Menagerie on Top Floors of Thai Department Store

    In USA San Diego, Philadelphia and Washington Park Zoos have red-shanked doucs.
     
    Last edited: 30 Jun 2007
    Chlidonias, 30 Jun 2007
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  9. Zooish

    Zooish Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Maybe not the best, but at least one of the more decent ones... I believe Zoo Negara does not have doucs, or any other Malaysian zoo for that matter.

    On Singapore Zoo's claim of largest primate collection, i can't vouch for the veracity of it (i work for the zoo, but not in the zoology dept). But there are at present 39 species of primates at the Zoo, including those presently not on display but excluding subspecies. In total, there are 320 primate specimens.
    The marketing people have a knack for exaggerating or twisting facts...

    I think Twycross Zoo has more primate species.
     
    Last edited: 30 Jun 2007
    Zooish, 30 Jun 2007
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  10. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    ah, the good old marketing people...lol

    320 individuals though, that's pretty big!
     
    Chlidonias, 30 Jun 2007
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  11. jwer

    jwer Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Thnx for the info everyone, i'm pretty sure the north american population is 0.2 at San Diego and 1.1 (mother & son, on loan from San Diego) at Philadelphia... What made you mention Washington Zoo?
     
    jwer, 1 Jul 2007
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  12. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I found that on the internet. Washington bred one apparently. Wasn't dated with the year (only that the baby was born in September), although it looked reasonably recent.
     
    Chlidonias, 2 Jul 2007
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  13. patrick

    patrick Well-Known Member

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    dusit were breeding doucs (and yep they were indeed red-shanks) o my last visit which was about 3 years ago. i got a couple of pics of the infant who was very curious. i can't remember how many exactly, but there was a decent sized troop i know that much. like someone elese said - they are in a tall, very ordinary mesh or barred cage, but they did at least look reasonably healthy. i don't think very much of dusit zoo, but it had improved dramatically from my first visit....
     
    patrick, 3 Jul 2007
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  14. Pertinax

    Pertinax Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Sounds like exactly the same cages and situation as 15 years ago.:)
     
    Pertinax, 3 Jul 2007
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  15. kiang

    kiang Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    kiang, 22 Jul 2012
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  16. Jackwow

    Jackwow Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I'm in Bangkok at the moment but making a flying visit (no pun intended) to Chiang Mai this evening, visiting the zoo all day tomorrow and then returning to Bangkok at night. Really looking forward to it. :D
     
    Jackwow, 3 Jan 2013
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  17. Jackwow

    Jackwow Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Back in Bangkok after 3 months back in Scotland so I think another Chiang Mai Zoo visit is in order. Not a "flying visit" this time though. :D
     
    Jackwow, 27 May 2013
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  18. vogelcommando

    vogelcommando Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    vogelcommando, 24 Feb 2016
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  19. vogelcommando

    vogelcommando Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    vogelcommando, 24 Mar 2016
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  20. Crowthorne

    Crowthorne Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Crowthorne, 18 Sep 2019
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