Cologne Zoo Cologne Zoo (Zoo Köln)

Cologne Zoo (Zoo Köln)

So I'm planning my next zoo trip, to Cologne Zoo in January. This will be my first visit to a German zoo.

I hear that their indoor rainforest exhibit is quite impressive, and they have a large elephant exhibit with room for up to 20 eles. How many do they have right now?

Any other rarities or highlights the good people of Zoobeat can recommend?

 

The lemur house is pretty good and contains the only group of douc langurs in Europe.

They had the last red uakari but I think that has died of old age.

Saigas are the only ones outside Russia.

 

Thanks Pygathrix. I've found a good review on the Zoos dans le Monde site with lots of photos including the Madagascar house - looks good, as does the ape house and baboon rock!

 

Check this link. There are 20 pictures from Cologne Zoo.

I went to Cologne in July, and i was very impressed. I counted a total of 12 elephants in their big enclosure and house. The indoor Rainforest is indeed impressive, as it only features Asian animals, some of the quite rare. The beautiful douc langurs now live in the Ape house, a greenhouse with some interesting enclosures for gorillas, orangs and bonobos. It was also cool to see saigas, little blue penguins and blue-eyed black lemurs.

Hope this helps

 

Just some quick add-ons as Cologne zoo is one of my favorites...
The uakari wasn't a red but a white-headed uakari (Cacajao calvus)... They had a pair coming from Stuttgart zoo. The male, Pucky (who lost and eye and really looked weird) died in july 2005 and the female, Schneckchen, died a few months after. They were kept in the small south-american monkey house (which looks like Moscow's cathedral)... in here, you can find one of the biggest breeding groups of red howler monkeys (Alouatta seniculus), yellow-breasted capuchins (Cebus xanthosternos) and Geoffroy's spider monkeys from a very rare subspecie (Ateles geoffroyi ornatus).
You can also look for the meerkat enclosure (I know it's definitely not a rare specie!!), it's one of the best and biggest around Europe.
They also have an impressive duck collection (with Madagascar endemics Anas bernieri and Anas melleri breeding).
The last douc langurs in Europe (with a baby born earlier this year) and the very last saiga antelope (a male) are also on exhibit.
In the Madagascar house, you'll see some rare species, Greater bamboo lemur, White-bellied ruffled lemur, Crowned lemur...
The pheasantry holds some very rare species including goliath herons, cape bald ibis, white cranes and some madagascar endemics (crested ibis, blue coua, crested coua, madagascar fody) transferred last year from Walsrode.
Close to the big-cats enclosures, you'll find some rare siberian weasels (Mustela sibirica).
The big tropical house is trully impressive... nice collection (Lesser whistling duck, javan pond heron, Rodriguez fruit bat, Vietnam pheasant, Palm cockatoos ....).
And to finish... don't forget to visit the aquarium-reptilarium-insectarium... incredible collection and some trully rare species there!!!
Have a nice visit!

 

After having the zoo hyped up by others before my visit i was rather disappointed. Mostly because everyone kept mentioning sea-dragons and birds of paradise which both are not in the collection anymore.

Stil, the two giant Arapaima are really impressive so the aquarium's still good to visit and the douc langurs are special as well. As far as i know, Cologne stil holds 2 male saiga's but since they don't tolerate each other only one of them is on show at a time... The tropical building is decent, but after Prague and Burger's Bush and the hype about it i expected more. The elephant exhibit is HUGE and in my opinion it tares the zoo out of proportion, which i found a shame. For some reason we didn't enjoy ourselves as much at Cologne as we did at Dortmund or Duisburg, but i still can't pinpoint why...

Here's a tip, don't throw away your entry-card since you need to go out of the zoo gate to be able to visit the aquarium/terrarium building (where you also need that card for...). Noone told us that, but i was lucky i stuck it in my pocket instead of throwing it away at the entrance...

Animal photo's in my fotopic

 

I'm back from my visit to Cologne Zoo yesterday and thought I'd write a few comments while it's fresh in my mind (thanks to everyone for the good advice by the way).

My overall impression was of a fairly traditional urban zoo with a mixture of some good, modern exhibits and poor, outdated ones.

The "Elefantenpark" is a mightily impressive and houses 13 Asian elephants (including 2 calves born last year). There are 3 main outdoor enclosures which can be connected or separated as desired by gates. When I was there, the main herd could wander freely between the left-hand and right-hand areas and the bull "Bindu" and 7-year-old male (whose name escapes me) were confined to the smaller central area. There's a lot of fake rock barriers, some sandy/muddy areas and a choice of pools. The indoor area has a large concrete communal barn with a pool and individual holding pens with viewpoints at different levels. It does tend to overwhelm the western half of the zoo, but I think over time fewer, larger enclosures is the way to go.

I also really enjoyed the ape exhibit. All the apes were indoors (not surprising given the time of year). The douc langurs are labelled in English as the “red-shanked†subspecies and are housed in a small glass-fronted exhibit to the right of the entrance. They are not particularly well exhibited – there’s no naturalistic planting (appreciate the difficultly of this with a leaf-eating species) and they didn’t appear to have any access to outside space. There are five in the group including one young. The gorilla and orang groups were both quite active and also successful breeders – there’s a 3 year-old gorilla and a 1 year-old orang. The bonobos were mostly hidden and just lying around. The gorillas are mixed with black and white colobus in their outdoor pen but I couldn’t work out where the colobus were kept inside – a caged route disappeared into the keeper-only first floor level.

Madagascar house – no collared lemurs (but I’ve seen this species at Twycross), but they did have greater bamboo, red ruffed, black and white ruffed and blue-eyed black species.

Sadly the "Regenwald" (walk-through Asian rainforest exhibit) was closed for renovations for the whole of January. This was a big disappointment as it's supposed to be one of the highlights, but it's always one of the risks of visiting a zoo in the low season.

Very impressed on the whole with the large aquarium/terrarium and “Insektarium†building. Only one arapaima. The four Nile crocodiles don’t have a lot of room. Few large lizards except for a single water monitor and a few green and rhinoceros iguanas.

On the negative side, the shared black rhino/hippo/sitatunga house really needs to be demolished or reworked. The zoo will probably have to move one of these species because there simply isn't room for all three. The bear enclosures I also thought were cramped and outdated. According to ISIS the zoo has 5 female sun bears and 2 female grizzlies but only one of each was visible. I hope they have off-show facilities for the sun bears because I can’t imagine all five sharing the single tiny exhibit. A third exhibit is labelled with Asiatic black bears but this appeared to be empty.

Didn’t manage to find the saiga, but I did see the musk ox (including young), Hadada ibis, Siberian white cranes and goliath herons.

 

@Chris79: great review, as it was honest and forthright. It's good to see someone analyze zoo exhibits and include the good, bad and ugly in the descriptions.

 

Sorry to hear that you didn't see the Regenwald house or the saiga

The sun bears share two enclosures, and I think they have a reasonable amount of space, even if the enclosures could use a renovation. A single Asian black bear, of the rare subspecies Tibetan black bear (ursus thibetanus thibetanus) live in the other enclosure you mentioned.

The douc langurs don't have an outdoor enclosure, and I don't know when/if they get one. The nile crocodiles, hippos and sitatungas will have a brand new house ready by 2010, and that should be really great. You can see a photo here.

 

Hi Chris good review. I've been to Cologne three times, last time just after the elephant house was opened, it looked a bit big and bare at the time but quite huge. The douc langurs used to be in the lemur house in rather cramped and unexciting conditions both in and out, I'm not sure if the move has improved things for them. Pity you missed the saiga, they're cute things. That's two rather sad species who appear to have had their day in Western Europe.

 

Good review!

As far as i know Douc Langurs are very prone to stress and therefore have been moved to an exhibit that at least shuts the noise from visitors out a little. I would estimate their move therefore quite an improvement, and it's also therefore no wonder that they don't have an open outside area because in a zoo like Cologne there would be no room for them to be "private" enough for this species...

There will be a new hippo house being build scheduled to open in, i believe, 2010. Therefore they will move out of where they are now, which is a good thing.

Btw you seem to have failed to spot the black-and-white ruffed lemurs are the "belted" subspecies

About the sunbears, i believe they have a mother with 2 cubs and another mother with 1 cub or something like that so the two enclosures they have for them are not that bad, allthough still rather small.

Too bad you missed the regenwald and the male saiga (in it's winter fur as well ). Hopefully you did spot some of the rarer birds and the little blue pinguin's?

I wouldn't deem the saiga lost yet for western zoo's, many are claiming to be trying to import fresh stock from the "wild" (one the wild reserves). Whether it'll ever be succesfull remains to be seen though. The Douc langurs (who are red-shanked, yup) seem to me to be lost, unless San Diego manages to wriggle some out of the EPRC in Vietnam (which according to ISIS they seem to have done?).

 

I've visited the zoo a few months ago for the second time.
It's a very beautiful zoo but I don't like the bear and penguin exhibit. But I'm sure that it will change soon. I hope so!
The elephant park is realy impressive, it's almost half of the zoo . Sometimes it looked to me as it was too large. I had a strange feeling about it .

 

San diego unfortunately dont have as many as isis says, isis say its just afault with the records and most of them are dead! as far as i know koln will get a young douc to pair with their youngest animal when the rest pass on. Chomutov in the czech republic hav a herd of saiga!

As for the zoo, i found it very impressive with a great collection! i would have indian rhino and gaur in the elephant part aswell!

 

Funny this

San Diego was down to two old females a while ago, while a mother with her son was on loan to Philadelphia Zoo. They also recorded on ISIS 0.2 for quite a while, but only recently the numbers on ISIS suddenly went up to what it now says, i believe 9.9.5. Perhaps they became the owners of one the BPRC groups and left them there, or perhaps the BPRC sent one of their groups over to San Diego (CREW centre perhaps?). Noone seems to know but it's odd nonetheless.

Good to hear Cologne might get (a) new Douc(s), even if it's in the far future there would still be some left in Europe.

Chomutov haven't had Saiga's for quite a few years now, the numbers on ISIS are old and out of date.

 

thanks for the info on the saiga! got my manager in work to contact isis regarding san diegos doucs and thats what we were told! i must admit that it would be great if they have got more but isis say they dont!

 

Saigas are still in Ukraininan/Russian/Kazakh reserves, but I think there is no interest in keeping them. Unless Pleistocene exhibits become popular

 

Currently, just the two saiga bucks are left (one kept behind the scenes). They're not getting additional animals. Moscow Zoo seems to still keep some.

The Douc group is indeed going to be increased by bringing in new animals from the primate sanctuary the Cologne Zoo supports in Vietnam.

 

Way cool! Will they be getting a new enclosure then?

 

@Toddy: To be honest- I don't know. They may just put them to the already existing spot at the apes, or might give a new home in the planned rebuild of the lemur house area.

 

Does anyone have further answers about the stillbirth of the elephant cow Shu Thu zar? Aparently there is a possibliy that it belonged to Aye Chan May because of the body size and mummification.