Also, I think my zoo could get an Asian or an Australian area on the sidewalk to the zoo. If you went, you'd know what I mean.
If you mean London, I guess it is great place for history and architecture. There are some really lovely buildings like the Blackburn pavilion, some not so aesthetically pleasing buildings like the Casson pavilion, some interesting areas and structures such as the Mappins and some not so nice structures (at least imo) such as the Lubetkin Penguin pool. The zoo has undergone some recent developments also - for example, Land of the Lions, Tiger Territory and BUGS are all newish. However, only a handful of the newer stuff is good - it's either too heavily themed, not good enough for what it cost, or simply not so good. @LowlandGorilla4 not sure what you are referring to with the 20ft elephant enclosure, but yes, in its history, the London zoo did have such enclosures when its objective was more orientated towards visitor pleasure and leisure than nowadays. The zoo no longer has elephants, nor rhinos, nor Common hippos because they simply don't have space. A quality elephant exhibit would take up easily half the zoo and would be a bit of a waste, given that other facilities (such as Whipsnade, just North of London) are better suited to house these animals. Of course, I would recommend visiting, but don't go in with very high expectations. It is now a mediocre zoo with a mediocre collection (a few rarities thrown in here and there) and some really nice history behind it. I certainly wouldn't visit without seeing the city first, as I consider London to be, one of, if not the most interesting cities on Earth. As for my other home zoos, if I call Paris/Montpellier in France my second home, Paris has a few very good collections, but I would again recommend seeing the city first as I think it is just as interesting as London and arguably more intact. Montpellier zoo is free and a very nice outing, but nothing too special. It is rather hard to 'revamp'. Essentially, in the UK, we have something called listed buildings. If a building is on the list, changes cannot be made to it (simplifying a bit here). Since most of the older buildings in the zoo along the horror that is the Lubetkin penguin pool are listed, it means they can't be demolished. This means that the zoo has to build around these buildings without impacting them, and so it is really hard to revamp. The areas which are free of listed buildings have mostly been revamped. However, another issue is that the zoo is quite tight on funds. It is located inside a Royal park, so costs of construction, insurance and other factors are very high compared to in the countryside for example. This means they have less money to build exhibits with or negotiate around the listed buildings as Vienna zoo has done so well.
You don't have to have common hippos if you have PYGMY ONES! If you don't think that pygmy hippo babies are adorable, then you are 100% wrong on everything.
I wasn't saying they needed Common hippos, in fact quite the opposite. If you read on, I said that it would be quite ridiculous to house any of these species because of the space requirements, especially since Whipsnade (the sister zoo to London and part of the same association) has all three pachyderms. No, I think Pygmy hippos are much better suited to London than their larger counterparts, although not necessarily just due to their cuteness. However, many zoos have both pygmy hippos and Common hippos. For example, off the top of my head, Whipsnade, Sofia, Berlin, Pairi Daiza and Beauval all have both species of hippo.
Yeah. I know. But also they're endangered and the babies are cute. Plus the small space requirements and you get pygmy hippos at a zoo!
