My family live not far from Mervent Zoo so when I was over for a visit we headed for the zoo. It's a nice little zoo with a lot of postive things about it - but I also have just a few concerns. First the good stuff. Although the tiger enclosure wasn't state of the art it was bigger than the current one at London Zoo and both the tigers seemed very healthy and lively and playful. The white one knows just where to hide so you can't get photos ... The lemur enclosure is lovely, although they were all asleep in little groups when we went rather than making use of the big space. I don't know the scientific implications of keeping four different species together but they seemed to be just staying in little groups of their own kind. The lemurs seemed very content and not at all bothered by people. The ring tailed seemed to have a little one and were crowding round him/her for protection. There is a pen of goats and alpacas you can go in and they are quite the finest tempered bunch of goats I have ever met. Very content to be grabbed by lots of children and seemingly not bothered by any of it. My three year old companion went right for a baby goat and it's mother was surprisingly calm about it while we yelled and prised her away and got baby back to Mum's side. There is a lovely playground for kids and a nice seating area outside a cafe. The zoo is well landscaped and didn't feel too crowded even though there were a lot of people there. Now the not so good stuff ... I was concerned about the primates. They seemed to be in groups far too small to be natural. There were two spider monkeys and a group of four black capped squirrel monkeys. The spider monkeys seemed miserable and hostile and one seemed too still and unwell. The squirrel monkeys seemed odd in their behaviour compared to the ones I know at London Zoo. People kept feeding the animals despite many signs telling them not to. There seemed to be no staff around looking out for this sort of thing. The animals behaved as though they expected food from visitors. One of the giraffes was walking round and round leaning over to everyone to look for food. Sadly my Franch is limited and I have not yet learnt the phrase "please stop feeding brioche to the giraffe". The turtle pond looked like it needed a good clean. It was an almost luminous green in colour. Perhaps the turtles like it like that though. The Mara had grazed their enclosure bare and two of them were sharing a dried up old leaf. The toilets were pretty awful. Bring your own loo roll. The zoo is only open in afternoons for a good part of the year. All in all though in was a nice zoo in lovely grounds and it was a lovely day out. I'll upload some photos to the gallery later.