River Wonders review of River Safari, 23 April 2014

I have been waiting to see River Safari for ages! All the news coming out while it was being constructed was so enticing, with all the fantastic species which were going to be on display. When it finally opened the photos uploaded on here by Zooish dampened my enthusiasm a little because it seemed to be flawed in so many ways – budget-cuts, botched designs, some small enclosures – but I still wanted to see it. Today I finally did. And I loved it!

I have added a few links to photos in the gallery for this review because they show much better how the tanks look than I could explain. The photos are all from Zooish because I haven't uploaded any yet. There are lots more in the gallery from Zooish and others, so check them out. I haven't added any species lists to the Singapore reviews – species lists for Singapore are Zooish's department!! I also didn't make any notes so don't even think of asking for specifics on which species are in which tanks! Also I haven't mentioned every single tank in the following article, so don't take it as a blow-by-blow account.

The River Safari is divided in two sections, of roughly equal size if the map is to scale. The first half, to the left of the entrance plaza, is the Rivers Of The World section and is brilliant overall. The second half is entirely South American and it is a joke, consisting mainly of a five-to-ten minute boat ride whisking you past animals half-glimpsed or completely unseen. It is saved only by the amazing manatee aquarium at the end.

The theming was excellent throughout and all the animals seemed fit and healthy apart for some scale damage on all the Distichodus, and one seriously wonky goliath tigerfish which should not be on display at all. Signage was a bit hit and miss. Some tanks had everything labelled. At the beavers the other animals (fish and wood ducks) were on the video display but seen only after watching the whole video on beavers. Other tanks had the main fish labelled but none of the smaller ones. There were a few empty enclosures and tanks; I'm not sure if these had been occupied before or have yet to be occupied. In the first half of the park (Rivers Of The World) most enclosures and tanks seemed of a good size, although it has been noted on here that none of them will be large enough for the giant species of fish held once they grow up. The enclosures on the Amazon River Quest were almost all tiny. There was a huge and very noticeable difference between the two halves of the park in this regard, as if they were designed completely independently of one another with no cross-discussion.

The Mississippi is the first of the Rivers Of The World, and the very first exhibit is for American beavers. Both the beavers were fast asleep. The tank is not the largest I must say, but it is adequate so long as they aren't planning on breeding them. These would have been my first beavers but I saw some last year at the COEX Aquarium in Seoul (South Korea), and those ones were awake. There are little snippets of information scattered along the walkway as you move along through the bayou buildings, about beavers and other American fauna. One of the buildings has viewing holes low down which are supposed to contain tanks of small animals but they are empty and appear to have never actually been used (http://www.zoochat.com/1550/rivers-world-mississippi-river-315907/). The walkway loops round to three large tanks for alligator snappers, gars and Mississippi paddlefish – it is immediately obvious that the latter species will not be able to be kept in that tank long-term so hopefully they have plans for the fish when they become giant!!

Following on is the Congo River with a nice enclosure for dwarf crocodile; a nice tank for smaller African fish such as Congo tetras, bottlenose mormyrid, kribensis, etc; and a large tank for big fish – African and goliath tigerfish, African arowana (I was particularly pleased to see those), at least two species of bichirs, Auchenoglanis catfish and others.

Gharials come next, with two very large individuals in a large tank shared with shoals of barbs, and next to that a long “temple-themed” tank (http://www.zoochat.com/1550/rivers-world-ganges-river-316242/) for other large Asian fish including at least one goonch. I should point out here that reflections off the glass are bad throughout River Safari and it is often extremely difficult to get photos of – or even see – some fish. Like the goonch. The Australian bit (a euphemistically-titled “Murray River” section) is wedged somewhat oddly right in the middle of the Asian areas, between the Ganges River and the Mekong River; I could not see any Australian lungfish. Then there's the crab-eating macaque enclosure which I have never understood. These monkeys are native to and common in Singapore and while obviously that doesn't mean they shouldn't be displayed, it does seem like a wasted exhibit space to me. Proboscis monkeys would be more interesting. I did appreciate that the signage was calling them crab-eating macaques though, and not long-tailed macaque which is the common name now taking over. The cage itself is really nice – large, glass-fronted, pool at the front, lots of vegetation and branches. http://www.zoochat.com/1550/rivers-world-mekong-river-316330/

The huge Mekong tank is brilliant, with several species of giant pangasiids (including the pla beuk), giant carp, and of course giant freshwater stingrays. A nice touch at River Safari were videos playing about management of the animals, specifically on moving the giant stingrays and (later in the visit) moving arapaima into the manatee aquarium. Unfortunately most of the fish in the Mekong tank were left unlabelled as far as I could tell.

The aviary for lesser adjutants (and at least one painted stork) seemed an unnecessary addition, it just didn't really seem to fit properly with everything else. The tank for elephant-trunk snakes was not as small as I had thought from photos. It wasn't large, it is true, but I didn't look at it and think “too small”; of course, as with most things at all the Singapore zoos, it could still have benefited from being larger. The Chinese alligator enclosure was really nice, although also somehow a bit sterile-looking; I like Chinese alligators a lot, they always look so cute! The giant salamander tank was vastly larger than I had expected from Zooish's photo. It must be a good 25 feet long at least. It would have been nice if it had been wider as well, but I actually liked it (I had been unimpressed from the photo: http://www.zoochat.com/1550/yangtze-river-chinese-giant-salamander-exhibit-300523/). The salamander was very visible perched on a shelf on the back wall.

The biggest draw of the River Safari, I guess, are the giant pandas. They are in an special air-conditioned house, shared with a pair of red pandas and some golden pheasants. The best part of this house is that it is nice and cool!! One of the giant pandas was just sitting there, as pandas are wont to do, but the other one was active. No, that's not a typo, the panda was active! Walking around and doing stuff. The giant pandas have separate enclosures, each comprised of two indoor sections (joined under the visitor walkway) and an outdoor area. The indoor areas were very lushly-planted – how they remain so I have no idea! The red pandas are in a painfully small cubicle of an enclosure, although they had another unseen area (presumably just their sleeping quarters) accessed via a log bridge over the visitors' heads. The golden pheasants are in an enclosed aviary. Lot of money had obviously been spent on the panda house and it looked great, but it really did have that typical Singapore air of “not really big enough”.

When I had first entered the park I had to book a slot on the boat ride through the Amazon River Quest section. The girl at the counter said it would take 45 minutes to an hour to walk through all the Rivers Of the World parts. So I gave myself two hours and booked a slot on the 12 o'clock boat. The boat ride is a total joke. A huge let-down, especially after how good the first half of the park is, and the worse thing about it is that it takes up a very large area of the park but you barely get to even look at the animals! The species in order along the route (the names are from the map) are macaws, collared peccaries, brown-tufted capuchins, brown-headed spider monkeys, red howler monkeys, emperor tamarins, maned wolves, guanacos, giant anteaters, brown-nosed coatis, maras/Brazilian tapirs/rheas, red-backed bearded saki monkeys, cottontop tamarins, jaguars, black howler monkeys, Caribbean flamingoes, capybaras, agoutis, and an aviary the boat passes through with scarlet ibis and green iguanas. That order may not be entirely accurate because there are enclosures on both sides of the boat and half the animals I didn't even see (I only saw eleven of those twenty-two listed above. One of the ones I did not see was the giant anteater, but fortunately as with the beavers I had seen them in South Korea last year). I think there are supposed to be sloths and cocks-of-the-rock in there as well but they aren't on the map. Note that literally none of these animals can be seen from any foot-trail, they are solely viewed from the boat-ride. I had several issues with the boat ride, the primary one being that most of the animals' enclosures are miniscule! They are really really tiny, and they are also just horrendously non-immersive. I mean, not everything needs to be immersive, but in this case you would expect them to be so. Instead almost all the enclosures are just like little ugly museum dioramas spaced along the route, each surrounded by an extremely obvious dry or wet moat while the boat rolls past in a water-filled channel. Really bad designs all round. The boat is actually on a rail system, not really floating along, and it passes by each enclosure so rapidly that if you're not looking in the right direction you miss out. And of course if the animal doesn't happen to be standing in view for the ten seconds you have to look at the enclosure then you miss out then too. I had expected a taped commentary as well, to at least let the visitors know which direction to look in! Then there's the odd way the boat ride starts off with a sudden descent and a crash into the water channel. I missed the macaws if they were there and almost missed the peccaries because I was wiping water off my camera!! Pretty annoying! At the end of the ride, while I was thinking “well that sucked!” the two kids in the seats in front of me were going “That was AWESOME! We got all wet! Can we do it again?” On a scale of one to ten, the boat ride barely gets a one from me.

From the disembarkment point of the boat, there is a walking route to the exit. This passes first a jaguarundi enclosure which looked an average sort of size. The jaguarundi was just visible but in a very awkward position so I couldn't see it very well. I may have seen a jaguarundi at Melbourne Zoo (back when they still had lots of small cats) but I may be remembering wrong. Either way, I wish I'd seen this one better! The squirrel monkey walk-through is brilliant. The vegetation appears to be growing up nicely and in a year or so it will look even better. An enclosure like this one just shows up the boat ride enclosures for the travesties that they are!!

Finally we arrive at one of the very best parts of the River Safari, the house which displays manatees and giant otters! The latter species can potentially be viewed from three different points. First is a tunnel through their tank. I knew this was the giant otter tank but as far as I saw there was no signage to let anyone else know! The second point is when you arrive at the manatee tank and there is also a window into the otter tank from the side, showing exactly how large and deep it is. And it is really deep! I would have had more branches and such in there, to make it more interesting, and also shoals of little fish. As it was it was just a big deep empty pool. The third viewing point is from above, so you can see the whole land area and the whole pool surface (and the people inside the tunnel!). The enclosure is outdoors (but viewed from indoors) and it is again one of those “average/adequate sized” enclosures. (http://www.zoochat.com/1550/wild-amazonia-amazon-flooded-forest-315630/). The otters were lying in the shade right up the back behind the lip of one of the planters, almost out of sight. I waited almost half an hour but all I got was a couple of quick sightings of a head popping up for a few seconds.

The manatee aquarium was THE best single exhibit at River Safari. There were lots of individual tanks I liked, but the manatee aquarium was by far the stand-out. I've seen a few manatee aquariums, mostly for African manatees, and they're pretty bog-standard. Tank, water, manatee. That's about it. At River Safari there is a sand substrate, fake but effective “drowned” trees, good viewing arrangement in front of the main window, viewing from multiple points. The above water point of view was a bit non-natural, being roof beams and spotlights. There are several photos from Zooish in the gallery which show it well.

Final note: the gift shop at the end was excellent! The range of River Safari t-shirts in particular was outstanding (none in my size [or price-range] though).

 

okay so there are several concepts within that paragraph which I am not familiar with: work, children, other hobbies, sleep? What are these things?

There should be at least another couple of zoo reviews to come over the next few days Buy one of those waffle-dispensing machines to keep the kids fed automatically!

 

I was thinking little shoaling fish like tetras. I would have thought that would have worked. What sort of fish did they try?

I honestly did not see the otter signs in the tunnel! I would have loved to have seen the otters swimming, that would have been amazing I reckon.

 

it occurred to me today that the River Safari is almost exactly the same in my estimation as the Night Safari. By which I mean that the walking side of things is largely great, but the contained travel part of things (the tram at Night Safari and the boat at River Safari) is largely awful in terms of living/display space for the animals. A real half-and-half sort of feel. The walking trails aren't entirely fantastic of course, so below are where I thought things were not so good (in order, and I may have forgotten some). I have left out the previously mentioned matter of most of the tanks for the giant fish not going to be big enough when the fish become giant. I would hope they have some plan for this; I suspect they will either just leave them cramped, reduce the number of individuals, or (best option for the fish, if not for spectacle) replace the big ones with smaller ones.


Beavers: as I said in the review, the tank is adequate in size but no more than that. I realise they were somewhat constrained in working space when building the River Safari so I can let it go. But it would have been nice to have had it much larger. Certainly it won't be adequate if they plan on breeding the beavers.

Murray River: there is some sort of concept that the fish get stranded in shallow waterholes during the dry season. Nice idea but I'm pretty sure the fish wouldn't choose to live permanently in such shallow water. I would have preferred a more appropriate water depth for the fish concerned.

Elephant-trunk snakes: the tank is larger than I had thought from photos, but it still needs to be bigger. I don't have any idea on the husbandry necessities of the species but it looks more "home aquarium" than natural. The tank in the same row for water insects had a few water striders on top and a whole lot of little guppies; I didn't see any other insects (on the sign were water beetles, water stick insects, etc).

Giant pandas: the red panda enclosure is pitifully small. The golden pheasant aviary is actually bigger than many pheasant aviaries I have seen but it is still quite small -- and having a fenced aviary inside the panda house looked a bit out of place. The giant panda enclosures looked much smaller than they actually are due the odd way they have designed each enclosure in three separate parts joined only by doorways. However the enclosure size overall is still fairly small.

Big-headed turtle: in one of the "temporary" displays (there for at least a year now!). The turtle tank is not good at all for the species.

Amazon River Quest: everything! Actually the aviary is all right for the scarlet ibis. All the other enclosures on the boat ride are in my opinion shamefully small, especially where there are groups of animals (as with the peccaries, or the mara/tapir/rhea mix). Some of the species are just wasted as well, given the low probability of seeing them and the short time even available for viewing them. I am thinking in particular of the giant anteater!

Electric eel tank: one of several small tanks inside the manatee house. The others (e.g. angelfish and discus) are no worse than home aquariums -- they should have been much larger but they are fine as they are -- but the electric eel is in a tank far too small.

Matamata tank: in the same row as the electric eel I think. Not good at all.

 

turning the Murray River into a Ganges extension makes a lot more sense.

I *think* I saw four elephant-trunk snakes in the tank. Definitely three at any rate.

I saw a really big electric eel tank at one of the Aquariums I went to (I think Shanghai from memory). It had full-grown eels in it and was most impressive. That's what I would have imagined for River Safari.

 

I've uploaded some photos to the gallery: River Safari Gallery

The giant salamander is my favourite photo

 

ah, I didn't realise that! I just thought the whole thing was along the rails.