Shanghai Zoo review of Shanghai Zoo

I visited Shanghai Zoo twice while in town last week, the first time in good weather and the second time in bad weather. Because I was based in Suzhou (a smaller city outside Shanghai) I didn't get to the zoo anywhere near opening time (7.30am) but closer to 11.30am on both visits. Entry is 40 Yuan (about NZ$8) – you can work out your own exchange rate if you're not from New Zealand! The zoo is quite large and very green, with lots of trees and lawns and ponds, so there is a lot of wildlife in the grounds. On the first visit I spent an hour and a half upon arrival just pursuing birds and squirrels, which took up a lot of the zoo time! In full migration season this place would be fantastic for birding I reckon. The squirrels wild in the zoo are Pallas' (red-bellied) squirrels Callosciurus erythraeus which are introduced to Shanghai (they are native to China, and other parts of Asia, but are normally a montane species). Because of the late start I didn't get round the entire zoo on my first visit, having to miss out the primate and reptile sections. On my second visit I made sure I saw those two areas (although I could have gladly missed the primates, given how badly many of them were being housed!). I didn't take many photos on that second visit because the weather was alternating between rain and rain and rain and RAIN. Pretty miserable day (it rained solid for three days in a row).

Overall the Shanghai Zoo is very good indeed. It is certainly better than the Beijing Zoo by a good margin. I liked Beijing Zoo, I didn't think it was an awful zoo, but it did have an awful lot of really bad cages. The Shanghai Zoo in contrast was made up primarily of “good” cages. There were some bad ones of course, but often they were “bad” more from an aesthetic perspective than an animal husbandry one. Very notable exceptions were the primate cages, a lot of which were horrendous. Birds are well-represented and well displayed, but as usual there aren't many “special” birds here, mostly common species. There's a good spread of Asian and African hooved stock, a good selection of larger carnivores, and very many primate species. Barely any small mammals, and only one small cat that I saw. Token aquarium. Generally good reptile house with some nice snake species. All the visitors were well-behaved even though both days I visited fell on a public holiday (although there weren't many people on the second visit because of the weather), the only exceptions being a couple slapping on the glass of the red pandas and the ubiquitous feeding of the animals (there are signs everywhere saying not to feed the animals).

Whereas I would be in two minds about returning to Beijing Zoo (they have lots of nice species, but the exhibition of them is often a touch depressing), and I absolutely wouldn't return to Suzhou Zoo without an extremely good reason, I would definitely make a return visit to Shanghai Zoo without any hesitation (but I would avoid the primate area).


A quick run-down of the main areas and animal groups follows. I do have a feeling I probably missed a few enclosures while walking because there are a LOT of paths going every which way at the zoo, and the signboard maps which are scattered around the grounds are mostly the sort of simplified ones which make it easy to miss smaller exhibits. Hopefully if I did miss anything it was only boring animals like the cheetahs and not something like otter civets or Hume's ground jays!!!

BIRDS:

Overall mostly well kept with clean aviaries, some rather bare (concrete floors and walls with some branches) but others well-planted, mostly of a reasonable size.

*There was a really nice walk-through aviary, very well-planted, with a good selection of (common) Asian passerines including lots of hoopoes. Far nicer than in almost any other Asian zoo I've been to (the sort of aviary you might expect at Jurong Bird Park).

*The Bird House was relatively nice, with good-sized glass-fronted aviaries, some entirely indoors and some better with indoor and outdoor sections. Species here included Chinese (black-tailed) hawfinches, green magpies, yellow-cheeked tits, cuckoo owlets, toco toucans, red-billed toucans, channel-billed toucans, plus others more usual. This is where the parrots were housed as well (all common avicultural sorts like macaws, amazons, etc; nothing unusual).

*The hornbill aviaries, again, quite large and well-planted, glass-fronted with viewing into both outdoor and indoor areas. Housed wreathed, Indian, Oriental pied, trumpeter and red-billed hornbills, as well as crowned pigeons.

*Pheasants were kept mostly mixed in open-topped planted pens (all males, either wing-clipped or pinioned), with species I saw being silver, Lady Amherst's and golden, with signs for ring-necked and copper. Also blue peafowl in their own pen. In enclosed aviaries were others including blue eared, brown eared and Swinhoe's pheasants, as well as great bustard. I didn't see any rarer pheasants than these (I'm pretty sure I didn't see any tragopans or monals when I visited).

*Birds of prey were mostly kept in odd mixed aviaries. I didn't make note of the species, but there would be an aviary with (for example) an osprey, black kites and buzzards; or short-eared owls, kestrels and sakers. Not the sort of mixes you would imagine could persist for long before birds started getting killed and eaten! Eastern grass owls in their own aviary were good to see (I do like Tyto owls). Really the mixed aviaries in the bird of prey section let down all the bird areas, which in general were very good.

*Others: ostrich, emu, greater rhea and common cassowary, all housed in standard pens, as usually seen in most zoos. Waterfowl lake with pelicans, ducks, geese and swans; quite a few wild birds round here too, such as little egrets, night herons, vega gulls, mandarin ducks, spot-billed ducks, little grebes, etc etc. Flamingoes in a small pool. Cranes in a smallish landscaped pen (I can't remember what they had, but it was a mix because I do remember grey-necked crowned cranes with the others being Asian species). Oriental white storks were the only storks I remember seeing. There are penguins at the zoo too but I missed them (I'm guessing they would be Humboldt's).

CARNIVORES:

*Bears: the usual concrete pits. I always say this, every time I write a review of a zoo which keeps bears, but it pisses me off how bears get treated in zoos. Always it is concrete, concrete, concrete. Especially with a pit-style enclosure it would be so very easy to lay down rubble for drainage and then a thick layer of soil so the bears can dig and generally keep occupied. The bear pits here weren't terrible because they were reasonably large, had ruggedy concrete “mountains” in the middle (overgrown with creepers in one of the pits), and they each had a largish pool, but still the bears deserve so much better. There were three pits: one for a pair of sun bears, one for a large European brown bear, and one for another brown bear which was unlabelled but I think may have been a Tibetan brown bear. All the bears were being fed by the visitors, and all were well-trained at catching thrown food.

*Dogs: Grey wolves and African hunting dogs had good enclosures next to the bears. Maned wolves had a very boring enclosure: empty concrete glass-fronted indoor part and smallish empty outdoor pen with short grass. The sign said they were the only maned wolves in Asia (we won't tell Singapore Zoo). The other dogs were by the small mammals (raccoon dog and Arctic foxes) or by the cats (dholes, red foxes and Corsac foxes). Spotted hyaenas were by the cats too. These all had pretty small and boring cages. I especially felt sorry for the Arctic foxes because they didn't appear to be liking the temperature (not surprisingly!). There is also a “pet corner” at the zoo which keeps all sorts of different domestic dog breeds which I gave a miss for three reasons: 1) I don't like domestic dogs, 2) I had heard the conditions there were particularly unpleasant, and 3) I forgot.

*Cats: lions and tigers had pretty good islands surrounded by water moats; one of the tiger islands had a big waterfall. There was something called “Tiger Conservation Centre” here but it was closed up, so not sure what that's about. The other bigger cats (jaguar, leopard, puma) were all in cages, not particularly small but not overly large either: that sort of mid-size where you think “yeah, that's alright, could be bigger.” The only small cat I saw was a caracal, in a fairly smallish cage. There were cheetahs too but somehow I missed them. All the cat cages (and those dog cages next to them) were glass-fronted.

*Seals: two northern fur seals and a harbour seal, in two sizeable enclosures. Not huge but not tiny. The land area is well-planted with trees overhanging the pools. The pools themselves are not very deep unfortunately, but the actual area of the enclosures gives them more room than many zoos have for their seals. For some reason, the two very active fur seals have the smaller of the two enclosures (maybe half the size of the harbour seal one).

*Pandas: red pandas had a nice outdoors enclosure with a low wall at front (deeper on the pandas' side to stop them climbing out) with a couple of trees; similar to what you see in a lot of Western zoos. The indoor part was large and glass-fronted. I didn't pay much attention to the giant panda enclosure but the indoor part was the same (largish and glass-fronted) and the outdoor part relatively small.

*Small mammals: not many species at all, and all rather poorly housed. However there were a number of nasty old cages in this area which had obviously been sitting disused for a long time which was good (as in, the zoo presumably wasn't going to be using them any more, and hopefully would be removing them at some stage). On the down-side, this I guess was also the reason for the lack of small mammals! The only species I saw were lots of coypu in an ugly concrete pen with dirty pool; banded mongoose; crested porcupines in a largish “meerkat-style” enclosure (the sign just said “porcupine” in English so not sure of the species); a Eurasian (common) otter in a reasonable enclosure (the sign said the animal had been caught by a farmer in the suburbs of Shanghai and brought to the zoo); a pile of panting raccoons in a rather unpleasant enclosure; and an extremely overweight masked palm civet (it spent all its time at the wire hoping for food). There was also a sign for hog badger on the palm civet cage but I didn't see it. The raccoon dogs and Arctic foxes were also in the small mammal area. What I often tend to find in Asian zoos is that, contrary to what a Zoochatter might like or expect, there are usually very few small mammals on display and they usually are the same few species everywhere (e.g. masked palm civet, common palm civet, binturong, Asian porcupines, slow loris; and a few exotics like raccoons, coypus and kinkajous). It is very rare to see things like linsangs or marbled cats (I've never seen either). Shanghai had even fewer small mammals on display than most zoos.

HOOVED STOCK:

A good variety of Asian species but nothing like the huge selection at Beijing Zoo. Most were in fairly small yards, but which were all considerably larger than Beijing's little holding pens. Nothing that was especially out of the ordinary for Chinese zoos (Sichuan takin, Chinese goral, blue sheep, hog deer, etc). The muntjac enclosure however was what I really wanted to see. This was quite large, well-turfed, glass at the front and fenced on one side (most of the enclosure was surrounded by a hedge so it could only be approached from certain points, which I liked). The signage said the enclosure contained tufted deer, Reeves' muntjacs and black muntjacs. The only muntjac species I'd ever seen before were common and Fea's muntjacs. I had missed the black muntjac at Beijing (it was off-display) so I was keen to see them here. I'm pretty sure I saw every animal in the enclosure because people were feeding them at the fence. There were loads of Reeves' muntjacs (tiny wee things they are!) but I saw no tufted deer unfortunately and I don't think there are actually any in there. Then there were two larger muntjacs, one being a black muntjac and the other even-larger one being the mystery animal from the gallery (is it a Gong Shan muntjac? Is it a black muntjac? Is it a hybrid? Nobody seems to know).

*Asian elephants have the usual small elephant pen. The giraffes have a good-sized yard. White rhino in a tiny enclosure. Hippos in very small enclosures (but there appeared to be several inter-connected pools going under the public walkways). Most of the African hooved stock (zebras, antelope) had good-sized enclosures; the zebras had a very well-wooded enclosure which was interestingly different to the usual empty patch of grass or dirt that you see in other zoos. There were (Brazilian?) tapirs but I didn't see them in their heavily-planted enclosure. Llamas or apacas were somewhere as well, and I saw anoa on the map but not while walking.

PRIMATES:
Awful. Simply awful. If you were to name the main kinds of animals that get royally screwed in zoos, I can bet the top picks would be bears, large primates, elephants and reptiles. With the primates, the odd thing is that often the smaller ones (e.g South American species) get quite good and large enclosures but the larger the species gets (e.g. macaques and baboons) the worse off it is. It isn't just a matter of the cage size staying the same so large animals have less room, it is often the case that smaller monkeys get bigger cages with more “furniture” and big macaques, baboons and chimps end up in little concrete cells with absolutely nothing to do except go insane. At Shanghai Zoo the chimps and orangutans are not too bad (a lot of small indoor cages with glass fronts – I think they might all be interconnected but I'm not sure – and outdoor islands or walled yards) and I managed to miss the gorillas which I understand are well-housed. The hamadryas baboons have a large open (concrete) enclosure with various play equipment. So those are all passable. The golden snub-nosed monkeys, Francois' langurs and white-headed langurs have large grassy outside cages with lots of climbing opportunities so they get a very good tick (and the white-headed langur was a different kind of tick in itself, because it was the first I had seen). The macaques are in a long row of bare concrete cages, totally horrible. The Assamese and Tibetan macaques were grossly-overweight from visitor feeding. (The Tibetan macaques had the worst cage of the macaque row; really really small with just a single metal bar as 'furniture”). The other macaques were also fed regularly but somehow weren't as fat. (Species were stump-tailed, crab-eating, pig-tailed and rhesus). All the other primates were in sort of “monkey houses”, rows of small glass-fronted tile-walled concrete indoor enclosures with variously-sized outdoor enclosures attached (although at the time of my visit many were locked either inside or outside, so I guess that was to do with cleaning or something). There was a large variety of species from Africa, Madagascar and South America. Some were fine – e.g. the De Brazza's guenons and the lemurs had large outside cages with lots of climbing opportunities – but as I said the larger species were just sad. The mandrills and baboons were in tiny tiny empty concrete cells smaller than the cages holding squirrel monkeys, for instance. Shanghai Zoo has some poor enclosures elsewhere (e.g. the small mammals section) but nothing that is really bad – apart for half the cages in the primate section.

Upstairs from one of the monkey houses was a nocturnal house. Until stumbling across it accidentally I had been wondering why the zoo was lacking one of these because they are usually a fixture in Asian zoos (and they are usually horrible places too, like at Beijing Zoo where the Nocturnal House should be renamed the Torture House). Shanghai's one isn't bad at all but it only has four cages and I suspect most visitors miss it anyway. Most Asian zoos don't seem to really get the “nocturnal” part of “nocturnal house”, but Shanghai goes in completely the opposite direction and has their cages so dark I could barely make anything out inside. According to the signage one held slow loris (couldn't see them), one held mouse lemurs (couldn't see them), one held pigmy slow loris (I think I saw one?), and the last held Egyptian fruit bats (which I did see, but only because I knew they would be all hanging from the mesh ceiling!)

OTHER MAMMALS:

Coypu and porcupines already mentioned in the small mammal area, and Egyptian fruit bats in the primate section (nocturnal house). There were giant anteaters elsewhere I think. There was a paddock for macropods – eastern grey kangaroo, red-necked wallaby (including albinos) and red-necked pademelons. I can't remember anything else although there may have been a couple of others (maybe mara).

REPTILES and FISH:

There were two fish areas in the zoo. One was a goldfish display with unusual cylinder tanks outside a little house containing more ordinary rectangular tanks within. The other was a rather token aquarium section below the reptile house. The tanks were quite nice, quite large, well-cared-for, but several contained fish that were somewhat too large or too many in number for the size of the tank. Still nice though. One of tanks contained Chinese sturgeon. The two sea turtles were way too big for their tank and just looked awkward trying to swim inside it.

I was fifty-fifty on the reptile house. I liked the size of the tanks – all large and some of interesting design (curvy glass fronts); none of the tiny shoe-boxes seen in many zoos' reptile houses – and the whole house was well laid-out, but at the same time there were some suspect species-mixes (e.g. the mixed snake tanks), and some of the species didn't really seem suitable for the way the particular tank was set up (e.g. too dry, or too bare). The Siamese crocodile was the only individual reptile which really needed a larger tank. I guess you could say I liked the house but with certain reservations. Most of the species were fairly ordinary. The most ordinary were the things like common iguana, bearded dragon, albino Burmese python, etc; however there were also a lot of nice Asian snakes like many-banded kraits and various pit vipers (some more are named in the gallery photos if you care to look). Chinese giant salamanders and Chinese alligators were requisite of course. I don't think any amphibians were on display at all.

 

oh, erm, in China salamanders are mumble mumble mumble. I was actually trying to think of any frogs or toads I saw and completely forgot the salamander while doing so. My "out" is that I didn't actually *see* the salamander, only its tank

I do try to make them interesting. And I know for Zoochat there is literally no amount of information overload possible in a zoo review, especially for a foreign zoo that most will never visit. The more minutiae the better.

Asian zoos in general are odd beasts. There are good ones, there are bad ones, there are mixed ones. Same as anywhere really, it's just that in Asia the bad ones can be REALLY bad. I liked Shanghai Zoo a lot though.

 

I used to take notes (writing down every animal on display), but it interferes with actually looking at the animals so now I just take photos (I usually now take shots of the sign after taking one of the cage or animal, so I know what is what; and sometimes I'll take a photo of every sign in the reptile house or whatever). Usually I write some thoughts down straight after the visit while they are fresh in my mind. Then I just look at the map while writing the review later. I don't remember everything, but I have a good memory anyway so most of it sticks.

 

Asian zoos (a rather broad term it must be admitted) do often have a lot of Asian ungulates, many of which are unusual in Western zoos (e.g. in China takin, goral, Chinese deer species, etc etc; in southeast Asia serow and Eld's deer, for example, are pretty common in zoos) and there are usually a variety of Asian primates (macaques and langurs) which are rarer in Western zoos. But otherwise they do tend to have the same standard zoo animals as any other zoo elsewhere: the lions and tigers and elephants and camels and ostriches; the ABCs of zoos you might say.

Small mammals are barely catered for and usually encompass the same set of species; birds tend to be commonplace species (parrots, pheasants, toucans, hornbills....you need to search for more unusual ones although they are out there); reptiles are sort of in the middle, with many very common types (iguanas, monitors, etc) but also usually a number of local species scattered through the collection.

Really all of that is typical of Western zoos as well though.

In Asia there is probably a correlation between how big and well-supported (by the government) the zoo is and how many exotic species they can obtain from foreign zoos. Smaller zoos often have many more local animals because they obtain them locally, and the exotics are just the more widespread ones. Then there are the sort of rescue centres which is where the real rarities would be likely to be found, but they fall outside the "zoo" world.

 

nanoboy has pointed out in the other thread that the second day I went to Shanghai Zoo was the day a big typhoon hit the city. That's why it was raining a little.

 

oh, also I didn't take any photos of giraffe signage for David because there was none. All the sign boards at the giraffe enclosure were just frames (with bubble-wrapping still in place!) so they must have all-brand-new signage coming.

 

I counted I think 13 or so Francois' langurs in their cage so there must have been a lot inside their shelter when you visited if you only saw 5 or 6. The day I saw the primates was the rainy day when there were few people visiting, so i didn't see anybody feeding the monkeys except for the macaques. I did see a lot of people on the other day feeding everything else though. The bears are always popular to feed.

Speaking for myself I didn't see any rats at the zoo on either of my visits. I did see a lot of stray cats though, especially around the amusement area (near where the wild cats are kept).