Yangon Zoo The Zoos of Burma 2: Yangon Zoo, 26 December 2013

The Yangon Zoo was originally built in 1906 during the British rule, back when Myanmar was still called Burma and Yangon was still called Rangoon. As may be expected it was constructed according to the norms of late 19th century menageries, with small concrete cages with lots of bars and spikes to keep the dangerous animals from running rampage. Unfortunately the zoo has not really had any modernisation since then and although the zoo grounds are a very pleasant well-treed park, the animals are still largely contained within what appear to be the original concrete-and-bars cages. The tigers, for example, are displayed in barred cages around a building with a prominent proclamation that this is the “King Edward VII 1915 Carnivora House”. At the start of 2013 there were plans announced to move the zoo to Hlawga Park outside the city (which hopefully would have meant better facilities and not just a rebuild in the same style) but I'm not sure what the current plan is because Hlawga is so far out that visitor numbers would be heavily affected. I think the idea was basically due to the zoo being inside the city and the land is wanted for development.

There's not any apparent logic to the zoo's lay-out, it is such a big rambling hotch-potch of paths that walking around it is like a little Lego man trying to make his way through a plate of spaghetti bolognese. There are dead ends and back-tracks and loops and extra entry gates. At one point I was walking back along a path I thought I had just come along – and I saw a paddock of elephants! Where the heck did that come from?! There's no real cohesion to the distribution of the animals either, with the cats in several places, bears scattered here and here and here (there are bears everywhere!), birds of prey next to gibbons, hornbills next to tigers, parrots next to the Reptile House....even with the map you never really know what is going to pop up next! Signage was a mix of informative (rarely), basic (just the name in Myanmar and English), very basic (the name only in Myanmar), and completely non-existent (commonly). In many cages I had to search thoroughly to see what, if anything, was in there, or if what was in there corresponded to the sign, or if there were extra unlabelled species. The zoo does have an over-population problem with certain animals, where they have so many that there will be, as an actual example, two bears in an outside enclosure and then behind that will be four tiny barred cells each containing two or three more bears. There were at least fifteen sun bears at the zoo, about the same number of Asiatic black bears, maybe ten or so tigers, at least eight or nine fishing cats, I counted twelve cassowaries, and so on. Probably not surprisingly, there are very few exotic species at the zoo so the bulk of the species are native to Burma. Some of the exotics they obviously do well with – they had lots of hippos and cassowaries – but others were in singles or pairs and may perhaps have been recent imports, like the two pigmy hippos.

Everything can be fed by the visitors it seemed, but what was a nice touch was that there were stalls at all the obvious points – next to the hippo enclosures, or the bear enclosures – selling fruit and vegetables so at least the animals were getting proper food and not junk (except the otters where they were selling slices of white bread). What was also nice to see was that in stark contrast to China there was no disrespectful or irresponsible visitor behaviour. Nobody was yelling at the animals or banging on the cages, they were just walking around looking, taking photos, exclaiming to each other at particularly amazing or attractive or fearsome animals.

There is a museum on the zoo grounds which I managed to miss completely (mostly due to running out of time), but the pamphlet says amongst other items it displays “a pair of tusks of the white elephant which died during the reign of King Thibaw … [and a] ... skeleton of a whale 72 feet in length”

Because the zoo is a bit of a tangled mish-mash I won't do a walk-around type review, I will instead go through the basic animal groups and make comments on species, numbers, cages, etc, starting with mammals, then birds, then reptiles. There will be a complete species list (of what I saw) at the end. The zoo pamphlet gives numbers as 51 species of mammals, 70 species of birds and un-numbered reptiles. My counts were 39 species of mammals (including domestics), 62 of birds, and 10 of reptiles (probably under-counted).


MAMMALS:

Hooved stock: The best-housed mammals at the zoo, but it's not difficult to do that with deer – just put a fence around a good bit of space and they'll be fine. Yangon is a dry dusty city, so the deer yards were all very sandy. The zoo is also on a bit of a hill so the yards were mostly built in a curious stepped fashion, like what you might see in old bear enclosures. The first ones I saw were very stepped and I wondered if they were originally built for something else. The steps seemed to work all right with the deer but in the hippo enclosures the steps looked very awkward for the animals! There were lots of hog deer, Eld's deer, sambar and common muntjac, all grouped in one area; lesser mouse deer were in with rabbits in another section of the zoo. The rest of the hooved animals were mostly in two other areas, one predominantly exotic and the other native. The latter had a couple of quite large grassed paddocks, and here there were gaur and wild pigs, and some Asian elephants (there were also elephants elsewhere, chained on a platform). The exotics were also in quite large yards/small paddocks (what you call them depending on interpretation I guess), not really large but perfectly fine. There were lots of common hippos here in relatively good enclosures (apart for the steps in some) – there were more common hippos near the entrance to the zoo in much smaller pens – and also a couple of pigmy hippos, followed by a large but bare paddock for Malayan tapir which I did not see, a smaller one for a lone white rhino, one for giraffes (I only saw one giraffe), then a dromedary, and some donkeys and horses.

Primates: Pretty consistently housed in terrible fashion. The worst were the chimps in a 19th century relic of a cage (right next to even worse cages for bears). The primates were spread all about the zoo: a pair of hoolock gibbons and a dusky langur by the pheasants and birds of prey, in fairly small concrete-and-mesh cages with a few ropes and branches (would be alright if much larger, although not exactly aesthetically pleasing); the chimps on top of the hill above the deer, next to bears; slow loris in an aviary-style cage next to small birds (that one was all right, but again could be a lot bigger); and the rest being macaques all grouped together near the exotic hooved stock. The first macaque enclosure is a very big concrete island for rhesus macaques which is fine; all the rest were in awful heavy-welded-mesh cages, either cylinder-fashion or box-fashion. They reminded me of the monkey cages that were at the tiny Mini Zoo in Christchurch (NZ) when I was growing up, not cages that should be in a big official zoo now. The species here were rhesus, crab-eating and northern pig-tailed macaques, as well as a few more hoolock gibbons. Really depressing.

Carnivores: A bit of a mixed bag but like the primates more or less consistent in being very badly housed, largely as a result of the antiquated infrastructure. There were a few exotic Big Cats but everything else was local.

Starting with the Big Cats: there were loads of tigers at the zoo, some (including a white one) housed in the 1915 Carnivora House. This would no doubt have been a building to be proud of at the start of the twentieth century but now not so much. I don't think the house itself is open, but along the front are three covered concrete-and-bars cages (the sort you would imagine if thinking about somewhere like London Zoo in 1900). At the back of the house are three rounded open-topped barred cages, these ones with earth and clumps of giant bamboo. Now the front (“inside”) and back (“outside”) cages are connected, so three cages total, but back in the day I imagine they would have been six separate cages with the dens for each inside the house. The other tigers are on the opposite side of the zoo, in an odd circular structure, where the bar-fronted dens are on the inside of the circle and viewed from ground level, while the open-topped concrete-walled outside areas are round the perimeter and viewed from a concrete walkway along the top. These are quite well-planted and the structure may not even be as old as it looks, but the design itself gives a real menagerie feel to it. As well as tigers this is where the lion(s) are – I just saw one female – and according to the map also jaguar(s) but I did not see them.

The bears, as always, get royally screwed in the housing department. I hate seeing bears in Asian zoos because it is always depressing. There are only two species here, Asiatic black bears and sun bears, but there are lots of both and they are spread all over the zoo. For the black bears there are some behind the Carnivora House in two tiny cages (two bears in each), up above the deer there are three or more in a platform-type enclosure (dry moat in the front, wall of the house behind, flat top to the enclosure going down in steps to the moat – this type of enclosure at least gives them more room), and then more again over between the monkeys and the hippos near the exotic section (this was the best of the lot for the black bears). The sun bears get it in the neck even worse than the black bears. The first ones I saw, by the chimps, were five (!) in a tiny circular barred sort of thing that looked like an up-scaled canary cage, and in the same spot a row of four tiny bar-fronted cages each with two or three sun bears (one cage had an adult and a youngish cub). Really exactly how I imagine a scene from a zoo in 1900 would look.

There wasn't as diverse a selection of small carnivores at the zoo as I had hoped. Certainly no marbled cats. Just near the entrance was a concrete enclosure divided into several parts, housing lots of smooth-coated otters and a few common otters. Land area at the back, water area at the front. The otters were a big hit with visitors, being extremely active and vocal because they were continually begging for food – which unfortunately in this case was slices of white bread. The otters were wolfing it down but I can't imagine it would be good for them. Near the Carnivora House were a set of smaller cages which looked to be of the same era as that building; they were labelled on the map as being for Small Cats but now they mostly housed hornbills on one side and on the other a red panda and some binturongs. Another set of cages in another part of the zoo, near one of the waterbird aviaries, was also labelled on the map as being for Small Cats. These cages were more recent but still not good. There actually were some Small Cats housed here, four of the display cages containing fishing cats with more visible in cages behind. I saw eight or nine fishing cats there and reckon there were more not visible. The other cages here held leopard cat (I saw one), common palm civet (I could make out a couple asleep in a box), Burmese ferret-badger (did not see) and a spare common otter. Some of the unlabelled cages appeared empty but as most of the inhabitants were nocturnal and asleep inside logs or boxes I couldn't say for sure.


Other stuff: Not much! There were domestic rabbits and guinea pigs, and Asian crested porcupines (Hystrix brachyura). The map had “wallabies” but where they should have been the enclosure now held hog deer (they would have been red-necked wallabies, and may have still been in there with the deer and just not showing). The rabbits and guinea pigs were in large sandy pens shaded by trees and the ground was dotted with burrows. One pen was shared with lesser mouse deer. The map said “Myanmar hare” which had me hoping for something interesting (the Burmese hare Lepus peguensis is a native species in southeast Asia) but if there were any here I did not see them. The poor porcupines were housed appallingly. There was a central shading roof like an umbrella with eight small pens arranged around it like cheese wedges, each pen containing two or three animals. The pens were entirely concrete, not a scrap of earth, with low walls. A few big logs in the centre of each was the only potential cover the animals had. All the porcupines were just lying out in the open on the concrete because they had nowhere to go. I was there late afternoon and the central shading roof was useless because the low sun shone straight into the western side, so all the porcupines on that side were lying in full sun (this was December when the temperature during the day was in the high twenties to low thirties [Celsius]; in summer it is in the high thirties to forties).


BIRDS:

The zoos in Burma put the emphasis in their bird collections on large species: water birds, pheasants, hornbills and birds of prey. Most of the birds probably come directly from the wild (some that I saw at Yadanabon Zoo in Mandalay definitely did). Because of this the species lists after the reviews can only be considered accurate as of for the dates of my visits – in a few months there will probably be some entirely different birds on display. Yangon Zoo also had quite a few large exotic parrots such as macaws and cockatoos. Smaller birds were few, and were mostly parakeets and doves. Passerines are almost entirely absent – at Yadanabon Zoo only hill mynahs; at Naypyitaw Zoo only a single red-billed magpie; at Yangon Zoo only hill mynahs, red-whiskered bulbuls, Java sparrows and black-headed munias (plus a house crow in one large mixed aviary). There are a lot of very common wild passerines in Burma which would make good display birds, such as hoopoes and various babblers and starlings, so their absence is a little surprising. I'm not sure if it is because there is no desire to bother with them, or if they do but don't have the expertise to keep them alive. At Yangon Zoo the signage was poor for the whole bird collection, often entire rows of aviaries would have not a single label for any bird there.

The birds are mostly housed perfectly adequately, in the sort of aviaries you see in zoos everywhere – not overly large but not too small either. Some are larger than others and some a little small, but overall not bad. There are two very big “tent-style” aviaries for waterbirds (I would call them “huge” in relation to the space in which most animals here are kept). The larger of the two had ruddy shelduck, comb duck, Chinese goose, a spot-billed pelican (a nearby sign said conspicillatus though), a sarus crane, black-necked stork, lesser adjutant, woolly-necked stork, painted stork, glossy ibis, black-crowned night heron, grey heron, great white egret, cattle egret, green peafowl and bantams. The other (not much smaller, but with a lower roof) had a similar collection, with black swan, ruddy shelduck, Chinese goose, lesser whistling ducks, domestic ducks, spot-billed ducks, a male pintail, glossy ibis, black-crowned night heron, grey heron, cattle egret, purple gallinule, green peafowl, bantams and domestic pigeons, as well as a random house crow.

There is a sizeable lake in the middle of the zoo with a small island. On the lake are a few captive birds (mute swan, spot-billed pelican, etc) and a few wild birds (there was a big flock of lesser whistling ducks, as well as night herons, little cormorants etc).

The highlight of the bird collection for me was a spot-breasted eagle owl. (Apart for two species of snakes in the Reptile House, this was the only “new” species for me here).


REPTILES:

Apart for the Burmese star tortoises which are housed in a cage between, naturally, binturong and red panda because why not, all the reptiles are grouped together in and around the Reptile House. Off to the side, some saltwater crocodiles have average land/pool combinations behind thick bars. The Reptile House is small, with about six fairly small indoor tanks for reptiles in the middle (a couple were empty, none were labelled) and around the walls were small aquariums for common tropical fish (oscars, Pangasius, angels, swordtails, guppies, etc). I don't have any Burma reptile guides so couldn't identify the unlabelled snakes beyond “pit-viper”, “green vine snake” etc, but presumed they were local species; I got them provisionally identified on this forum afterwards (species lists at the end). Around the outside of the building were open low-walled enclosures, some of which were labelled and some not. One had a lot of Burmese pythons, another Burmese brown tortoises, one a water monitor. One had a mesh cage inside the open enclosure and was labelled as king cobra but I couldn't see the snake. Two other enclosures appeared to be empty.

 

SPECIES LIST FOR YANGON ZOO:
(just what I saw on display, except for a couple of labelled cages where I didn't see the inhabitants).

As mentioned earlier, my counts were 39 species of mammals (including domestics), 62 of birds, and 10 of reptiles (probably under-counted); an article I found on the internet from the start of 2013 puts the figures at 45 of mammals, 69 of birds and 18 of reptiles.


MAMMALS:
(with numbers I saw for selected species)

Asian Elephant
White Rhino (I just saw one)
Malayan Tapir (did not see)
Domestic Donkey
Domestic Horse
Common Hippo (four or more different enclosures, each with one or two hippos)
Pigmy Hippo (I saw two)
Giraffe (I only saw one)
Dromedary (I saw one)
Gaur
Lesser Mouse Deer
Eld's Deer
Sambar
Hog Deer
Common Muntjac
Wild Pig
Asian Crested Porcupine (lots, probably about twenty or more)
Domestic Guinea Pig
Domestic Rabbit
Slow Loris
Dusky Langur
Rhesus Macaque
Northern Pig-tailed Macaque
Crab-eating Macaque
Hoolock Gibbon
Common Chimpanzee (couldn't really see them where they were, I think I saw three)
Tiger (including a white one) (lots-- at least six or seven different cages)
African Lion (I only saw one lioness, but most of the big cats in this area weren't visible so I don't know how many lions there actually are)
Jaguar (on the map but I didn't see it)
Fishing Cat (in four cages, at least eight or nine individuals)
Leopard Cat (I just saw one)
Common Palm Civet
Binturong
Eurasian Common Otter
Smooth-coated Otter (lots!)
Burmese Ferret-badger (did not see)
Red Panda (I just saw one)
Asiatic Black Bear (lots! At least ten to fifteen)
Sun Bear (lots! At least fifteen)
*[there was a place on the zoo map for wallabies but they were not there (the enclosure had hog deer in it instead); they would have been Red-necked Wallabies, which I saw elsewhere in Burma]


BIRDS:

Common (Double-wattled) Cassowary (lots! I counted twelve in six yards and there were probably more)
White-bellied Sea Eagle
Himalayan Griffon Vulture (lots, in at least three locations in the zoo)
Brahminy Kite
Black Kite
Eurasian Eagle Owl
Spot-bellied Eagle Owl (I just saw one)
Woolly-necked Stork
Lesser Adjutant
Black-necked Stork
Painted Stork
Grey Heron
Great White Egret
Cattle Egret
Black-crowned Night Heron
Sarus Crane (I just saw one)
Glossy Ibis
Purple Swamphen
Domestic Duck
Chinese Goose
Black Swan
Mute Swan
Lesser Whistling Duck
Ruddy Shelduck
Comb Duck
Spot-billed Duck
Pintail (I saw one male in one of the big mixed aviaries)
Spot-billed Pelican (although a label had them as conspicillatus [the Australian Pelican])
Green Peafowl
Domestic Hens (Bantams)
Ringneck Pheasant
Silver Pheasant
Kalij Pheasant
Grey Peacock-pheasant
Budgerigar
Cockatiel
Indian Ringneck
Alexandrine
Moustached Parakeet
Grey-headed Parakeet
Vernal Hanging Parrot (labelled as galgulus [the Blue-crowned Hanging Parrot])
Fischer's Lovebird
Green-winged Macaw
Blue and Gold Macaw
Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
Umbrella Cockatoo
Moluccan Cockatoo (labelled as leadbeateri, probably due to “pink cockatoo” causing confusion)
African Grey Parrot
Green Imperial Pigeon
Thick-billed Green Pigeon
Emerald (Green-winged) Dove
Diamond Dove
Domestic Ringneck Dove
Great Hornbill (lots! At least ten to fifteen in various aviaries)
Oriental Pied Hornbill (a few, I saw maybe five or six)
Rufous-necked Hornbill (I only saw three males)
Plain-pouched Hornbill (I just saw one)
Hill Mynah
Red-whiskered Bulbul
Java Sparrow
Black-headed Munia
House Crow (I saw one in one of the big mixed aviaries)



REPTILES:
(mostly in unlabelled enclosures so probably not a full list)

Saltwater Crocodile
Water Monitor
Reticulated Python
Burmese Python (lots)
King Cobra (did not see)
Burmese Vine Snake (Ahaetulla fronticincta)
(probably) Gumprecht's Pit-viper (Trimeresurus gumprechti)
Russell's Viper (Daboia russelli)
Burmese Star Tortoise (Geochelone platynota)
Burmese Brown Tortoise (Manouria emys phayrei)

 

The Spot-bellied Eagle Owl is a damn nice species I have seen it on a number of occasions myself, although presumably not the same subspecies.

 

I have now uploaded photos from the Yangon Zoo. You only had to wait a year. I might even get round to uploading the ones from the Yadanabon and Naypyitaw Zoos some day....

http://www.zoochat.com/forumdisplay.php?zoo=yangon-zoo&show=gallery

 

just to be clear, my only knowledge of Burmese zoos is from visiting them once each. I don't actually know anything more than what I saw when I was there.

I'm not sure what you mean about zoo co-operation regarding bears. Within Burma? The zoos were all very over-populated with bears (except Naypyitaw) so there's no options there. Within Asia as a whole? No idea, that would be something SEAZA or similar would have to be looking at I suppose. But there are so many bears captive everywhere within Asia anyway.....

I assume all the Eld's deer are the Burmese form, simply because I can't imagine them importing a different form from elsewhere when they are readily available in-country.