Good point Chli. Here goes: For the mouse tower, there are a couple of pictures like this one. The Paay has a lot of strange, odd and unsecure enclosures like this one for coatis, this tunnel for kea and (though not as strange as the two others) the otter enclosure is "unique" too.
Too many zoos look the same. They are full of cliches that become passe as soon as they catch on - shark tunnels, bat caves. It is one thing to have conservatism for practicality like in shed cities, quite another to repeat the same old if you can splash the cash. At one point it was kitschy Oriental themes, but now the fad is immersion though is too often self delusional: let enclosures be unashamed enclosures. Let them have dark or surreal humour like the plane crash exhibit. We need more exotic exhibits. Zoo design is architecture, let it be playful if it doesn't impair the pragmatism or welfare. An example might be Lubetkins penguin pool: not like I enjoy the look of raw concrete and the costs of upkeeping concrete decently outmatch the low cost at onset, but does it deserve the flak it gets, functionally? The Snowdon Aviary however was a bad design - it was not the only example among super aviaries however.
Some examples I saw on pictures from Japan but cannot trace to a zoo. One was a great panda exhibit which featured a bathroom with tiles and a WC, and a room with replica of Giant Wall of China. Another was a room where walls were seal aquarium and the seal to surface for air had to dive under the floor and up the glass cylinder in the middle of the room. Another was otter exhibit with a water-filled glass bubble projecting to the visitor area, in which the otters could swim. That one looked rather positive, allowing close contact with animals. There were also some very weird exhibits in the USA in the 1960s or so, modernist with absolutely no consideration of needs of live animals. One was a sort of rock hollow with two circular rocks in the middle, which was designed for 4 spectacled bears. I cannot trace them to photos, maybe somebody else can.
Anything mixed with a species not found in another species' region is always weird to me (minus aviaries which seem to not stick out so much to me for some reason, maybe I'm so used to Bird Kingdom). Llamas/alpacas are frequently mixed in with African hoofstock for some reason; African Lion Safari has them in their hoof stock reserve. The Americas paddock seems a better habitat for them. Toronto Zoo's old polar bear exhibit. Weird Avant Garde art design or something. Probably innovative for it's time but ew. Just a corner of it:
This open-topped Vinegaroon exhibit: Open-Topped Vinegaroon exhibit - Second Floor - World Aquarium by birdsandbats posted 28 Jun 2018 at 6:46 AM
Otters Zoom In and Out of Their Ottertube An Otter House In Japan Now Has A Roundabout – No More Underwater Traffic Jams
Speciesim, much? For the sake of convenience, few animal houses are really to the letter when it comes to their inhabitants. That's why you can see amphibians and invertebrates in reptile houses, small mammals & birds in giraffe / "pachyderm" houses, non-antelopes in antelope houses, etc. etc. Gila monsters and snakes have been proposed to both belong to the clade Toxicofera; maybe you can convince Australia Zoo to change the name to TOXICOFERA HOUSE
How many of the following theming are in Pairi Daiza Zoo: -crashed planes, -human skeletons and skulls, -sculptures and reliefs of an elephant or elephant-headed deity (presumably Ganesh)? My estimate is: 2, over 30 and over 100. Any Belgian zoo fan counted exactly?
As part of an ecology display, I once fenced off an active meat- ant mound and included it as an example of a decomposing species.
