Last chance saloon for these two zoos: the loser will be the first zoo mathematically incapable of winning the Cup. Australia and Islands.
I don't envy the individual who would like to sift through Omaha's approximately 1,300 species and attempt to determine what animals fit into this category, although some of the areas of the zoo wouldn't apply here. Beauval likely has a lot of species as well, making this an interesting match, but how many zoos of the world have more than 1,300 species? I'll give an overview on Omaha, as I have tended to do in this ZooChat Cup. ** Omaha has the world's largest Nocturnal House that contains a superb Australian exhibit with vast underwater viewing windows for Johnson's Freshwater Crocodile, Krefft's River Turtle, Pink-bellied Side-necked Turtle, Fly River Turtle and Northern Australian Snake-necked Turtle. There are also Tammar Wallabies, Short-beaked Echidnas, at least 7 or 8 bat species and a wealth of other animals inside the Kingdoms of the Night complex. Someone else can supply a list of 'island' species. There is the Lied Jungle tropical house and I have no idea how many species would qualify for an 'Islands' category. The same goes for the full-size Aquarium inside the zoo. The Desert Dome has a section called The Red Center of Australia with an astonishing lineup of Aussie reptiles; some of the snake species are found at very few other zoos in North America and there are even exhibits for species such as King Brown Snake, Death Adder and Perentie. There is an Insect House, two Bornean Orangutan exhibits, a Wild Kingdom Pavilion with probably a handful of 'island' species, and here was the list of animals found in Expedition Madagascar in 2018: Fossa, Aye-aye, Red Ruffed Lemur, Black-and-White Ruffed Lemur, Ring-tailed Lemur, Black Lemur, Mongoose Lemur, Common Brown Lemur, Red-collared Brown Lemur, Crowned lemur, Grey Mouse Lemur, Giant Jumping Rat, Straw-coloured Fruit Bat, Madagascar Ibis, Madagascar Teal, Madagascar Button Quail, Lesser Vasa Parrot, Radiated Tortoise, Flat-tailed Tortoise, Madagascar Big-headed Turtle, Malagasy Hognose Snake, Madagascar Ground Boa, Plated Lizard, Spiny-tailed Iguana, Cheke's Day Gecko, Giant Day Gecko, Oustalet's Chameleon, Panther Chameleon, Powder Blue Reed Frog, Tomato Frog plus various Mantellas and freshwater fish. ** I have visited more than 520 different zoos and aquariums in my lifetime, and 23 out of the 32 finalists for the ZooChat Cup. However, I have focused on Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo during the final because, by some quirk of fate, many of the zoos that are in the 'Final 8' are ones that I have yet to visit! Plzen - never visited Wroclaw - never visited Chester - never visited Beauval - never visited Vienna - never visited Zurich - was there in 2003 Bronx - was there in 2008 Omaha - was there in 2018, 2012 and 2008
Again, my only post on this subject but: These don't count. And Beauval has a large Australasian greenhouse, a multitude of Australasian aviaries, lemur islands and a few more. Will probably think of more as time goes on but Beauval is also quite strong in this category, especially due to their Australasian exhibits.
Maybe a difference in opinion, but I wouldn't refer to the Australian room as "superb". It wasn't bad and the aquatic exhibit was cool, but it was a rather small room in the otherwise massive complex and the other exhibit in the room (for wallaby/woylie and maybe gliders?) I found decent but not that noteworthy, especially compared to the other parts of KotN.
I am not even sure that it matters that Beauval has a pretty strong Australian collection and a good bird collection if we take into account how Omaha houses many of its lemurs: This was opened 10 years ago and was outdated 20 years before that as there is 0 outdoor access and has very little in terms of making the enclosure attractive to the inhabitants. Compare that to a lemur island in Beauval where the animals appear to have full access to live trees (not fake concrete baobabs): And then we haven't even started talking about keeping Tammar wallaby in a night house setting, no wonder people are critical of them...
To the best of my knowledge the Tammar is one of the most nocturnal macropods, so I'm not sure I see the issue?
Here is the species list for Omaha (note that some species are repeated, as it is by exhibit): Desert Dome Brown Tree Snake, Common Death Adder Frilled Dragon, Northern Blue-tongued Skink Centralian Python Rough-scaled Death Adder King Brown Collett's Snake Woma Python Taipan (Inland) Spiny-tailed Monitor Perentie Kookaburra, Masked Lapwing, Tawny Frogmouth Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby Cunningham’s Skink Free-flight: Star finch, long-tail finch, double-barred finch, Australian wood duck Expedition Madagascar* Black Lemur, Madagascar Big Headed Turtle Straw-colored Fruit Bat Mongoose Lemur Aye-Aye Giant Jumping Rat, Grey Mouse Lemur Lesser Vasa Parrot Radiated Tortoise, Ring-tailed Lemur (on sign but not present: Common Brown Lemur, Mongoose Lemur, Red-collared Brown Lemur) Flat-tailed Tortoise, Giant Day Gecko, Oustalet's Chameleon, Plated Lizard, Spiny-tailed Iguana Baron's Mantella, Beautiful Mantella, Blue-legged Mantella, Climbing Mantella Madagascar Ground Boa, Malagasy Hognose Snake Red Ruffed Lemur Cheke's Day Gecko, Madagascar Button Quail, Panther Chameleon, Tomato Frog Fossa (outside) *full species list but a couple species (straw-colored fruit bat, etc) may not count Kingdoms of the Night Fossa Green Tree Python, Magnificent Tree Frog Jamaican Boa** Haitian Boa** Amethystine Python Banded Knob-tailed Gecko Short-beaked Echidna, Tamar Wallaby Fly River Turtle, Krefft's River Turtle, Northern Australian Snake-necked Turtle, Pink-bellied Side-necked Turtle Johnson's Crocodile Little Golden-mantled Fruit Bat** Lied Jungle Luzon Bleeding-Heart Dove** Magnificent Tree Frog Imperial Pigeon (free flight) Common/Western Crowned Pigeon (free flight) Nicobar Pigeon (free flight) Philippine Crocodile** Solomon Island Eyelash Frog Orangutan Forest Gray's Monitor** **Could not remember where we fell on either Philippine animals or Caribbean endemics, so I included them. Caribbean animals also found outside the Caribbean were not. There are possibly a few birds that didn't make the list (the constantly shifting free-flight list makes them difficult to keep track of), but likely not enough to be concerned with. The Australian reptile collection in Desert Dome is good, along with the free-flying birds and the rare yellow-footed rock wallaby (also semi-free-roaming, if I remember correctly*). While the enclosures at Expedition Madagascar can certainly be debated, the collection representing the island is objectively strong; the only comparable one I know of would be Bronx (San Diego might have the same number of species, but scattered around the entire zoo). *With the qualifier that I'm not a marsupial behavioral expert, I have my own concerns about walk-through wallaby exhibits. They are popular, but in every one I've experienced the macropods steer clear of people, and both the foot paths they form on the edges of their habitats and their immediate behavior indicate that maybe it is not the most comfortable state for them. The rock wallaby I saw at Omaha was far away from the human walking path, and few people seemed to notice it.
Omaha's Madagascar house beats Bronx's in terms of species imo, but is far behind in terms of quality. In addition to the species @Coelacanth18 listed, I found an unlabeled Powder-Blue Reed Frog on-exhibit with the mantellas and I did end up spotting all of the signed lemur species. Somewhere the zoo has a mixed subspecies pair of Madagascar Crested Ibis as well. @lintworm is slightly incorrect as there are two fairly large outdoor lemur enclosure at the zoo including a walkthrough, though he is also correct in that I don't think the lemurs exhibited in the house have access to them. Personally all indoor primate displays are not the be-all-end-all of bad exhibits for me--it all depends on the species and quality of the enclosure(s) as I've seen all indoor enclosures larger, taller, and better than many outdoor ones--but Omaha's I find to be pretty bad apart from the mouse lemur and Aye-Aye enclosures. Australia-wise, the zoo's herp collection is superb and the small Australia sections of Desert Dome/Kingdom's of the Night are quite nice. My main issue here is the rock-wallaby, though. Does anyone know if the wallabies can actually access the entirety of the walkthrough or is it just that one rocky ledge? As far as I could tell, it's only that one ledge, which probably makes it by far the worst wallaby enclosure I've ever seen... I'd love to be wrong, though, so someone please correct me if I am! Despite the above, Omaha does still have a solid collection of species and they do have some good enclosures, especially for their herps and free-flying birds in DD and Lied Jungle. I'm not going to vote yet, though, simply because no one's really made an argument for Beauval yet apart from the excellent-looking lemur island. ~Thylo
Expedition Madagascar, which opened in 2010, does have some outdoor lemur exhibits and a nice walk-through section, but I fully agree that some of the all-indoor lemur enclosures are very poor indeed. Compared to what is commonly found in European zoos, the exhibits are hugely disappointing. However, species such as Aye-aye and Grey Mouse Lemur have exhibits that are no better or worse than others of their kind. Omaha has poured a lot of their conservation dollars into Madagascar projects and a new species (Lepilemur grewcocki - Grewcock's Sportive Lemur) was 'discovered' by the zoo in 2006. The Australian section in the Desert Dome is superb, with reptiles galore, and I believe that the rock wallabies do have access to a wider area but from photos I cannot confirm that.
I'm also not sure. From memory, that photo, and another that I took (not posted in the gallery), it doesn't appear that the gap between the ledge and the walk-through is significant; when I saw it I just assumed they had the run of the whole area and chose to occupy the ledge to stay away from people. Maybe the boundary between wallaby exhibit and walk-through area is simply unclear... either way (confined to ledge physically or by human behavior) it seems like a questionable design. Agreed; feeling personally conflicted about Omaha and not having much info to go on for Beauval, I'm not sure yet if I want to vote for either one.
Last post Tree kangaroo and Rufous-tailed bettong (4 enclosures of similar size ) Koala outdoor Fish tanks in the Australasian house:
Given how little has been said about Beauval, and how much has been said about Omaha, I really don't think there are any grounds as presented for voting 3-0 Beauval even with the implication from lintworm that his vote is purely down to sheer disapproval of Omaha.
Yes, 3-0 Beauval does seems very harsh. There is @amur leopard , who adores Beauval and has been a huge supporter of that zoo. Then there is @Fatduck who seems to have never posted before...and @lintworm who is not impressed with perhaps 4 all-indoor exhibits for large lemurs at Omaha. As for @Giant Panda I'm not sure, but 2-1 to either zoo seems more appropriate considering the images for each zoo in the gallery.
Or not After all, you've been to Beauval personally, and judging by your first post there is more to say about the place than has been said yet. But voting is *how* you show sheer disapproval otherwise, they'd have to give points to Omaha despite not believing it deserves any, or not vote and let Omaha win because its supporters showed up. I don't see how either of these points are relevant. If you want to know why they voted 3-0, why not just ask them? If they have four enclosures, how did they end up with only one kangaroo?
Also what is a "rufous-tailed bettong"? I'm assuming you mean Brush-Tailed? Just asking since actual Rufous Bettong is now an actual option for European zoos (though Beauval doesn't seem to have any). ~Thylo
Active phase-out of Matschie's Tree Kangaroo in Europe. They do keep Goodfellows too, and these are presumably also kept in this area - but I was remarking on the specific exhibit photographed.
I have a very strong allergy for enclosures that were outdated long before they were built, especially when it comes to zoos that should know better and have the resources to do much better. Failing to do so for me implies a complete lack of interest in the animals welfare, which is unacceptable for me. This is also why I have criticized Pairi Daiza a lot, which is a great zoo except if you are a cat, pygmy hippo, etc. That alone is reason for me not to vote for Omaha and given that all the pictures in the gallery of Beauval indicate ok to very good enclosures, for me 3-0 is justified.
