To be fair, Hippo population worldwide is not in good spot, so this might become more frequent in future... This isn't necessarily a bad thing though. Anyway I'm going with 2-1 Beauval
I agree - not necessarily, but if it means that these antelopes have a space deficit, it is a bad thing. If they were to knock down all the walls separating the antelopes at Horn and Hoof Mesa, they would give all of them a lot more space, and it would allow interactions. That would make a massive mixed species exhibit as opposed to lots of separated, artificial exhibits (species are not kept away from other species in the wild by man-made walls)
Actually, increasingly they are, sadly. And in any case many (most?) 'geographically correct' mixes are only so at a national level (ie both are found in Congo) ignoring the fact that even species from the same national park may never interact due to altitude or foliage preferences. I like a multi-species exhibit as much as the next person, but I don't think we need to make an unnecessary virtue of them.
Including the species I forgot on my list, 22 of SDZ's ungulates are in a mixed exhibit of some sort so I'm not really sure what you're talking about in the first place. I would argue that the presence of these mixes is also part of the problem in terms of crowding the pens. ~Thylo
There are a lot of barren enclosures housing single species. The point is that they have lots of different enclosures with the same species/species mixes that could all be fused together. However, if the stem of the problem is that the mixed species exhibits are not working, they need to find something that does work, because Beauval's mixed species enclosures all work fine... Also, mathematically, if you take two square exhibits side by side holding the same species in both, and call the sidelength of these squares 'x', and then knock down the separating wall, not only do you have slightly more area (The wall has to have an area) but it also means that the antelopes can run diagonally across the exhibit for 2.23x instead of only 1.41x in the square exhibits that they have before. Therefore, since there is slightly more area per antelope and a much greater allowed distance to run, it cannot, by definition be more cramped.
I can't think of any neighboring ungulate yards at the zoo that which house the same species. I do agree that more could be done and larger enclosures could be made. The row of older hoofstock yards up by Northern Frontier could all theoretically be connected (or at least three of them could be) and renovated to be much more naturalistic, which a slightly reduced number of species mixed in. ~Thylo
This is perhaps getting off-topic for this particular thread, but there's something to be said for maintaining a set of lightly themed, functional, versatile enclosures like the Northern Frontier yards. Makes it much easier to respond to collection needs or place oddball species like SD's Chacoan peccary that don't fit typical themed zones. Same could be said of the carnivore grottoes on Center Street (they can go ahead and explode those corncrib monkey cages though).
I don't inherently disagree with that for the hoofstock yards. I'd suggest sticking smaller species or less animals in a couple of them, though. As for the grottos, the otter works fine in one but I think it's horrible the bears are still kept like that. Personally I'd blow Center Street and the Junction at least, and possibly most of the incredibly ugly Australian exhibit with them! ~Thylo
