How do you pronounce Doue-la-Fontaine, anyway? French is deliberately confounding. My best guess is Dwee-la-Fon-tah? And is that a hard or soft 'g' in Magdeburg? Ahem. Two of the most interesting zoos that I missed in my 2017 trip. Doue came through comfortably against Cotswold Wildlife Park on ungulates, 18-1, while Magdeburg had a bit more work to do beating Munich on large carnivores 13-9. The latter came as a surprise to me, having loved much of Munich when I visited, and Magdeburg is going to have to back up that form in the newly re-formatted carnivores category. Remember, this now includes everything from least weasels to elephant seals. And remember there's only three days to vote. Tomorrow, Dresden vs Vienna.
Oh Doue-la-Fontaine invincible in the birds departement and by my best estimate the prime reason to visit this gem of a zoo. It has something no other zoo has and that is it is built into a natural quarry. It has the first and best Okapi sanctuary in all over Europe. But it is very strong on carnivores too. You will have to search a long long time to find a better enclosure for giant otters in a zoo. The new snow leopard and javan leopards enclosures are in-quarry build enclosures, with dense vegetation and lots of trees to climb. Nothing artificial, even the backdrops of the enclosures are actual real rockys with caves built in. The spectacled bear enclosures is kind of an oddish eliptical but a very well designed enclosure with squirrel monkeys as playmates for the bears. The sumatran tigers have a squarish enclosure with rich vegetation and if they do not want to be seen, this makes them hardly visible at times (been there done that for hours, when I was trying to spot them with their litter of young ones..... ). Fine but not top notch, the lion enclosure in which they house a small pack of lions - sunny and spacious. Around the back end of the rhino enclosure you run into the cheetah area, ehem, again, great duo of enclosures, grassy, sandy and some trees for shade. European lynxes can be fotographed as if in the wild and so on and so on. This zoo ist just spectacular! I do believe on the numbers Magdeburg gets close in the carnivore department. When it comes down to enclosure quality, Doue la Fontaine is unbeatable. Clear win for Doue!
Both: Snow leopard; Nepalese red panda Doue la Fontaine Dwarf mongoose Northern lynx; South African cheetah; Sumatran tiger; lion; Sri Lanka* and Javan leopards Maned wolf Spectacled bear Asian small-clawed and giant otters Magdeburg Striped hyena (including East African striped hyena) Dark cusimanse; yellow, dwarf, banded and marsh mongooses; meerkat Arabian sand cat; Carpathian lynx; Siberian tiger; southeast African lion South African bat-eared fox; bush dog; African wild dog; Chinese dhole Marbled polecat White-nosed coati Doue has a bear, but Magdeburg has a coati and a hyena, so would win on families. As regard species, Doue has more cats and mustelids, but Magdeburg has several more mongooses and dogs, so gets my vote.
Doué-la-fontaine (you need to say do-eh-la-fon-tane) has also a great location : the whole zoo is constructed under and trough a limestone ground that gives a very natural scenery. It's for me an advantage on every city zoos ! For the species, Doué has a smart collection with many endangered subspecies (Sri-Lankan and Java leopards, black rhino) or not-current species for french zoos : giant otters, spectacled bear ...
I would literally agree with you, if Doue would not be such an outstanding venue with more than a competitive selection. And I want to stress this just because it is such a sad competition.
