An interesting match-up, this. Hamburg got here via a 23-0 squash of Mulhouse on reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates. Planckendael wasn't much more challenged by London, winning 19-7 on small mammals (a margin that surprised me, I admit). This time? Primates. Not a strength for either zoo, with only a handful of species each, so I'm curious to see how this pans out. Tomorrow, Whipsnade vs Zurich.
Well that is a boring matchup, this is obviously not the selling point for either zoo. Ungulates would be a clear win for Planckendael, whereas birds or ectotherms would have been for Hamburg. Carnivores would have been an interesting discussion to watch especially Planckendael has Bonobo, Ring-tailed lemur, Golden-headed lion tamarin, Black lemur, White-cheeked gibbon, Sulawesi crested macaque, Geoffrey's marmoset and Pygmy slow loris. Hamburg has White-faced saki, Ring-tailed lemur, Mandrill, Hamadryas baboon, Emperor tamarin and Sumatran Orang-utan Planckendael has the larger collection with the more interesting species but enclosure wise it is not spiffing. The bonobo island is nice, though the indoors is too small (though that will change next year). The gibbon indoor enclosure is really bad, though the island spacious. The Callichtrids have a fine walkthrough enclosure and I can't remember at all how the lemurs were housed. I don't know much about Hagenbeck's enclosures, though the Orang-utan one seems very interesting (but not necessarily good) based on pictures... So for now I am leaning towards Planckendael, but I am open for suggestions.
That was my initial thought too, but then, why should a discussion of relative weakness be any less interesting than one of relative strengths?
Because I think people would be less inclined to defend their pick, like we saw in the Burgers vs. Wroclaw and Berlin vs. Rotterdam match-up. It is much more interesting to debate whether Messi is better than Ronaldo than to discuss whether Sanogo is better than Berahino, even though in both pairings the football players are of relatively equal quality.
Like both zoos very much but in this case I go for Planckendael, the enclosures at Hamburg are IMO to old-fashioned and althrough this can have in some cases also their charm, this is not the case with the Primate-enclosures at Hamburg.
I do not see how I could vote for Hamburg as a zoo I would go to in case I wanted to see primates. The Orang-Utan enclosure is a fairly good example for that too. Theoretically the windows can be opened to have it be a kind of outdoor enclosure. Which would make it a bearable thing, if it were not for the god awful restaurant inside the orang house, that when I visited on a bad weather day with no windows open, served french fries and chicken nuggets only, which in the process made the entire house smell like a fast food restaurant. I did feel sorry for those great apes. With what's been written so far, it has to be Plackendael for me.
I'm om team Planckendael here. It looks like they have expanded their primate collection a bit since I visited in 2010 (they didn't have lemurs or crested macaques back then, though I seem to remember that the macaques have replaced their lar gibbons, but even so it's not a bad replacement at all). Hagenbeck's best primate exhibit might be their mandrill exhibit, which is above average for what I've seen for the species, but still not world-class. The orangutan exhibit is not bad, but I think it looks better than it is because of the very unique design and execution; when it comes to size and enrichment, there are probably many better orangutan exhibits out there. The tamarin/saki exhibit is average. The baboon exhibit is a concrete grotto that may be better for the animals to live in than for visitors to look at, but still nothing to brag about. The lemur exhibit in the aquarium has met its fair share of criticism on here, and I agree with most of it; it's too small and tries to hard to look like a Malagasy village instead of an appropriate lemur habitat. Planckendael's exhibits are more consistently good, though a bit more generic than Hagenbeck's two newest exhibits (but in the case of the lemur exhibit, creative doesn't equal good). I don't remember them as clearly since my Hagenbeck visit is much more recent, but my thoughts were confirmed when I checked the galleries and my old photos. As others have said, both of them don't exactly have top-notch collections, but it's still easy to pick Planckendael. Slightly more species, and on average their species are rarer - if you're a species-hunter, you're not gonna like that Hagenbeck's biggest primate rarity is a mandrill or orangutan.
Not the greatest for either group, but I appreciate an old-fashioned Baboon Rock, the Mandrill cage si god (but basic) and (fried for smells aside) I rather like the Orang Utan house. So Hamburg it is. Yes, but, to be honest, I'm not sure I need to read anything more about Messi or Ronaldo, whereas the on-goig catastrophe of Berahino's career is extraordinarily fascinating!
