Budapest Zoo

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I’m just going to talk about what I liked, didn’t like and general opinions here.



- I thought that the best bit of the zoo was Magic mountain/great rock. This is a sort of mock-rock mountain and the exhibits are on the inside. You come in past the exhibits for gorillas and orangs and go through a corridor with signs about evolution and species going extinct. These signs were almost all in Hungarian (not a complaint, I was in Hungary so it is only to be expected. After all, no zoos in the UK have their signage in Hungarian) so my appreciation of it was limited but I could get the general gist of what they said from pictures. The place was a sort of hybrid between a natural history museum and a small animals house. There was a nocturnal section with various nocturnal rodents and bats and there were also lots of tanks with fish, insects, herps, rodents etc. all of this was dotted around various museum-like displays. There were various stuffed (is it more proper to call it taxidermy?) animals, skeletons and models including a life-size sperm whale. There were also various interactive things and I thought the whole area was really cool.



- The primate area was alright with a walkthrough bit and also free-roaming ring tailed lemurs and birds within the primate building but the inside enclosures weren’t very natural looking. I noticed black-and-white ruffed lemurs in with red-ruffeds, I’m assuming this is either a non-breeding group or a group with all animals hybrids of some degree?



- In the zoo I noticed a fairly large aviary full of jackdaws and I thought this to be very weird. The aviary was perfectly alright for the jackdaws as far as I am concerned and there were also some rabbits mixed with them but why display jackdaws?! I’m all for zoos having native species (especially threatened ones) but there were wild jackdaws all around the zoo with some even sitting on top of the aviary and on the path next to it! I honestly don’t see the point of the jackdaws. Were they rescued birds that were being rehabilitated? Otherwise I couldn’t see why the zoo would keep an aviary full of just jackdaws and a couple of rabbits.



- The only water that could be bought in the zoo was fancy expensive water in glass bottles. These were also only 250ml and you had to stand next to the shop and down the lot to give the glass bottles back to the shop, it was also expensive. Tip: If you go to Budapest Zoo, take enough water with you.



- There was a mixed tank with Harbour seals and African penguins which I though was quite cool (if a bit small for the seal), are there any problems with mixing pinnipeds with penguins? I’m not sure that I have seen this before.



- The African Savanna area had a range of different taxa including some reasonably unusual hoofstock as well as the ABC animals like rhinos that visitors want to see as well as quite a few species of rodent and a couple of reptile species, aardvarks and some birds like guinea fowl and ground hornbills. I would however say that the inside of the building which visitors walk through to look at the hoofstock outside and smaller enclosures inside lacked a feel and was a little basic feeling and the outside area(for hoofstock) was a little on the small side. (The inside enclosures for things like rodents were really good though, well decorated to look good and suit the inhabitants needs and also fairly large for the inhabitants sizes). I would however say that the hippo enclosure is far too small, both the inside and outside areas.



- I also really liked ‘Amazonia’ which is a South American Exhibit. There is a central area with 6 side rooms going off from it that represent different parts of South America. The planting was lovely with waterfeatures that gave the place a nice feel. Each of the side rooms was also really good with nice natural-looking enclosures for various mammals, birds, herps and fish from the different parts of South America. The only one complaint that I have is that the central area doesn’t have enough birds. It has signs for six different species but I only saw one individual animal which was a roller right up at the top of the place and that is after spending a fair bit of time looking. Under ‘Amazonia’ is the aquarium which has quite a few tanks. These were mostly freshwater tanks and very nicely planted with quite a variety of fish species. There was also a tank with a very large electric eel and on it was a display of the voltage being produced by the eel at that time and also a display of the last electrical pulse. I thought this voltage display was really cool.



- Quite a few of the geographically based houses (if not all of them) also have quite a few cultural displays of the cultures of the areas that the animals are from. The main place that made me notice this was the India house which had various Indian cultural bits and bobs.



- In the middle of the zoo there is a very large lake with various species of waterbirds which is really very nice; there are also lots of wild cormorants and grey herons that nest in the trees next to the lake. Next to this lake is the biggest aviary in Budapest Zoo which has a very nice fake mountain and is a walk-through with a path leading up to the top. There is also a pond at the bottom and halfway up the ‘mountain’ is a pit-like (pit has negative connotations but It’s not bad) enclosure for African porcupines. The free-flying birds are European griffon vultures, Northern bald (waldrapp) ibis, white-faced whistling duck, fulvous whistling duck, bataleurs and grey crowned-cranes.



- So far I have been mostly positive about Budapest Zoo but overall, I didn’t think it was fantastic (not bad, but not really good). The overwhelming reason for this is that the zoo is not big enough for the animals that it has. Simple. Elephants, tigers, lions, sea lions, seals, hyeanas, leopards, hippos, elephants, forest buffalo, two subspecies of brown bear, komodo dragons, several hoofstock species, rhinos, great apes, hippos etc. are all displayed in Budapest Zoo and to be honest, I don’t think there is room for all of them. Therefore the enclosure size for the large animals suffers and many are displayed in areas that are too small. The big cats, bears, hippos and komodo dragons have the enclosures that are the worst in terms of size in my opinion but all of the species listed above (with the possible exceptions of great apes, rhinos and some of the hoofstock) are in enclosures that are too small. Many are also very concrete and not natural looking. (I will note that for the smaller species, this was absolutely not true and many were in quite roomy enclosures). I have just googled the area of Budapest Zoo and the area of London Zoo (a city zoo that is in a comparable position to Budapest Zoo with both being part of a main park of the city) and London Zoo is 15 ha and Budapest Zoo is 17 ha according to google. I couldn’t even image London attempting to keep half of the large animals that Budapest does and Budapest isn’t much bigger…



- I didn’t want to end this post on a low note so I have left a fantastic bit of the zoo and what it is most famous for until last, the Australia section. This covers about a quarter (just judging by looking at the zoo map) of the area of the zoo and has an extremely impressive collection. There are quite a few nice bird aviaries and a nice walkthrough nocturnal building with brush-tailed bettongs, Lyel’s flying foxes, sugar gliders (though didn’t see them), common brushtail possums and some very friendly grey cuscuses. There is also a typical wallaby walkthrough which is made much nicer with the use of tammar wallabies over the usual red-neckeds, a few nice big kea aviaries as well as a few buildings dotted around with various gems such as echidnas, wombats, kowaris and quolls. There is also a building with koalas which as you would expect was packed with people staring at grey balls of fur sleeping behind eucalyptus leaves



Overall, it’s an ok zoo. Quite a few very interesting and rare species and a few really nice exhibits. However, there are also quite a few old, sub-standard exhibits that really take away from the good bits and there is a general lack of space in the zoo with (as is true with pretty much all city zoos) no bits of open space. Definitely worth a visit if you are in Budapest though and I am interested to see how some of the smaller, not natural-looking exhibits change.

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