London Zoo

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Yesterday, I took the train down to London Zoo. This was my last UK zoo this summer because I am taking the channel tunnel for the return drive to Warsaw on Tuesday. If all goes to plan, I will be visiting two zoos on the drive back, those being Antwerp and Leipzig.

London Zoo

I have visited London Zoo five or six times before - most recently last December - so it wasn’t a new zoo for me, but I enjoyed my visit nonetheless.

I quite like London Zoo; it receives a fair bit of criticism over wasting space and not having enough large animals but I don’t think it’s as bad as some people think. There is quite a bit of wasted space though, there is a large area in front of the restaurant and ‘Penguin beach’ that I think could do with and animal exhibit, and one could probably also fit some things in various areas of lawn, but I don’t think wasted space is such a huge problem. There is also some space by the sides of the canal, but having some natural vegetation there is a positive in my opinion. I do have one major criticism in terms of wasted space though – empty enclosures. This is particularly true with some of the smaller aviaries on the side of the canal with the Snowdon aviary and there is also a fair bit of wasted space around there.

In regards to not enough large species, I would completely disagree with that. For a zoo the size of London, they have quite a good balance in my opinion. There simply isn’t space for so many large species held in good enclosures and that is why there is Whipsnade for all the larger species. I would even go as far as saying that they have too many large species – the yards for Giraffe, Zebra and Okapi are a little on the small side and could possibly do with being enlarged to bring them up to the same standard as the rest of the zoo so that would necessitate getting rid of something.

And speaking of the standard of the enclosures, they are very good overall. Tiger Territory is the best tiger enclosure that I personally have ever seen and Penguin Beach is the second best penguin enclosure (after the one in Wroclaw zoo’s Afrykarium). I also really like Rainforest Life and Night Life and although I have heard that a lot of stuff was lost when Rainforest Life was built, I never saw any of it personally so I don’t feel the loss. There is also the issue of lots of boring ‘ABC animals’ such as Outback which is only Red Kangaroos, Emus and Bennett’s Wallabies and various other things with boring, common species but there are still a fair few oddities such as many of the birds in the Blackburn Pavilion and a few unusual species in Night Life etc. and although they *could* replace some of the boring animals with more unusual ones, it’s not like everything they have is just the usual ‘ABCs’.

From what I have heard, I think if I had seen London Zoo some time ago when they had lots more unusual species then I wouldn’t think so positively of the place, but because I haven’t, I’m just judging as it is rather than comparing it to how it has been and I think it is a fairly good zoo.

A couple of additional bits and pieces:

I thought the reptile collection was fantastic; however there were quite a few very heavily themed enclosures which I thought was excessively themed. I also liked how there were many ‘off show’ breeding areas visible through glass windows – those being for Endangered fish in the Aquarium, Endangered Amphibians in the Reptile house and Partula Snails in B.U.G.S – there were also signs explaining ZSL’s work with endangered species and conservation which I thought was great. Another particularly nice building was B.U.G.S (Biodiversity Underpinning Global Survival) - which I think is a great name by the way – is an invertebrate house (including a nice spider walkthrough) but with various fish, reptiles, mammals and birds showing Biodiversity with lots of educational signage making for a very nice exhibit.

So overall I do like London Zoo. It could do with being bigger, but realistically that’s not going to happen so for what there is, I think everything is very well done.

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