More fun zoo photos

Rostock Zoo, Oct, 2011

I like zoo photography. Click the caiman to see the slideshow.

Convergent crocodilians

This attractive individual lives in the Zoo Basel. It shares a large enclosure with these two:


As we gazed upon their toothy serenity, my wife asked me what species they were. I had to admit I didn't know. There may have been a placard somewhere, but in the crowd of humans I didn't notice it. Clearly crocodillians, and not alligators or caimans, but beyond that I couldn't say. Gharials have longer, skinnier snouts for catching fish, and most crocodiles have thicker, heavier snouts for pulling down large terrestrial animals. These seemed to be somewhere in between.

I've looked up what species of crocodilians have snouts like this, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that there are three candidates: the Slender Snouted Crocodile, the False Gharial and the Freshwater Crocodile. All three have similarly shaped snouts and eat a mixture of fish and terrestrial prey. All three are said to bite humans only when harassed, and all three live in fresh water. Each is found on a different continent and they are not closely related to each other. The African Slender Snouted Crocodile, the South Asian False Gharial and the Austrailan Freshwater Croc have apparently evolved into similar niches and therefore converged on similar morphology. Interestingly, despite its numerous crocodilians, the Western Hemisphere seems to lack a similar species.

I found out that these are Australian Freshwater crocs only by looking up which of these three species the Zoo in Basel keeps.

They also hold three of these, Nile Crocodiles:
That's what the above water part looks like. The below water part of the same individual in the same position looks like this:


Notice the much wider, more typical crocodilian snout.

Rostock Zoo

We wanted to go for a longish walk today, and the Rostock Zoo is walking distance from our house, so we headed on over. We walked through only a few city blocks and then a large city park with oak/maple/chestnut/beech forest and playing fields. The zoo was blissfully uncrowded due to the cold and wet weather. Unfortunately, this also meant that many of the animals were inside or inactive. Walking into this zoo the differences in funding and history from the Copenhagen Zoo we so recently admired were painfully obvious. It is of course an unfair comparison, given the differences between the two cities, and the weather when we visited, but still striking. Many of the animals simply stood in small, relatively featureless enclosures. Iris commented that the people who designed some of the enclosures were following in the style of Soviet apartment blocks. The animals, with some notable exceptions, looked bored, and sat waiting to be fed. A couple of the fish tanks had dead fish at the bottoms. The lone elephant walked in a small circle, always clockwise. The orangutan clutched the bars of her cage.

From Rostock Zoo 10/17/09

Many of the animals were tremendously obese. We saw almost no zoo employees except at the cafe, the entrances and the store. There was a lot of the feeling of bad old zoo here.
At the same time, like much of Rostock, it was obvious that the Rostock Zoo is very actively trying to replace the run-down vestiges of GDR with new, modern and elegant. The otter habitat, clearly recently built, had the otter racing every which way through trees, ponds and tunnels searching for cleverly hidden bits of food. We watched from a small bridge over the enclosure or from a sunken room below water level, aquarium style. The otter's enclosure was beautifully thought through and built.

From Rostock Zoo 10/17/09

The depressing concrete and iron boxes that house the great apes have been retrofitted with glass fronts for warmth as well as branches and nets for climbing on, and big signs requesting donations to build a new ape house. I emptied my coins into the collection box. A large counter showed that they had raised most of the million Euros in donations they need for the new ape house. The old-world monkeys were in a new (although still somewhat cramped) exhibition hall that doubles as a gallery of large prints of the winners of a wildlife photography contest.

The most striking (and to me most disturbing) enclosure is the crocodile house. About the size of a two car garage, it has a couple of small crocs, some large soft-shelled turtles, brightly colored freshwater fish (all the fish at the zoo are freshwater, presumably because they lack the facilities for salt-water aquaria) and four free-roaming Black-mantled Tamarins. These little South American monkeys had the complete run of the place. They jumped over the crocodile tank, ran between the zoo visitors' feet, jumped on the visitors and scurried up and down the walls. They showed no fear of people, and while we were there were fed by hand by more than one young guest. One young lady took turns with a tamarin licking her ice cream.

From Rostock Zoo 10/17/09

All this with no zoo employee or volunteer in the building, and both doors to the house frequently open. It was thrilling to see these tiny (~1Lb) primates up so close, have them jump onto my shoulder, stick their noses against my camera lens to see what was inside, etc. But it also struck me as really quite irresponsible. It may be that the zoo simply has no other warm space to keep the tamarins, but my mind was filled with all the things that could go wrong here. Someone could step on a tamarin. One of the teenagers attempting to grab a tamarin's tail could succeed and get a nasty bite, or injure the animal. People could transmit diseases to our fellow primates. The monkeys could transmit diseases to people. Someone could stuff a tamarin in a backpack and take it home (this sort of thing has happened at other zoos). The tamarins could run out the door and wander into the nearby lion enclosure, or just die of cold. The crocs could get them. Petting zoos are supervised, and never contain primates or species of conservation concern. This broke every rule, and I can only hope it is a very temporary arrangement. That said, the tamarins were probably the most memorable and exciting part of the visit.

One other thing that struck me about this zoo is how much space they have for expansion. Many of their newer exhibits, and large fields for the ungulates, are in an area across a road from the main zoo, accessible through a separate entrance or via an underpass. Most of that added-on section is still just woods, waiting to be made into wooded homes for animals. They also have lots of old cages that are simply empty, ripe for replacement or creative reuse. What they seem to lack is not the will to improve, or the space, but funding. With the exception of the tamarins (which I think should be moved at once, even if it has to be to somewhere the public can't see them, or to another zoo) all of the animals are situated as well as they can be given the current enclosures available. If asked, I would probably advise replacing or significantly modifying 75% of the enclosures. I suspect the people who work there feel the same way. I very much hope that they find the funding and the will to make the type of transformation they need.

Due to poor weather and bad batteries I only took 150 pictures today. 20 of the better or more relevant ones are here.

Rostock Zoo 10/17/09

Something's doing at the zoo

I can think of nothing that divides the opinions of animal lovers more than zoos. To some they are horrid spectacles where wild animals are locked in little cement boxes for the public to gawk at. To others they are a way to educate the public about wildlife while adding to our knowledge of each species and contributing meaningfully to conservation efforts. Some view zoo animals as living short boring lives of confinement, while others view zoos as predator, poacher and disease free shelters for species rapidly declining in the wild. Both groups are passionate in their support of animal welfare, and both are partly right about zoos. Zoos for a very long time were, and to some extent and in some places still are, places where animals are kept in very unnatural conditions for the gawking pleasure of humans. Zoological gardens originally cared little about the welfare of the animals, beyond the expense of replacing them. When most modern zoos were opened, animals usually were kept in small hard cages with no natural elements and nothing to do. It is still possible to find many zoos like this, and many cages like this even in the more modernized zoos. But many zoos, including most I have been to in the US, are actively and intentionally reforming themselves, and have been gradually improving for some decades. Rapid improvement is difficult while one has a large group of animals to keep. You can't simply bull-doze the whole place and start anew. Rather you must find what open space you have and build a new tiger habitat, then move the tigers there and rip up their old cages to build a large outdoor space (with winter quarters underneath) for the baboons. When that is done, and the baboons are safely outside, the monkey house can be rebuilt, and so on. In a few decades when all the old cages are gone, you will realize that the tiger habitat you built really isn't big enough for tigers, and you can start the cycle again. So changing from a bad old zoological garden to a new fancy new wildlife conservation and education center takes decades.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting one of the most advanced and impressive zoo I've been to, the Copenhagen Zoo. In overall appearance and plan it reminded me very much of the Bronx Zoo, where I worked for a short time. In fact it was so similar I have no doubt many of the same people were involved in planning the individual habitats in the two zoos. The two are so similar that I could say to my wife, "this looks just like the place in the Bronx Zoo where they have the crocodiles and river turtles," only to turn the corner and find the crocodiles and river turtles in nearly identical enclosures.

Almost all of the enclosures were state of the art, made to look and feel as much as possible like habitat, with places the animals can go to get out of the weather, and out of the view of tourists, or where they lay in the sun if they so choose. They had a large display (in Danish, so I couldn't read any of it) on the bad old way of doing thing, set up so that the viewers actually walk through a series of cold cement cages with giant steel bars where rhinos and hippos used to be kept. But what impressed me most was the attention paid to making sure the animals had something to do. The anteater ate not from a trough, but from a rotten log with numerous holes drilled in it and food stuffed into each hole. This gave it something to do with its improbably long tongue and impressive curved claws. Rather than laying around looking bored, it spent its time ripping open logs and licking food out from inside them.


Inside the impressive new elephant house the elephant also has to work for its food. I spent half an hour watching an elephant attempting to extract its food from a large barrel hung 5 meters off the ground. The barrel hangs from a rope, such that the elephant can barely reach it with its trunk. By repeatedly whacking the barrel with the tip of its trunk it can make it swing enough that eventually some of the food inside spills out on the ground. The elephant then eats this and goes back to whacking the barrel. By the time the meal was over, the elephant looked honestly tired, a rare and precious thing for a zoo animal.


The bears spent enough time digging in their enclosures (with enough magpies and starlings closely following them) that I can only assume there was food buried somewhere in there, with the location changing from day to day. Over and over throughout the zoo we saw animals doing something.



The term in the zoo community for this is behavioral enrichment, and it turns out to be incredibly important not only for the animal's mental state, but for their overall health, their longevity and the satisfaction and education of the viewing public. Crowds these days don't just want to see an elephant standing there, they want the elephant to be happy, and they want it to be doing something. In the Copenhagen Zoo, the animals are doing something, and usually it is something similar to an actual behavior observed from the wild. Wild elephants really do whack and grab overhead food with their trunks. Anteaters really do tear open rotten logs. Behavioral enrichment takes a lot more thought, and a lot more work, than dumping food in a trough, but it makes for a wonderful zoo. (A recent episode of the NPR show Radio Lab focuses on Zoos, and talks a lot about the importance of behavioral enrichment.)

We spent about eight hours walking around the Copenhagen Zoo, and saw most but not all of it. I strongly recommend it to anyone who loves animals, whether or not you love zoos. I took about 500 pictures that day, 60 of the better ones are linked to below.

Copenhagen Zoo