On the other hand, I have loved some of the smaller zoos I've visited. Salisbury, Maryland had one of the nicest small zoos I've ever seen. More of a park than a prison, with the animals seeming more like pets on a tidy farm. Fancy birds, some oddities, not too many stinking monkeys, buffalo babies, and one panther (not such a big cat to manage) that always slept. A good cat for a small zoo is an ocelot. There's always the snakehouse for a good shiver.
Hiya Mamzelle.
You mentioned the Salisbury zoo and what a surprise. I live about thirty miles from Salisbury Merryland.
I love the Cape May NJ zoo which I get to via the Lewes ferry. It has a “boardwalk” that snakes in and out of a forest.
“The problem with zookeeping is when the managers get too ambitious. I find the huge zoos in the “Great Cities” to be depressing. Trying to exhibit all the big cats, the large fragile primates (gorillas), the more dangerous herd animals—it’s just better to specialize than to try to be that big.”
Perhaps, but not so much with the SF Zoo, it’s not that big, compared to St. loius or San Diego. It’s actually quite small, not as small as the Oakland zoo, but small. They also specialize at the SF zoo, they are a big player in the area of cats, like the snow leopard, and tigers - but they don’t have a reptile house.
They have room for what they do have, and the new enclosures, like the meercat island, are really great leaps forward in natural habitat, or close to it, as opposed to cages - and I think the cats were in the final phase for new enclosures, I know the lions got new ones.
I lived outside of Salisbury and have frequented that zoo many times...did you know it is affiliated with the Belize Zoo? I have been to that one as well.