The original author 丨 flower erosion
Excerpt 丨An also
Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo and Shanghai Zoo are the best public zoos in East China and even in China. In recent years, the two zoos have improved particularly fast.
Of all the exhibition areas of Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo, two are particularly exciting: one is the roe deer slope and the other is the Asian primate area. The two zones were built in completely different ways, but both led to the same result: creating a natural environment for animals and exhibiting natural behavior.
The source of this article: "Visiting the zoo is a serious thing", flower erosion, The Commercial Press January 2020 edition.
The slope of the deer, as the name suggests, is a slope. There are three hills in the Red Mountain Forest Zoo, the roads are undulating, and the woods on the mountain are really the treasures of the zoo. The roe deer slope is a large mountain woodland where several roe deer and a group of yellow chamois are stocked. Roe deer and yellow chamois are two small deer native to China. Both deer have fangs in their males.
There is an interesting phenomenon in the animals of the deer family: the more primitive, smaller species, the males will have fangs - that is, their upper canine teeth. In the case of roe deer, their fangs are very large, up to eight centimeters long, and the body length of the large roe deer is only one meter. These long fangs earned them the English name "vampire deer".
The fangs of the roe deer move. When eating, their fangs will fall down so that they will not be broken when eating. But if you enter the combat state, the fangs will "whizz" up. When you see a fanged beast standing upright, you should know that they are ready for a good fight.
roebuck
The roe deer of Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo are more afraid of people, like to stay in the forest to avoid people's sight, more idyllic. If you want to observe their cute teeth, you need to look for them. In contrast, the yellow chamois is much more generous. If you see a group of cute deer the size of a puppy and somewhat horned deer on the slopes of the deer, it's the yellow chamois. Yellow chamois are not just dog-like.
The chamois is called "barking deer" in English, which means that the bark is like a dog barking. But I've never heard a chamois bark in a zoo, which is a shame. In China, the most common chamois are yellow chamois and red chamois. The size of the yellow chamois is relatively small, so it is also called a small chamois.
Yellow chamois
The male fangs of small deer are weapons for intraspecific fighting, and to put it bluntly, they are used to rob girls. Many people have a misconception that when they see an animal with long canine teeth, they think it eats meat. In fact, canine teeth are essentially a weapon for fighting, not a tool for eating meat. True carnivores, like tigers and wolves, have molars specialized in a flaky appearance like meat-cutting axes, rather than broad, uneven apex like human molars. This is the hallmark of carnivores.
The native environment displays protozoa, which is a weapon for the zoo to improve the display level. As long as the concept is in place, you can think of designing such an exhibition area, the resources and money consumed during construction are relatively small, and the state and behavior of the animals are better.
A similar design can also be seen in the panda hall of nanjing hongshan forest zoo, where a high slope is set aside for outdoor activities, and the pandas living there must be strong as long as they are not homely. Compared with the ultra-luxury panda pavilions of Shenyang Wildlife World and Dalian Wildlife World, the cost of Hongshan should be relatively low, and the environment of the outdoor playground is much better.
But zoos can't just show protozoa, and how to show animals living in completely different climates can better reflect the design level of a zoo. The Asian Primate Pavilion of Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo is the best exhibition area of all zoos in China, and it is likely that there is no one.
The design concept displayed in the exhibition area is extremely advanced and worth learning from all domestic zoos.
Asia is a region of great primate diversity, with different monkeys and apes living in a variety of environments, from south to north. Many zoos in the country have a wide variety of primates, but there is hardly a second venue like the Asian Primate Museum in Nanjing, which provides different environments for different animals. Look at the cage of the gibbon and the cage of the golden snub-nosed monkey.
Gibbons and golden snub-nosed monkeys are primates that are good at moving in trees and eat vegetarian food. In the general zoo, the cages of these two animals are very similar, and the good work is to climb the frame and add greenery, and there is almost no difference.
In the Asian Primate Hall in Nanjing, there are also climbing frames and vegetation, but if you look closely, this environment is different. Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey, the most typical "golden silk" monkey, lives in the mountain jungles of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Hubei and Gansu. These areas are cold in winter and hot in summer, and the long hair of the Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey can tolerate cold winter, and in the summer, it needs to be moved to a higher altitude area to escape the heat. The various existing gibbons live in the southern region, adapt to the higher temperatures of subtropical and tropical jungles, and have a poor tolerance to cold.
White-cheeked gibbon
Therefore, the Asian Primate Hall of Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo has set up a completely different environment for them. The climate in Jiangsu is similar to that of Sichuan, so the Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey lives in a cage isolated by a soft net, and does not have to be too afraid of winter. Gibbons live in greenhouses surrounded by glass and cement walls, with fresh air systems maintaining constant temperature and humidity.
Even more exciting is the difference in vegetation in the cage. At a glance, the plants owned by the Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey are basically temperate plants native to Nanjing, while the gibbons are surrounded by tropical plants. Watching the gibbon sway by, the picture really had a feeling of dampness and heat.
Several of the cages in the Asian Primate House are very tall, and the design of the climbing frame is also very three-dimensional, which adapts to the arboreal habits of these primates. Between several cages, there are string cage corridors made of soft mesh, and when needed, breeders can use these corridors to control animals into different cages, allowing them to enter the fresh environment and reduce stereotyped behavior.
Jungle of gibbons
In addition to Asian primates, there are also some African and American primates in the Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo. The red-palmed tamarind monkeys from Central America are one of them, and if you see some black monkeys in the garden like black monkeys wearing long red-gold gloves, they are them. Compared to their Asian relatives, they are treated worse and the cages are much smaller.
But in this small cage, I saw a particularly beautiful abundance: the keeper cut a large green pepper with a diameter of more than ten centimeters, hollowed it out, put on a rope to make a small bowl, stuffed the fruit into it and hung it on the branches inside the cage. After seeing this green pepper bowl, the red-handed tamarind monkey immediately jumped over, grabbed the green pepper with both hands and grabbed the rope, ate the fruit first, and then began to nibble the green pepper.
Red-palmed tamarind monkey with green pepper bowl
Compared with metal bowls and plastic bowls, green pepper bowls are particularly wonderful: one is relatively light, monkeys can fish; second, they can eat, monkeys are willing to fish; third, they are not afraid of falling, how to use it is not painful, and it is cheap. Such a small abundance almost does not cost money, but it enriches the behavior of the animals a lot, and tourists find it funny to see. If the front-line breeders can think like this, it is more important than spending money.
Such a mind can often alleviate the backwardness of the cage. Almost all of the zoos in China have historical baggage, and there will be some particularly old, outdated, and bad cages. The worst historical burden of Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo is the beast area, a group of tigers, leopards and other beasts, all locked in a small cement cage, which makes people look very bad. There is no way to change it quickly, after all, the construction is not so fast.
If you want to be good to animals, you must do more under the existing conditions. So the keepers laid soft fallen leaves in these small prisons so that the animals could roll in the leaf piles; and brought some wood, some piled on the ground, some hanging on the top of the cage, so that the beasts could at least have something to play with. These measures can not fundamentally solve the problem of poor cages, the beast should still be stereotyped, and the richness of behavior is not too high, after all, it is much more difficult to adjust the behavior of the beast than the monkey.
Watch out for the fallen leaves in the wood and corners.
However, the poor cage house did not become a reason for their lack of abundance, and this state of non-abandonment of treatment is particularly rare in domestic zoos. That is conscience. Conscience does not solve problems every time, but without conscience, never try to solve problems.
(By the time "Visiting the Zoo is a Serious Thing" was published, the exhibition area had already begun to be renovated.)
This article is excerpted from "Visiting the zoo is a serious matter" and has been authorized by the publishing house to publish.
Author 丨 Flower Erosion
Edited by 丨Shi Yanping