Sub-Evil Boy and I spent a few hours in the Twin Cities on our way to Wisconsin a few weeks ago. Several hours were spent at the very cool Pompeii exhibit at the Minnesota Science Museum (no pictures, sorry). We also had a short visit to the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory in St. Paul, which we’d never been to before.The animal enclosures tended towards the old and sad, but the conservatory was quite beautiful.
The gorillas at Como were particularly sad. Classic old school enclosures, with fairly little space and even less to do. They looked bored and depressed, and it was hardly surprising. And I’m not just trying to take cheap shots at the zoo, here. I’m sure their funding is nothing to get excited about, and as a city zoo in a park with essentially no admission fee, they operate under some pretty challenging constraints. Still, it all makes for a zoo that’s preserving DNA, but not much else.
I was really torn this and the B&W version of this. The discussion on Flickr about that (and about zoos in general) has been quite interesting.
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