inspiration share thread

[Khaidu]

Sometimes it can be hard finding great places to find inspiration, so why not have a thread showcasing existing zoos and their enclosure plans and images to help others? Not everyone is in the know of zoos and where to find these types of references

To get the ball rolling, here is an amazing website of a business that specialises in designing enclosures for zoos. They have pictures of floor plans, backstage layouts and photos of the enclosure and backstage areas after it was built :

ZooLex Gallery

Image of one of the pages showing a panda enclosure that was designed.

 

[Captain Callum]

Real life zoo Inspiration? My kind of topic There are many ways to find real life Inspiration of zoo design and habitats in quite a few simple ways than most imagine.

Google images (or any other browser image search) :

The easiest way to get Inspiration is surely searching for images found online. Example searches for ' giant panda zoo exhibit' will net results from the national zoo, Copenhagen zoo and several others with varying degrees of habitat design. Aerial pictures of these habitats from marketing resources can be of great help. Many of these images can link to websites showing possible backstage images if one searches for 'zoo backstage' or grand zoo plans for helping layouts when searching for 'zoo masterplan'. If any masterplans have an available pdf download, I highly recommend doing so.

Youtube:

I know many are surprised most times when I mention YouTube is my main source of recent footage for my recreation builds but knowing what to search for on YouTube is extremely helpful in both learning layout, scaling and how big habitats. Of course the easiest method of YouTube is searching for planet zoo related videos from our wonderful community. Zoo layouts, habitat design, backstage construction and realistic building is all found here, just search for your desired topic after planet zoo.

Where I deviate from the typical planet zoo player on YouTube however, you want to search up ' zoo tours' or ' zoo walkthrough' , if you can manage to find a slow paced walking video of a zoo that looks into detail of habitats , it greatly helps in understanding how a zoo can and should be built. Not everyone is a visual learner from videos however so this method may be difficult.

Zoolex:

Zoolex has already been mentioned with its fantastic use of information to show off pretty much the entire habitat and ground plans of key habitats. There is limitations of older low resolution images on some older submissions or the limitation of an modern search function on the zoolex website where typically you need to manually search for your desired animal habitat on Google. Searching the word 'rhino' can lead you to pages and pages to sieve through to find your desired habitat page.

A lesser known feature of zoolex however is the pdf documents of mixed species. These are a collection of real life zoo collections of a single zoo species and what compatible animals can successfully be held together. Quickly one realises planet zoo has very limited information on what animals can be together, or rather cherry picked animal combinations where one animal should clearly be able to have a mixed habitat with such animal. To find these you typical have to search for ' mixed species zoolex pdf'. Sadly not all animal groups are found in these invaluable documents.

Zoochat:

We can't mention zoo Inspiration without mentioning zoochat. Zoochat is the single most important zoo related forum on the Internet with thousands of albums filled with pictures of real zoos, zoo discussion, current zoo collection lists, animals no longer held, and so much more. The most valuable resource is the media section of zoochat. This is where you can dig through lesser known zoos or the most popular zoos in the world and see what the habitats look like, or even how they evolved over the years. Most of the big zoos have over a decade worth of images to go through.

There is also the forum discussions area where you can find recent zoo masterplans, zoo collection lists and related information for the key structure of a zoo. Maintaining a realistic animal collection can be just as important as making naturalistic habitats.

 

[Orkan]

I have a list of zoos you can visit in Google Street View. I made it a while back and have never really used it so I’ll post it here.

Taronga Zoo, Sydney, Australia

Melbourne Zoo, Melbourne, Australia

Roger Williams Zoo, Providence, Rhode Island

Philadelphia Zoo, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Brookfield Zoo, Brookfield, Illinois

ZooAmerica, Hershey, Pennsylvania

Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo, Bridgeport, Connecticut

Dallas Zoo, Dallas, Texas

North Carolina Zoo, Asheboro, North Carolina

San Diego Zoo, San Diego, California

Chester Zoo, Cheshire, England

Prague Zoo, Prague, Czechia

Zoo Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Edinburgh Zoo, Edinburgh, Scotland

Singapore Zoo, Singapore, Singapore

Taipei Zoo, New Taipei, Taiwan

Ueno Zoo, Tokyo, Japan

Khao Kheow Open Zoo, Bang Phra, Thailand

Sri Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens, Mysore, India

Zoologico Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico

Bio park of Rio, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Quilpue Zoo, Somewhere in Chile (Google Earth Doesn’t Specify)

Zoologico de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Orlando, Florida

Bronx Zoo, NYC, New York