Continuing the tour of the Indianapolis Zoo, we visit the two remaining biomes.
Towering over the heart of the zoo is one of the facility's newest - and most recognizable, and most controversial - exhibits, the Simon Skjodt International Orangutan Center. Looking more like a megachurch than a conventional zoo exhibit, this facility features a mixed troop of orangutans - Bornean, Sumatran, and hybrid - in an exhibit that, in contrast to the rest of the facility, eschews any attempt to replicate the natural rainforest environment. The complex instead more closely resembles a research facility, with the emphasis being on the cognitive powers of the apes. The exhibit is indoors, but the orangutans have access to the outdoors via an overhead trail of cables and towers that circles the building.
At the time of my visit, the IOC was about to be joined by a similar facility for chimpanzees, which has since opened, but which I have not had the chance to see animals in.
The ape facilities are loosely affiliated with the adjacent Forests biome, which features more conventional zoo exhibits. The trail is anchored by habitats for two large carnivores, Amur tigers and brown bears. Both are decent, though I'd express a preference for the green, lusher tiger habitat; the bear habitat is of the rocky grotto style that was all the rage when the zoo was built in the 1980s, and could benefit from more natural substrate. Rounding out this area are habitats for red panda, white-handed gibbons, and bald eagles. An enclosure of macaws found nearby looks fairly unimpressive, until you realize that this is just a holding pen for them, and the birds are given the opportunity to engage in free flight around the zoo.
A relatively recent addition to Forests features habitats for two species of crocodilian, the American alligator and the Orinoco crocodile, both with indoor and outdoor viewing. While not the most exciting of exhibits (perfectly adequate, but lacking underwater viewing), I did enjoy the educational messaging and framing, highlighting the different challenges and histories of the world's most abundant, stable crocodilian species, set alongside one of the rarest.
Unlike the other three biomes, the grasslands section is also geographic in focus, highlighting the animals of the African Plains. Opening with a grassy veldt grazed by zebra, ostrich, and wildebeest, the exhibit also features a large muddy yard for white rhinos, rocky kopjes for lions and Guinea baboons, a sprawling yard for cheetahs, and a paddock for giraffes. The cheetah yard features an interactive that allows visitors to clock their run time against that of the world's fastest land mammal. A separate mixed-species exhibit houses cape porcupine and warthog living together. The baboon exhibit might have been the weakest point in the zoo for me - too much vertical rockwork, whereas I think they could have benefited from more floorspace. The other African exhibits, however, I thought were particularly nice. It's not often I see white rhinos in groups larger than a pair, or zebras in an exhibit in which grass is actually growing.
African elephants occupy a large habitat with deep pools nearby. It's not the most exciting of elephant exhibits that I've ever seen, but it seems to do the trick for Indianapolis, has the zoo has a successful history of breeding the pachyderms. A relatively newborn calf was out on view at the time of my visit. In fact, the zoo was the site of the world's first successful African elephant artificial insemination, resulting in a calf born in 2000. (On a side note, I think this is the first zoo I've been to that has both elephants and cetaceans).
Being a relatively new zoo, it didn't surprise me that Indianapolis has many high quality exhibits - and didn't seem to have any that I would call truly poor. It was a pleasant place to explore, though I didn't find it to be one of the more exciting or complete zoos. The focus was very much on large mammals, and there wasn't a particularly strong bird or herp collection; even the fish and invertebrate exhibits in the Oceans section felt more like a little bit of thematic glue to fill the gaps between the penguins, pinnipeds, and dolphins. I also found the biome theming, originally a very intriguing idea, to be a little crumbling, between the monkeys in Oceans and the ape exhibits deviating from naturalism (after careful thought, I decided that I don't especially like the IOC - it's not bad for animals, in my opinion, but just not especially great as an exhibit).
Not to end on a sour note, I will take a moment to allude to some truly great conservation work that the zoo does, which I'll explore a little bit in my next post, and which I got a special sneak-peek into. Likewise, no visit to the zoo would be complete without also taking a meander through the gorgeous greenhouse and gardens near the entrance.
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