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Sunday, April 28, 2024
To Post, or Not To Post?
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Reunited, And It Feels So Good
There was a time - no so long ago, really - when the birth of any great ape in a zoo was such a rare, tremendous occurrence that the baby was deemed too delicate and precious to be entrusted to the mother. Parenting, the thought process was, was too important to be left to amateurs, and baby gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees would be whisked away to be raised by human caretakers. This had a regrettable tendency to result in behaviorally-incompetent animals that were not, in turn, suitably prepared to raise their own young when the time came, causing those offspring to be hand-reared as well. And so the cycle went on...
Today, great apes, like almost all mammals, are left with their mothers whenever possible. Sometimes, situations play out in such a way that the baby must be removed for one reason or another. At Busch Gardens Tampa, for example, female orangutan Luna had to undergo a caesarian section, and her infant had to be removed while she recovered from the surgery. The park was very open with the public about all of this (and yet still managed to see dozens of comments along the lines of, "But why isn't it with it's mom?"... read the caption, people!), as well as the fact that their end goal was getting the mother-child duo reunited as soon as possible.
"As soon as possible" turned out to be fairly fast, and mom and baby are once again together, and the bonding has begun.
These stories don't always have an ending that's so happy - recently, a baby gorilla was born at Fort Worth Zoo, but the mother wasn't able to provide care. A few decades ago, the Fort Worth keepers would have just raised the baby on their own, and I'm sure it would have been an absolute rockstar of an animal celebrity at the zoo. Instead, the decision was made that the baby needed a proper social group more than Fort Worth needed a social media boost, and the baby was packed off to Cleveland, where a surrogate mother was found.
Every situation is different, so every outcome is different. What's important is finding an outcome that provides the animal with the best chance of having a happy, healthy, properly-socialized life.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Aesop, You Aren't
Since ancient times, people have used animals as allegory to tell stories and share morals. When it's ancient lore being passed down - think "The Tortoise and the Hare," it comes across as charming, timeless, and insightful. For some reason when people write crud like this in modern times, I just find it extremely annoying, like a whiny plea for people to recognizing how "deep" the author really is, and then we're all expected to clap at the end of story (I mean, who actually talks like this?). I wonder if folks thousands of years ago felt that way about Aesop.
Also, don't throw rocks at the animals. A better ending would be, "And then a zookeeper came up behind them and tipped both of them into the lion exhibit. By the time the gun team arrived, it was obvious that it was too late to save them, so no actions were taken against the animals. Thirty witnesses were on hand to say that the wife had pushed the husband in, and he pulled her in after him. Case closed."
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Archetypal Animals
"I hope that you're the one - if not, you are the prototype."
- OutKast
Visitors go to the zoo to see animals, but with a few specific exceptions, they aren't too particular about what exact animals they see. For example, you might ask someone what animal they're more keen to see, and they might say "monkeys." They probably don't care too much about what monkeys they see, whether they're spider monkeys or macaques or guenons. There are some animals that, while being monkeys, might not be "monkey enough" for the visitor, such as night monkeys or marmosets. Similarly, they want to see parrots, but for the most part don't care as long as they are "parrot enough" - the key requirements being loud and colorful.
A trend that I've noticed in a lot of zoos is that you get zoo directors and presidents with less direct experience with animals, who are mostly brought in to run the business and drive the gate. These are the folks who are often making decisions about collection planning and new exhibits, and that includes selecting animals. They want animals to satisfy the visitors, and look for species that fill the niches that visitors are looking to see. The thing is, for all of these niches of animal, there's inevitably one or two species which become the most popular by virtual of their visitor appeal (color, strange appearance), ease of care (cold hardiness, simple diet, compatibility with other species), or some other reason.
The result is that many zoos start holding those same few species, resulting in diminished diversity in species across zoos.
Visitors love crocodilians, for example. Almost every zoo I've ever been to has a crocodile or alligator. Of all of the world's crocodilians, there's none which probably makes a better exhibit animal than the American alligator. They grow big, making an impressive animal. They are tractable and ease to work around. They are one of the most cold-hardy crocodilians, able to be outside for a great part of the year than tropical species. Everyone's heard of them; they're cultural icons to a degree few other reptiles are. Also, they're native to much of the US, and as such work in displays of native wildlife. It's no surprise that so many zoos favor them. If a zoo director wanted a crocodilian for display, why pick an small, obscure, delicate, or otherwise more difficult species, like a Philippine crocodile, when you could have an American alligator and the visitors would be just as happy?
The more zoos work with that one (or handful of) species, the more set their husbandry become, and the more established it becomes in everyone's mind that this is the easier animal to work with, everything else starts to seem more difficult by comparison, and more zoos opt to work with those common species,
The scenario, or similar ones, plays out for penguins (African penguin), lemurs (ring-tailed lemur), waterfowl (mandarin duck, white-faced whistling duck), antelope (bongo, addra gazelle), and a host of other taxa. The result is zoos that start to look a lot like one another - which maybe visitors don't mind too much. The end result, however, is that we can support fewer species and have fewer assurance colonies of endangered or threatened species in our care.
Some zoos, I feel, just need to start being willing to be a little more risk-averse and open to working with species that other zoos aren't working with and to do and be husbandry leaders, not just followers.
Monday, April 22, 2024
From the News: The San Francisco Zoo will receive a pair of pandas from China
The San Francisco Zoo will receive a pair of pandas from China
When China announced that new giant pandas would be coming to the US soon, it set off a flurry of speculation as to which zoos might be the beneficiaries. San Diego Zoo was an obvious front runner, and I don't think anyone is expecting the National Zoo not to resume its work with the species. But who else might join the panda program?
I can honestly say, I was not expecting the answer to be San Francisco.
Despite being such a major US city, San Francisco has, for as long as I can remember, been a zoo that's squarely in the middle of the pack. It's not famous for its exhibits or its collections in the way that many zoos in less prominent cities (Omaha, Columbus, Fort Worth) are. There's been more than a little criticism of the zoo's governance in the press lately, and it's perhaps most famous for the fatal tiger attack (the only case of a zoo visitor being killed by an escaped animal at an AZA zoo that I've ever heard of), pushing 20 years ago.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Extinction in Black, White, and Pink
The photo below was taken by David Seth-Smith in 1926. It's a shame that it's in black-and-white, because I imagine the scene was quite vivid in color. The birds pictured are pink-headed ducks, a species of waterfowl found in South Asia. Note the use of the past tense. Though the IUCN still technically lists the species as Critically Endangered, in truth they have not been seen for decades (since 1949, to be exact), and are almost certainly extinct.
Like the quagga, thylacine, and Carolina parakeet, as well as the famous passenger pigeon, this species survived long enough to be housed in modern zoo collections. I wonder if the duck had been able to hold on just a little longer, if just a few more birds had made their way into zoos; considering the era, actually, private waterfowl collections, such as the UK's WWT or the US's Sylvan Heights, may have been a better bet. If enough birds had been kept with serious efforts to breed them, maybe the species could have been saved. The odds would have been stacked against it, but other endangered species have bounced back from equally dire odds.
Again, the pink-headed duck technically still is an endangered species, not an extinct one, though a formal change in status seems to be only a matter of time. As another Earth Day passes us by, we can look back at our questionable, rather mixed record in saving endangered species, and try to promise ourselves - and our descendants - that we'll do better to save the next one. And the one after.
Friday, April 19, 2024
That's OrangUTAN to You!
We're all busy people in the zoo field, and we can't be expected to waste a lot of time of idle chit chat (I type as I listen to many of my coworkers who are, indeed, engaged in idle chitchat at the moment). We need to keep conversations moving, as as such we need to be brief. As a community, our lingo is full of acronyms, from AZA to ZAHP, some of which can overlap confusingly with more conventional uses of those same acronyms (a BFF is a black-footed ferret, not your best friend forever, though I suppose they could be the same, while a PDF refers not to a type of file format, but to a poison dart frog).
We also use a lot of short-hand with animals, abbreviating either their Latin names or their common ones. Many of these have seeped into common usage, which is why many of our guests will speak of chimps, not chimpanzees, rhinos, not rhinoceroses, and hippos, not hippopotamuses (hippopotami).
But there is one commonly-used short-hand for a popular zoo animal which we should not be using. Recently, I came across a statement from the Orangutan SSP (itself several years old, but I just saw it for the first time now) explaining why, for reasons of linguistic accuracy and respect for Malay culture, it is not appropriate to call orangutans by the common nickname of "orang."
Orang-u-slang: Why "orang" is no substitute for "orangutan," by Rachel Davis
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Caring and Community
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Zoo Review: Oakland Zoo, Part II
Continuing through the main body of the Oakland Zoo, the majority of the exhibit space is given over to the African Savanna exhibits.
Like California Trail, this area tends to be skewed to the megafauna (but what zoo African area isn't?), though with the inclusion of a few smaller species as well. Fauna doesn't come much more mega than African elephants, which inhabit one large (six acre) yard. Since my visit I believe I'd heard that there was going to be something of a shuffling of elephants, with some older animals being sent out to a sanctuary, with the possibility of a breeding herd being established. I'll have to see what transpires. Next to the elephants is a very attractive hillside yard for lions, and well as an open paddock for giraffe, and side exhibits for warthog, spotted hyena, and plains zebra. Part of the region has an African village motif, with one hut housing a small collection of African reptiles, with meerkats scurrying outside another. A meshed-in enclosure holds a troop of delightful red-tailed monkeys, one of the most handsome of African primates, while two aviaries hold a variety of African birds (including Madagascar sacred ibis, a first for me).
One African exhibit is worthy of a little extra attention because of its curious story. Separated a little bit from the other displays is a habitat of hamadryas, a desert-dwelling baboon from North Africa and the Middle East, with a spacious grassy yard sprawling out in front of a rocky cliff face. At the dawn of this millennium, Oakland was on track to try and obtain that most beloved of zoo animals, the giant panda, and this exhibit was built to be the panda exhibit. Pandas never came, alas, and so the baboons moved in. Few if any animals match the star power of giant pandas, it is true, but I will say, I think a social group of active, engaged primates makes a better display than a perpetually sleeping (unless its snacking) black and white bear. So in my mind it all worked out for the best.
As one might expect, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Children's Zoo is largely made up of domestic species, with petting opportunity for kids to interact with goats and sheep. If domestics aren't your area of interest, however, I'd still recommend swinging through - there are enough "zoo" animals to make it worth your while as well. A cliffside habitat houses a troop of lemurs, while North American river otters twirl about in front of underwater viewing windows. There is a surprisingly diverse invertebrate collection in the House of Bugs. A small collection of reptiles and amphibians can be seen in excellent terrariums in one building, with larger species - American alligators (with a giant mock-fossil croc skeleton nearby) and Aldabra tortoises - seen in outdoor enclosures. Perhaps the most surprising - and exciting - feature of the children's zoo, however, is the bat exhibit. A large colony of flying fox bats occupies a towering outdoor flight cage. Visitors aren't able to walk in with the bats as they are in some indoor rainforest exhibits, but it's still extraordinary to see the large bats out and active in the sun. (Not part of the children's zoo, but kids will probably want to take a trip to the rides area, located near the gondola station that leads to the California Trail).
The final area is Tropical Rainforest, which I found to be the most uneven of the exhibit areas. It features fairly standard island habitats for white-handed gibbons and siamangs, a few small aviaries for rainforest birds and small primates, and a fairly ugly, over-engineered chimpanzee exhibit. There is also a tiger exhibit which, while nice enough, pales compared to the lion and jaguar exhibits elsewhere in the zoo. The last exhibit I saw in this region, however, was the real showstopper.
Once a common species in US zoos, sun bears are now increasingly rare, being phased out to make room for the other tropical bear species, which seem to be more sustainable in numbers. Most of the sun bear exhibits I've seen have been fairly meh. Oakland's was gorgeous - huge and lushly planted, viewed from an elevated pavilion that provided a treetop view of the enclosure. I almost didn't see the bear, the exhibit was so big and dense - it was, in true sun bear fashion, clinging to a tree, mostly obscured by the trunk, and resting completely at ease. Sun bears are fading out of the US fairly quickly now, with most of the remaining animals being quite old. I wonder what will happen to this beautiful exhibit when it is emptied - a different tropical bear species, a primate, who knows?
Oakland Zoo is yet another example of a zoo that, in a surprisingly short amount of time, has managed to turn itself around from atrocious to quite good. Many of its exhibits are of a stellar quality - particularly those of California Trail - and it doesn't have any that I would really call poor (though certainly some that I would tinker with, given the chance). I'd also love to see smaller animals get as much attention as the larger ones - the bird and herp collections are fairly small. Still, it was a beautiful zoo with an interesting collection that was well-cared for in appropriate exhibits. The commitments to conservation and animal welfare were highlighted throughout the facility. I was glad to have visited - though I still need to go back to continue my sweep of the Bay Area facilities.
Monday, April 15, 2024
Zoo Review: Oakland Zoo, Part I
Saturday, April 13, 2024
Trust No One
Excellent advise from an expert source - and which I can relate to.
I once was taking care of a jaguar exhibit on my first week at a new job, when the pool clogged. A keeper who had been there longer than me responded to my call and come to help me fix it. We'd been looking at the drain for a few minutes when suddenly he jolted upright. He realized that, answering my call, he'd walked into the jag exhibit with me - without confirming that the cat was safely locked away.
Immediately, he ran to the holding building to confirm that she was secure before coming back out. I mean, if she hadn't have been, it would probably have already been too late for at least one of us.
He brushed it off later, joking that he told tell right off the bat that I seemed reliable enough to have locked the cat away before inviting him in. Still, it did teach me not to take it personally when people want to double check on what I say I've done for their own safety - and that I should never hesitate to double check on them.
Friday, April 12, 2024
Knowing Normal
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Book Review: West with Giraffes
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
Darkness at Midday
Looking back through the annals of this blog, I see that this is the third time in ten years I've done an eclipse post. Every single time, there is a lot of fuss and to-do in the media about how the animals will react to the sudden disappearance of the sun (for a few minutes). This go-around was no exception, with many facilities even encouraging visitors to come and visit so that they could play scientist and observe any unusual animal behaviors (eclipse glasses being included in price of admission, in many cases.
Spoiler alert - there really aren't any. I heard a few cases of animals that started to head from their outdoor exhibits to their night houses because they thought it was time to come in, but that's about the extent of it.
For what it's worth, my zoo didn't really do anything for the animals. They were all fine. They did, however, feel the need to send all employees an email reminding us not to look directly at the sun. Apparently, they have a lot more confidence in the intelligence of the animals than us.
Sunday, April 7, 2024
But Are You Happy?
An interesting paper from McDonald et al, carried out with staff at the Denver Zoo. It takes a look at animal care and health professionals (so, keepers, curators, vets, vet techs) and compares them with other zoo staff (in non-animal roles) to gauge their happiness and professional fulfillment. The results should be of concern to any zoo manager. Folks enter this field to fulfill a dream of working with animals, but that dream takes its toll in the form of anxiety, depression, and professional burnout.
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Mammal Names for Mammals?
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Species Fact Profile: Francois' Langur (Trachypithecus francoisi)
Francois' Langur
Trachypithecus francoisi (de Pousargues, 1898)
- Body length 40-76 centimeters, tail length 74-96
centimeters, weight 4-14 kilograms.
Males are slightly larger than females (also have longer tails). Small heads (crowned with a long, pointed
crest) lacking cheek pouches. Tail is
long and straight. Forelegs shorter than
high legs. Thumbs are well-developed and
opposable
- Fur is uniform brown, black, or dark gray, with
a white stripe running from the corner of the mouth to the ear, resembling
sideburns. There is also a smaller
amount of white in the crest above the eyes, resembling eyebrows. Infants are golden-yellow with a black tail,
transitioning to adult coloration at about 6-12 months old
- Home range size of about 150 hectares, daily
range about 1,000 meters. Males defend
the territory with hoarse vocalizations.
Juvenile males leave the natal troop at 3-4 years old and either form a
bachelor group or try to join another family troop. Females remain in the troop
- Highly arboreal, typically moving through the
trees on all four legs. Sometimes jump
from tree to tree by pushing off with their hind legs. Active by day. Often encountered resting on cliff ledges
(long periods of rest needed to facilitate digestion). Sleeps in limestone caves (may have more than
half a dozen regularly used sleeping sites in range, rotated to avoid
predators)
- Other females in a troop will assist mother with
raising her young, may adopt infant if mother is killed. It is possible that it is the bright orange
coloration of the juvenile which triggers paternal behavior in other langurs. Males do not assist in rearing the young
- Leaves are the more important component of the diet in the dry season,
other foods in the wet season. Large
forestomach (part of a multi-chambered stomach) hosts bacteria to digest
cellulose
- Most significant predator of adults is cloudedleopard. Juveniles are vulnerable to
large raptors, such as crested serpent eagle and mountain hawk-eagle. Predation not considered to be a major source
of mortality
- Northernmost range of any langur species
- Species is named after Auguste Francois, the
French Consul at Lungchow, Kwangsi, China who identified specimens in the wild
- Threats include loss of habitat both for logging and agricultural expansion (fires used to clear forest for fields also destroy feeding sites – limestone is also vulnerable to fire, leading to the destruction of resting sites), hunting for food and use in Traditional Chinese Medicine (used to make “black ape wine”), capture for the pet trade
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Fool Me Once
"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again"
- George W. Bush
April Fool's Day is a fun chance to play some (hopefully harmless) pranks on the general public, as well as coworkers. The stakes, admittedly, are kind of low - the worst that it likely to happen is have a gag which falls flat and no one finds very funny. Besides, when it comes to April Fool's Day, most people, on some level, want to be fooled, to be part of the joke.
It's a lot harder when you're trying to fool the animals.
Whether it's getting them to take some medication that they are not inclined to consume, or go into a pen to be trapped up, or any, keepers and vet techs are frequently having to match wits against their animals. The problem is that, like people, many animals can be difficult to outwit with the same trick more than once. It's an easy enough matter to coax an animal that lives in a very large enclosure into a smaller, enclosed space to be caught up - once. Trying to do it a second time, they'll be on to your ways. I worked with a large troop of spider monkeys that, through teamwork, was often able to thwart our efforts to catch them. No matter how nice the treats we put inside were, they all resisted the urge to stampede in at once and allow me to close the door behind them. Some would come in first while the others hung back outside, then they'd switch spaces so that I could never get all of them inside at once.
Convince an animal to take a tasty treat stuffed with not so tasty medicine? Sure, not too hard. If you injected a jelly donut with cod liver oil, I'd probably scarf it down so fast at first that I wouldn't catch what horror had been wrought - at least until it was too late. Offer me another jelly donut, however, and you can bet I'll be a little more suspicious, and maybe inclined to take a quick sniff or lick before gulping it down. So much for easy medication.
The safest way to get around this is to not trick the animals at all, but to collaborate with them. If the animal comes to learn that being herded into that small space isn't the end of the world - more like a minor inconvenience, for which it will be richly rewarded, perhaps - it'll be a lot more inclined to cooperate. With enough experimentation, you can also usually find some reward to mask even the most unpalatable of medicines.
There are times when your relationship with your animals will take on an unfortunate adversarial role (at least in their eyes) where you have to be the bad guy, just as parents are sometimes the bad guys in the eyes of their children. In situations like these, where you have to get the animal to do something that it doesn't want to do, it's generally better to use trickery than force or intimidation. Far better than either, however, is cooperation.
Which also saves you some embarrassment from the animals outwitting you, as they so frequently do.
Monday, April 1, 2024
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Friday, March 29, 2024
Species Fact Profile: Pacific Sea Nettle (Chrysaora fuscescens)
Pacific Sea Nettle
Chrysaora fuscescens (Brandt, 1835)
- Jelly with a distinctive golden-brown, lobed bell, capable of growing up to 1 meter in diameter, though usually less than half that. They long, trailing tentacles (white oral arms and about two dozen maroon tentacles) may be up to 4.5 meters long
- Swims using jet propulsion, pushing water through the bell to allow them to swim against the currents. Usually prefers simply to float, however
- Catch prey with toxin-laden tentacles drifting in the water, with barbed stingers being released when prey is contacted. The oral arms begin digestion as prey is transported to the mouth
- Primary defense mechanism is the potent sting of the tentacles, but some predators seem to not be effected by it. Predators include large fish, seabirds, cetaceans, and especially the leatherback sea turtle. The sting is painful, but generally not dangerous, to humans (common name references the stinging nettle plant of Eurasia)
- Small crabs sometimes hide within the bell of the nettle for protection, and may sometimes nibble at their hosts
- Populations have been increasing and range expanding. Both climate change and pollution (industrial and agricultural runoff dumping nutrients into the water) have been suggested as possible causes
Thursday, March 28, 2024
The Secret Lives of Prairie Dogs
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
What a Waste
Not that long ago, our zoo was hosting a special event which required an "all hands on deck" clean up effort. I was assigned to clean up a planted area, spacious, but not inhabited by animals for many years, towards the center of the zoo. It was right up against our food court and main visitor services hub. I was horrified. Not by the amount of trash I pulled - that I fully expected - but by the fact that, by the time that I was done, at least half of my bag was filled with photo strips from the nearby photo booth.
It was as if visitors were going in, getting their pictures taken, and then immediately dumping them in the bushes outside.
Today, I engaged in my annual ritual of getting food from our concessions, which I do exactly once per year. As I waited for my order, I watched in awe as patron after patron dumped mostly-full trays of food in the trash, purchased to placate hungry toddlers who then decided that they didn't want it after all.
I could sense the irritation of the parents. Zoo food ain't cheap.
So much of the zoo's messaging is about conservation, and so much about conservation is about sustainability - being mindful of what we use (or, in this case, don't use). I feel like whenever this topic comes up, you have people complaining about how this is going to involve all of us living miserably with terrible qualities of life, having to sacrifice everything on the altar of conservation.
Really, though, we won't. How much oil is consumed to make plastic crap that's thrown immediately away? How many acres of habitat cleared to grow food which is just thrown away? It would make a huge diverse to the sustainability of our planet if we would just produce what we actually need and not squander so much. That's a key lesson we should be trying to live by - and to share with the public.
Monday, March 25, 2024
(... and Aquarium)
There's an old "zoo man" that I'm friends with, someone in the mold of the old-school curators and directors of decades long past; I think we would have been perfectly at home working alongside Hornaday at the Bronx, or Mann at National. He's the sort of guy who's visited every zoo, seen every animal, and has an encyclopedic memory of all of them. He's also the sort of guy who retains strong opinions on how things should be properly done.
I had been talking with him recently after my visit to Sedgwick County Zoo, a facility that I enjoyed very much, when he cut me off after a bit and said, "It's a fine enough zoo. Of course, to be truly great it would need an aquarium."
I unpacked this a bit with him. His ideal for a zoo was based in the older European tradition, in which a truly great zoo was defined by its buildings. The Bird House, the Reptile House, a Small Mammal House (which might be a nocturnal house)… and the Aquarium. To his mind, a zoo could not be great without an aquarium. How could a park have "zoology" in the name and then cut itself off from the biomes that cover three-quarters of the planet's surface? (I've heard similar arguments made about the dearth of invertebrate exhibits in zoos... and made a few of those arguments myself). It's been a longstanding tradition in many European zoos, dating back to when the first public aquarium opened at the London Zoo in the nineteenth century.
In the United States, zoos and aquariums tend to be separate facilities. Sometimes they retain an association, as the New York zoos have with their aquarium under the umbrella of the Wildlife Conservation Society. In other cases, they are completely separate with no shared membership or management, though they may collaborate on occasion. Then there are the facilities that have an aquarium building as part of their main campus, and may even take on the name, "Zoo and Aquarium." Facilities that fall into this category include Point Defiance, in Tacoma, Washington (which has two aquarium buildings), Pittsburgh, Columbus, and, most recently, Kansas City.
The extent of the zoo-aquariums varies. None that I've seen so far has even come close to the size and comprehensiveness of the giant US aquariums, like Shedd, Georgia, or Monterey Bay. Sometimes it's as simple as a few small fish or jelly tanks situated around a stingray touch pool, or in association with a penguin or sea lion exhibit - in which case I feel like the zoo might just be giving itself airs (and by which theory Sedgwick could claim that it, too, has an aquarium, because it has fish on display in its rainforest building). I don't like the idea of tacking on aquarium just for the sake of saying you have one. Aquariums require a lot of expense, a lot of infrastructure and investment, and a lot of expertise to run properly. If you find yourself in possession of indoor real estate that can be devote to animals at your zoo, there's other things you can do with that space.
So, for most of my career, I've felt that separate and specialized is best. Zoos are best left to handle terrestrial animals, aquariums with the aquatic, with a little overlap.
I recently visited Memphis Zoo for the first time in well over a decade. Despite not doing so, the Zoo probably has a better claim than some others to tack on "and Aquarium" to its name. The aquarium in question is a fairly small building, located towards the west end of the zoo. It consists of a series of fairly small tanks - mostly freshwater in scope - situated around the perimeter of a small room. There are no sharks or sea turtles here, no grand vistas of coral reefs or kelp forests. The selection of animals was modest and well-suited for the size of the building. Another zoo might have cleared most of the tanks away for one, maybe two, room-sized tanks with one or two small side tanks, just to say that they had sharks, octopus, jellies, and sea horses, checking the boxes for what most casual visitors would want to see. Instead, most of the species chosen for this building were smaller, and more obscure, which actually made them more interesting to me than seeing the same exhibits that I've seen at a dozen places.
When I left to go back out to explore the rest of the zoo, I thought, "This was nice. A fun break, highlighting a diversity of species, and it would be a nice addition to the zoo on days when the weather was poor." Something like that I feel would be a welcome addition to many large zoos.