Shanghai Zoo
Shanghai Zoo is two stops down line 10 from here, away form the centre of town. It was built on land that once housed Shanghai’s most exclusive golf club, but all that nonsense was done away with after the revolution.
It covers a huge area and thus turned out to be quite a bad choice for one of the hottest days of the year so far, with the temperature reaching 30°C, the hottest day since we have been here. I don’t normally like going to zoos but I felt in fairness I ought to go and visit and I’m glad that I did. Parts of the grounds were extraordinarily beautiful, this being spring and in the first couple of days of April, the spring flowers and
Gorilla House
Gorilla Garden
blossoms were fully out. There was a lot of space between various animals’ compounds and I thought on quite a few occasions that they would have been better off doubling the space given to each species – the humans wouldn’t really notice what would have to be taken from theirs. However the gorillas did have a big octagonal house and large gardens on five sides of their home, so maybe they will be upgrading the space available to other animals in future.
The Rare Animals of China
Although there were a few animals from other parts of the world, such as giraffes and gorillas, the majority of the animals were indigenous to China and the zoo was all the better for that. You can click on this photo and then zoom in on it to see all their rare animals displayed region by region, which is helpful. China covers a large surface area of the world and therefore a great number of climates, so we are talking about animals that range
Giant Chinese Salamander
Szechwan Takin
Himalayan Tahr
Przewalski’s horse
from yaks to cranes, elephants to the Przewalski’s horse, some of which I had never seen before. The horse had elements that made me think that it was more related to a donkey than a horse. There are four sub-species of Takin: the Gaoligongshan, Bhutan, Sichuan and Golden. The last two are only found within China’s borders and as they are extremely rare, they are classed as one of the Nation’s “First Class” protected animals. The Sichuan (or Szechwan) Takin is considered to be a national treasure along with Giant Pandas and Golden Monkeys. The Himalayan Tahr is related to, but is not, a goat. And I’ve got newts in my pond in the UK, but these Chinese salamanders are huge about 1-1½ meters in length.
Every so often as I walked around the zoo I would come across some planting that was absolutely magical. And the plants and the animals in general were well labelled in both chinese, latin and english.
Tulips underplanting willows
Purple Rape
Cherry against conifer
Spirea Mass Planting
Tulips and Willows
Classic lake willow bridge combo
Mass planting of cherry trees
Shade trees around a cafe
The Fish Section
Piranhas
As well as a display where you could get up close and almost personal with some piranhas , but under red lighting for some reason, there was a surprising section on gold fish, which discussed the “Time Tunnel of Goldfish”. It claimed that there is evidence that the golden crucian carp, a native of China, can be found back as far as the Wei dynasty (220-265 AD). (however, Wikipedia claims that recent genetics show that the gold fish is descended from the Prussian Silver Carp).
Goldfish
Anyway from then it has gone through various stages of breeding which the notice described as “Wildlife, ‘let-go ponds’, domestically-breeding, basined-breeding, consciously artificial choice to cross breeding”. Some of these you might, like me, find it difficult to understand quite what they are getting at, but basically like dogs there has been a lot of interference by man to produce nowadays 500 varieties of this fish. And like over-bred dogs some of these varieties have been over-bred:
I found this one where the growth that should have been just on the top of its head, but now had grown over its eyes to be particularly disturbing. Like members of Crufts who set the breed standards for dogs, fish breeders need to start asking themselves some serious questions.
The fish were originally kept in temple ponds and then in porcelain bowls during the Ming dynasty and finally glass tanks appeared in Beijing in the late 19th Century. From the beginning of the 16th Century gold fish were taken from China around the world “as a messenger of peace and development”.
The Bird Section
Now although I’d been aware that there was a Golden Pheasant from the east as well as the pheasant kept and bred for shooting in the UK ( the Mongolian ring-neck type, common pheasant), I hadn’t realised that there were other varieties as well, which the zoo kept in pens, so in order:
- Reeves
- Blue-eared
- Brown-eared
- Golden
- Chinese copper
- Silver
but I now understand that there are in total some 40 species of pheasant with some additional varieties. So there you go, I’ve just demonstrated to you my complete ignorance of such things.
As well as pens for exotic colourful birds like pheasants and peacocks there was an avery for smaller birds. It was difficult to photograph them without my telephoto lens – my little boy has taken it to the Alps with him – so I wasn’t able to take as good photos as I would wish, but the panels in the avery will give us a good reference when we are walking about Shanghai so that we can identify what we see:
Hoopoe
Swans, Egrets and Black-crowned Night Herons
I did manage to capture a poor image of a hoopoe in the avery – and the egrets and black-crowned night herons on the edge of the big lake were a little easier to photograph. Some Chinese like to cage birds and often hang their cages out in the open during the day. I can hear one poor bird as I write this – he only makes one note over and over again, day in, day out. Why would you want to keep him cooped up?
A Word About Pandas
Uncooperative Red Panda
Often in zoos you will find Red Pandas housed alongside Giant Pandas, and the same is true in Shanghai zoo. But a Red Panda is not a bear – unlike the Giant Panda – it is more closely related to racoons, skunks and weasels than bears, but it is the only living species in its own family. A native of southwest China and the Himalayas its population is vulnerable. Now the Zoo does have some Giant Pandas and there was a Mona Lisa style crowd around the animals’ cage so I didn’t bother going to have a look. When we were in Chengdu, Sichuan, nearly two years ago we went to the Giant Panda Research and Breeding station there and saw around 50 of the animals. An awful lot of money and effort has gone into trying to save an animal that has gone up an evolutionary cul-de-sac and got stuck. Like brown bears, sun bears, European bears and Polar Bears the Giant Panda, as a bear, has the stomach of a carnivore – its closest living relative is the spectacled bear of south america. But it insists on having a diet that is over 99% bamboo, eating up to 14kg of bamboo a day. It does not have the specialised stomach that a cow does to eat all this cellulose. So it eats and eats and eats all day, getting very little nourishment out of its food. This makes it very slow and relatively stationary in its habitat. Then it gives birth to tiny offspring weighing up to 130g that are better suited to being in a marsupial’s pouch than being out in the open and which can be easily flattened and suffocated by a careless mother. Coming into season only briefly artificial insemination is used in zoos to try and breed them. I agree with Chris Packham who argues that
the breeding of pandas in captivity is pointless because there is not enough habitat left to sustain them and the money spent on pandas would be better spent elsewhere
and has said he would
eat the last panda if I could have all the money we have spent on panda conservation put back on the table for me to do more sensible things with.
He points out:
The panda is possibly one of the grossest wastes of conservation money in the last half century.
Chris Packham has apologised for upsetting people who like pandas. I like pandas; but I agree totally with his thoughts.
A number of rides litter the park
Play Wheel For Baboons
There were fun rides throughout the zoo for families to enjoy – for both humans and in this case baboons and there were people clearing up and gardening all over the park. Besoms made from small bamboo branches still with their leaves attached are used by road sweepers throughout the city and here at the zoo
Lady with Chinese besom made from bamboo leaves
Gardeners
Camphor Tree
French pruned maples
If you have a camphor chest, and ever wondered what type of tree the camphor is here is one for you and I love the way that many of the trees are french pruned i.e. that the branches and trunks are as important as the leaves in the overall picture and are pruned as such. There is a good book on this subject La taille de transparence, in French I’m afraid, but the pictures are good enough to show you what to do, if you are at all interested. I got my copy from the French amazon site. In front of the maple is a loud speaker and unfortunately these blurted out music, some of it western opera on and off, throughout the park, throughout my visit.
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