Official Description

Visitor Reviews

This review submitted by Niels Johs Legarth Iversen: November 2000
I guess most of the 300.000 visitors to this zoo are local residents of the Ruhr area, as this corner of Germany never had many tourists. But the public transport system will take you safely to the entrance (tram 301), and you won't die of asphyxiation during your visit, – the air pollution has dimished greatly since the demise of the heavy industri and mining. What you find is an extended zoo with few space problems, generally fair, but with a number of less than satisfactory houses. The most strange thing is that the chimp house at the north end of the zoo isn't better, – after all this animal normally is one of the most popular among the visitors, but here it is stuffed away in something resembling a dump from the fifties. In fact it is one of the few places for a long time that I have seen a warning about a faeces-throwing chimp (though I only saw him throw fruit during my visit). Another problem area is the elephant-and-hippo-house. Until recently thay had two indian elephants (barely tolerating the company of each other), but one died. The surviving Artaida is an old circus elephant with a grumpy temper, and the zoo management admit that even if they were allowed to move new elephants into their old elephant house, Artaida probably wouldn't accept them. And on top of this the sole polar bear of the zoo is a dwarf (named Antonia). She is happy and in good health, so they have chosen to let her live, but of course she can't be used for breeding, and it seems a little awkward to exhibit a crippled animal (please don't take offence, dear Antonia!). Apart from that, there are also many nice things in the zoo. As I said they have lots of space, – the savannah alone is 1.5 ha. They have some 834 individual animals, but 219 alone are turtles and they take little space up, so the rest have much elbow space. From 1998 about 50 mio. DM were used on improvements, and further investments are underway, so hopefully the standard of the zoo will rise significantly within a few years (and my description will become obsolete!). As for finding your way round: there are signs pointing towards different species, but generally the simplest strategy is the following: walk left until the chimpanzees, then walk back towards the center past the llamas. At the duck lake turn left and walk around the large savannah until the lynx. What is left now is basically a round area with paths in a rectangular pattern (even though the lines are curved). So just walk one row after the other, until you are safely back at the entrance.

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