Tickets for Dublin Zoo

irishguy

Can anyone tell me if you get a ticket for Dublin zoo do you have to use it that day? Or do they do gift vouchers ? They dont seem to want to answer there phone

Ruu_Old

Looks like you can get a gift voucher here. It is a family one though.

irishguy

Thanks for that just looking for a ticket for 2 though

RaiseTheBlinds

dont mean to be putting anybody off,.... but dont you think zoo's are cruel to animals.??

i mean these animals are meant to be roaming their native lands doing what comes natural to them.
that old chestnut about it being educational is lame, people bring their kids for entertainment only.
there isn'e nothing like seeing it in the wild,.... and when you see the lions in the zoo,..they are skin and bone , flabby and unfit. they should be masses of muscle by nature.

capturing animals for zoo's is big business, and the zoo's make a very healthy profit from their visitors.
btw what are they charging admission in these days ?

remember that old croc that used to be there , ne never, ever moved in my childhood,.... lived in a glass box the size of a bathroom.

ok,.. i know its only my personal opinion,... and i dont know anybody else that objects to be honest,... but i guess id sooner go to the zoo than the circus.

FranknFurter

In the last 10 years Dublin Zoo have done a *lot* to improve conditions for the animals. They are still in the process of improving areas but in general the captive animals there are looked after very well.

But yes, they still have a ways to go, they will tell you that themselves.

But finally they now understand that its an ongoing process, an animals enviroment needs to be constantly maintained and re-juvinated to keep the animal happy and healthy, they neglected this in the past but now they have taken it to heart.

If you have not been there in a while, I completely recommend taking a look, one thing I was glad to see is that the viewing areas on a lot of the enclosures are placed in such a way as to give the animal some privacy and not just big cages to give the best view to the public.

My own personal opinion is that (properly managed and run) Zoos have a valuable part to play, especially in conservation.
But monitoring should be constant and extremely rigid, no deviation from "best practice" should be allowed, and the focus should be more on conservation rather than entertainment. (A philosophy that Dublin Zoo now embrace as far as I can see).

B

RaiseTheBlinds

FranknFurter wrote:

in general the captive animals there are looked after very well.


B

yes,... ok but how happy can a captive animal get ?...... they should be roaming hundreds of miles , hunting , or escaping a hunter, sprinting or stalking, in a climate that comes natural, with varied diets, meeting many many other animals to reproduce with, striving for survival, aspiring for the top of a pecking order and ultimatley dying from a natural death as mother nature intended.

it dosent matter if your budgie cage is the size of your living room,... when you see for yourself how they live in the wild, you soon understand why i bird is meant to be free.

conservation of zoo animals is merely reproducing expensive and rare examples which will be shipped off to other zoos for huge sums of money, and resultsing in neither the animals nor the offspring ever being let back into the wild.

personally, i wouldnt even have a goldfish.

Jules

RaiseTheBlinds wrote:

conservation of zoo animals is merely reproducing expensive and rare examples which will be shipped off to other zoos for huge sums of money, and resulting in neither the animals nor the offspring ever being let back into the wild.

personally, i wouldn't even have a goldfish.

Would agree with you to some extent on the other points in your post but this one i would have to totally disagree with. A lot of zoos these days do, yes, breed and pass on young to other zoo but saying that this is to help with the gene pool, as if you send animals from one zoo to another it prevents in breeding and only betters the gene pool. More and more zoos these days do run conservation program, breeding and re-releasing animals back into the wild. Now granted not a lot of them do this but its getter better and better. If it wasn't for conservation program in China etc we would no longer have the Panda Bear.

Some examples of good breeding and research programs:

http://www.australiazoo.com.au/conservation/programs/breeding-programs.php

And a little snipit about conservation at Dublin Zoo

The zoo is part of a worldwide program to breed endangered species. It is a member of the European Endangered Species Program (EEP), which helps the conservation of endangered species in Europe. Each species supervised by the EEP has a single coordinator who is responsible for the building of breeding groups with the aim of obtaining a genetically balanced population.

Dublin Zoo manages the EEP for the Golden Lion Tamarin and the Moluccan Cockatoo. It also houses members of the species Goeldi’s monkey and the white-faced Saki which are part of EEPs coordinated by other zoos. The focus is on conservation, which includes breeding and protecting endangered species, as well as research, study and education.

Rodrigues Fruit Bats

Rodrigues fruit bats are one of Dublin Zoo's endangered species. They are the only mammal that can fly. Fruit bats, as their name suggests, feed on fruit and because of that are very important to the rain forest. Bats cannot digest the seeds and pips of the fruit that they eat and so the seeds leave the bat's digestive system "wrapped" in fertilizer. Without bats many rain forest trees would not be able to sow their own seeds.

Dublin zoo is now building a larger Asian Elephant enclosure (complete with Asian rainforest) and the bat house has been demolished .The Rodrigues fruit bats are now in the bird house (located beside the Ring-tailed Lemurs).

Golden Lion Tamarins

This tiny monkey, named for its beautiful golden color and the long hair around its head which resembles a lion's mane, is one of the rarest primates in the world. Golden Lion Tamarins, like many of the other Tamarins found in South America, are threatened with extinction in their natural habitat. Dublin Zoo is involved in the international breeding program and helps to fund researchers who study the Tamarins in Brazil.

The forests that Golden Lion Tamarins need in order to survive are cut down for timber and to make room for cattle ranches, farms and cities. Sometimes very small areas or 'pockets' of forest are left but these are too small for the Tamarins to survive in. In the past Tamarins were collected for sale to the pet trade or for use in research laboratories.The Golden lion tamarins are located in the South-American house.

Molluccan Cockatoos

Dublin Zoo holds the European Studbook for this species. A studbook is a record of all the individuals of a particular species that are held in zoos in a region. It contains information such as the sex of the animal, how old it is and who its parents were. This information is then used to decide which birds should be paired with which to get the best genetic mix. This ensures that the captive population stays as genetically healthy as possible. Moluccan Cockatoos are handsome birds - their white-with-a-hint-of-pink feathers and the pink color on the crest makes them desirable as pets, which is why the Moluccan Cockatoo appears on the endangered species list.

Taken from http://www.answers.com/topic/dublin-zoo

As i said i do agree with you about somethings but i think as FF said, if run correctly Zoos play an integral part in todays conservation efforts!