As a new small mammal and reptile house neared completion early this year at Lincoln Park Zoo, people on a fairly regular basis began mistaking it for the Lincoln Park Conservatory. They would rattle the new building’s locked doors, wanting to roam through the verdure under its soaring, 45-foot glass dome.
The resemblance of the 32,000-square-foot animal house to the 104-year-old, Victorian conservatory several hundred feet away, with a 52-foot dome, is entirely deliberate. Lincoln Park Zoo director Kevin Bell wanted the new facility to blend in with the conservatory and the zoo’s own, grand old Victorian buildings.
And, in fact, the $12 million Regenstein Small Mammal-Reptile House, which opened Friday, is as much a conservatory as it is a zoo building. It is a reflection of new thinking on the mission of zoos. The animals remain the main attraction, but the building is designed to educate zoo visitors that saving rare animals is meaningless unless their wild habitats are preserved, too.
The idea is to illustrate the crucial connections between plants and animals. The new building does so by taking zoo visitors underground, underwater, inside trees and even to the treetop level of a eucalyptus forest (where they will see eye-to-eye with koalas).
“More than 99 percent of the plants in here are real, living plants,” says Bell. “Most of the animals we are putting in here are endangered. Usually they are endangered because their habitats in nature are being destroyed by man.
“We want people to experience what it’s like to go to where these animals are from.”
That has meant stocking the new building with African, Asian, Australian and South American plants from deserts, swamps, savannas and rain forests. Long before the first animals moved in, gardeners installed scores of plant species, from maidenhair and switch grasses, to exotic flowers, ferns and bushes, to small forests of banyan, palm, eucalyptus and other assorted trees.
Three dozen animal species populating the building were selected because many are on the lip of extinction, needing help and conservation work if they are to survive. They also were selected for how they can tell the story of hot- and cold-blooded animals and their environments.
“We have Aruba Island rattlesnakes here, which are extremely endangered,” says Bell. “They tell the story of venom for us, but our efforts here with them also contribute to a captive conservation program now working on their behalf.”
Divided into two main sections, the inside of the new facility bears little resemblance to a traditional zoo building. Visitors enter into a dimly lit, carpeted gallery with elegant reptile and mammal areas leading off to the left and right. Small, brightly-lit individual zoo habitats are mounted in the walls like paintings in an art museum.
Some of the exhibits are as unusual as the animals they hold. There is, for example, a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers of African naked mole rats, which live their entire lives underground, workers and soldiers ruled by a queen.
One of the few artificial plants in the building is a replica of a hollowed out, giant African baobab tree, which visitors must pass through to reach the domed area. The baobab serves to show how a single tree can be a habitat for many species, with fruit bats and king baboon spiders being living examples.
The domed area, called the “Ecosystem,” is a dramatic space of rugged rock, running streams, creeping fog and steaming tropical forests. Birds, such as Asian white-crested laughing thrushes and African emerald starlings fly freely in their respective areas. Malayan water monitors (lizards), African dwarf crocodiles, Galapagos tortoises, shrews, swamp monkeys, sloths and anteaters swim, roam and climb amongst the habitats.
“I’ve often said that we shock our animals by suddenly throwing on the lights in the morning and then blinding them by turning off the lights at night,” says John Gramieri, the building curator.
“Our computer watches and operates more than 300 devices controlling the building, intricately recreating a 12-hour tropical day. The dawn breaks coolly and gradually. The temperature and humidity build up to hot, steamy afternoons, and then slowly cool as the light dims and fades to evening.”
The computer constantly monitors temperatures and humidity for the dozens of separate, mostly tropical habitats in the building. It regulates the amount of sunlight coming through the dome by opening and closing sunshades. It orders up humidity through machines that make artificial fog, which is sent creeping through the building every few minutes.
If something goes wrong, either in the small, individual, climate-controlled cages in the reptile and mammal galleries, or in the domed ecosystem, the computer detects it. A sudden, dangerous rise in temperature or drop in humidity prompts the computer to call and talk-yes, it has a “voice”-to the keepers, either in their office or, at night, at home, telling them what and where the problem is.
The zoo staff began planning the new building in 1989. It replaces the antiquated small mammal and reptile houses, among the oldest in the zoo. Both will be restored and converted to other uses.
Everybody-from keepers to the zoo’s education and marketing staff members-contributed ideas to the design of the new building, funded by the Regenstein Foundation, the Chicago Park District and the city building commission. The living plants and natural-looking habitats are mostly window-dressing to educate the humans. The climate control is an advance that should improve the comfort and quality of life of the animals.
Outside, just to the east of the new building, the zoo has completely rebuilt and handsomely landscaped its swan pond and waterfowl lagoon. Home to its resident swans and flamingos, the area also attracts some 25 species of visiting and migrating wild birds.
“We’ve probably set a standard here for ourselves with this new building,” Bell says. “When we begin thinking about upgrading other buildings, we’ll be back here looking for ideas.”
WHO’S WHO IN THE NEW ZOO HABITAT
The GALLERY
Reptile Walk
Dyeing poison arrow frog
Aquatic caecilians
Green tree python
Prehensile-tailed skink
Black tree monitor
Virgin Islands boa
Shingleback skink
Egyptian spiny-tailed lizard
Standing’s day gecko
Radiated tortoise
Dumeril’s ground boa
Mexican beaded lizard
Aruba Island rattlesnake
Indian python
Mammal Walk
Brush-tailed bettong
LaPlata three-banded armadillo
Gambian pouched rat
Short-eared elephant shrew
Coquerel’s mouse lemur
Golden-headed lion tamarin
African dwarf mongoose
Naked mole rat
Kenyan sand boa
Rock hyrax
African crested porcupine
Straw-colored fruit bat
Mountain fruit bat
Fennec fox
King baboon spider
The ECOSYSTEM
Asia
Prevost’s tree squirrel
Tree shrew
Malayan water monitor
White-crested laughing thrush
Asian small-clawed otter
Africa
Lilac-breasted roller
Allen’s swamp monkey
Hamerkop (bird)
Emerald starling
African dwarf crocodile
South America
Yellow spotted Amazon River turtle
Cotton-top tamarin
Hoffman’s two-toed sloth
Green basilisk lizard
Ringed teal
Galapagos tortoise
Australia
Koala
Short-nosed echidna
Tamar wallaby
