While Emily and Travis wandered around the gothic area of Barcelona, Marc and I spent a few hours in the zoo. The sea lion exhibit was really cool; they must do training from the windows because the animals are very oriented to the visitors in the window and come right up to see you. We were unable to see the dolphins because like Brookfield zoo, the dolphins are only visible during shows. This can be a good thing; reduce the stress on the animals so that they are only exposed to so much. But from the outside the tank looks small...jury is out on that.
All of the primate and gorilla exhibits were really well done, though a few animals looked like they were overgrooming and had sores.
We did find a few things that bothered us. The penguin and one of the hippo exhibits were close enough that visitors could reach over and touch the animals. This is especially dangerous with hippos, someone could get seriously hurt.
We were also lucky enough to see a seal training session. They must have really good relationships with their animals; the trainers used there hands to target the animals. Given the bacteria load in their mouth, it is not something I would recommend doing, not worth the risk of being bitten and developing an infection. Also, they had a young mouthy pup, who would try to nip at the trainer. The trainer responded by batting the pup on the nose. This also seems dangerous to me, I would never recommend using a punishment like this as I think in the end it will result in encouraging aggressive behaviours and increase the likelyhood of being bitten. Despite all this, the animals worked well and seemed to have a great repoire with the trainers.
Overall a decent zoo, but several exhibits need to be updated, and safety really needs to be reconsidered for animals, visitors, and staff in our opinion!
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