TetZoo Reviews Zoos: Tripoli Zoo in Libya

In 2009, I visited a zoo in Libya, and here are thoughts on it…

Caption: Tripoli Zoo as of 2009, home to bears, gazelles and more. Read on…

Regular readers of Tetrapod Zoology will know that I occasionally write reviews of zoos I’ve visited. I’ve long intended for this ‘zoo review’ series to be useful and even comprehensive, but the fact remains that I only rarely get round to writing them. Anyway, find a list of what I’ve done so far at the bottom of this article.

Here, let’s look at a zoo you may not have heard of, or indeed be aware of: Tripoli Zoo in Libya. I was fortunate enough to visit Libya in October 2009 for fieldwork reasons, and on one of my final days in the country I made a special trip to the zoo. Here are my thoughts. They partly repeat things I published back at Tet Zoo ver 2 in 2009, but are augmented and modified quite a bit, and include new and more images.

Caption: I enjoyed my time in Libya. It’s a huge country with some incredible landscapes. I was lucky enough to visit several rocky desert locations. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: the walls surrounding Tripoli Zoo feature a series of bas-reliefs, mostly depicting African wildlife. This one has an Indian rhino at upper left but otherwise shows African rhinos, giraffes, hippos and elephants. Image: Darren Naish.

By way of introduction I have to say that I know little about Tripoli Zoo and, despite checking, haven’t succeeded in finding out much about it. The Muslim world has a long and noble tradition of menageries and other animal collections dating back to the 10th century at least, and Islamic writings make it clear that animals kept in captivity must be cared for properly and kept in good surroundings. I didn’t get the impression from the structure of Tripoli Zoo that it had a history extending beyond, say, the 1970s but I’d love to know more.

Information about the zoo online centres around two stories: one being that it and its animals were mostly abandoned during the Arab Spring of 2011 (which resulted in the Libyan Civil War), another being that it was part-used as a detention centre in 2013. The 2011 Libyan Civil War – mostly under-reported in Europe and North America – was a huge event in the country’s history, the death toll probably exceeding 10,000.

Caption: just two of the many news stories that have covered Tripoli Zoo since 2011.

So far as I understand, the zoo and its animals ultimately weathered these events and the zoo persists – with a mostly intact collection of animals – today. This is in part thanks to the efforts of Amir Khalil, an extraordinary man associated with animal rescue events in Bulgaria, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan and elsewhere. Obviously, my understanding of issues here is rudimentary and skeletal and I apologise for being scant on details. If you know more, feel free to add comments below.

Another point I have to add is that a large section of the zoo was under renovation at the time of my 2009 visit, and as a result there was less to see than usual. Ironically, neither Addax Addax nasomaculatus nor Cheetah Acinonyx jubatus were there, despite featuring on the zoo’s entrance sign. In fact, having read what I can on the zoo’s history, it’s clear that it previously included many more animals than it did in October 2009, including elephants, rhinos, giraffes, ostriches, hippos, zebras, hyenas, lions, tigers, lynxes, tapirs, kangaroos, monkeys, water buffalo and more. I know from photos online that at least some of these animals were back there once the renovation was finished. Despite this, I was fairly impressed. The animals were in good condition, the enclosures were reasonably large, and the selection of animals was pretty good. It certainly was not a bad zoo. The complete lack of signage did, however, reduce any educational value zoo-going might have for the public, to put it mildly.

Crowned cranes, raptors and more. We’ll start with birds. The zoo had a fairly good collection, including several species I’ve never seen before. Many zoos today have crowned cranes, but these are virtually always Grey crowned cranes Balearica regulorum, the larger of the two species, and the one that’s light grey and with white cheeks. Tripoli Zoo had this species but also the Black crowned crane B. pavonina, which is darker, smaller and has pink cheeks.

Caption: Black crowned cranes of Tripoli Zoo (still the only examples of this species I’ve seen), with White stork in the background. This species occurs east to west across central Africa. Images: Darren Naish.

Greater flamingos Phoenicopterus roseus, White stork Ciconia ciconia, Muscovy Cairina moschata, Black swan Cygnus atratus and Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae were also on display, as were various parrots, including Green-winged macaw (aka Red-and-green macaw or Red-blue-and-green macaw) Ara chloroptera. There were also aviaries with Red kite Milvus milvus, Indian peacock Pavo cristatus and what I think were female Golden pheasant Chrysolophus pictus.

Caption: a Tripoli Zoo bird montage, showing (clockwise from far left) Green-winged macaw, Golden eagle, Golden pheasant, and Red kite [UPDATE: likely not a Red kite at all]. Images: Darren Naish.

An additional large aviary was devoted to big raptors, namely Egyptian vulture Neophron percnopterus, Eurasian griffon Gyps fulvus and Golden eagle Aquila chrysaetos. I don’t get to see Egyptian vultures much, so spent a lot of time taking pictures of the one they had.

Caption: I’m really interested in what this Egyptian vulture is doing with its feet. Note here how it seems to be partly supporting its weight with flexed toes — but, look at the next photo…

Caption: it turns out that the vulture is holding something in its strongly flexed toes. It’s now switched from doing whatever it was doing with its right foot to its left one. It’s not surprising that a raptor can do this, but it’s still interesting to see it. Image: Darren Naish.

Cats and bears. Moving now to mammals, let’s start with the carnivorans. As mentioned above, Tripoli Zoo has been (and is now?) home to tigers and lions – and even a liger – but none were present when I visited. However, several Puma Puma concolor were there, as were several black Leopard Panthera pardus. The camera I owned at the time wasn’t of the sort that allows you to take photos of animals that are at distance, and kept behind dense-mesh fencing, so I don’t have any photos of the leopards.

Caption: a pretty poor photo, but the best I could do in view of limitations. There are three pumas in this photo; two are reclining on the platform. Presumably all three are related. Image: Darren Naish.

On the subject of cats, I have to mention that a number of feral cats Felis catus were hanging out in the zoo, sometimes literally in the enclosures. That’s not great in that they can act as disease vectors to other carnivoran species and even predate on zoo animals (various of the birds there could potentially be on a feral cat’s menu). It’s difficult to think of a way of excluding them from the zoo without potentially endangering the zoo’s formal inhabitants.

Caption: Brown bears of Tripoli Zoo. I had the impression that the larger, broader-headed individual at right (with the paler fur and unusual left ear) was male and the other female, but I could be very wrong. Image: Darren Naish.

Among other carnivorans, I certainly remember the Brown bears Ursus arctos. Both were adults of dark brown, typical appearance (I mean: they weren’t reddish or unusually patterned like certain Middle Eastern and east Asian brown bear forms) but I don’t know anything about their origins. Sadly, both bears were displaying abnormal behaviour. It’s obvious that bears, like primates, need stuff to keep them constantly occupied. Fail in that and they go insane.

Caption: I think it’s obvious just from my few photos here that these were (and still are?) unfulfilled, bored bears. In case you’re wondering, the bears aren’t separated from the public merely by a short metal fence. As you can see from the image at right, there’s actually a deep moat around the whole enclosure. Image: Darren Naish.

Cattle and antelopes. The zoo’s collection of hoofstock – by which I mean artiodactyls, or even-toed hoofed mammals – was impressive, again including a number of species I’ve never seen in captivity or at all. I’ll say to start with that they had several familiar domestic species, including Domestic cattle Bos taurus, Dromedary Camelus dromedarius and Llama Lama glama.

Caption: camelids of Tripoli. The dromedaries are interesting in including white and piebald individuals (you might also be able to see the chest callous on the reclining camel in the middle). Images: Darren Naish.

Two cattle breeds were kept at the time of my visit (2009). One was Ankole, but I’ve been unable to identify the second. The adult females were short-horned, black and brown across the body, and white-muzzled, while two young males in the same enclosure were entirely black. I’ve wondered on and off over the years whether these were reconstituted Aurochs but that doesn’t seem to have been the case. Whatever they were, I’d like to know.

Caption: when you go to the zoo, you sure want to see some cows! Image: Darren Naish.

A group of Scimitar-horned oryx Oryx dammah included a youngster with short horns, so perhaps this was an indication that captive breeding had occurred. A large Blackbuck Antilope cervicapra group consisted of at least six males and numerous females (at least 12), and only one of the males was adult. This is the typical herd structure in this species: a single mature male typically leading the group. The substantial extent of the white on the male shows that these blackbuck were of the Rajputan subspecies A. c. rajputanae.

Caption: Blackbuck group, with the sole adult male adopting a straddle while peeing. I guess antelopes don’t like urine splashing on to their hooves, but then who does. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: Blackbuck females and non-adult males. A surprisingly large group. I haven’t yet seen this species in any other zoological collection. Image: Darren Naish.

A small group of Nilgai Boselaphus tragocamelus were present, as was a lone Brindled or Blue wildebeest Connochaetes taurinus. As you might know, the ‘Brindled gnu’ of tradition has recently been split into several species (I wrote about this at Tet Zoo ver 3 here). The overly dark grey colour, black beard and mostly dark forehead and muzzle of the Tripoli Zoo animal indicate that it’s probably a member of the southern African C. taurinus after all, but light areas around the eyes and a few other things leave me unsure. You might know that a good number of wildebeest in captivity are hybrids between members of the brindled wildebeest complex and the Black wildebeest C. gnou, though I’m not saying that that’s necessarily relevant here.

Caption: reclining wildebeest or gnu. I assume that live lawns are difficult to maintain on the zoo’s budget, hence the use across the enclosures of sandy substrates. This can be linked to insufficient hoof wear in certain hoofstock species. Images: Darren Naish.

The zoo also had Slender-horned, Sand, Rhim or Rheem gazelle Gazella leptoceros, a poorly known, particularly pale, mid-sized gazelle of the Sahara, one of two species included by some authors in the (probably not monophyletic) ‘subgenus’ Trachelocele. The other Trachelocele species is the Asian Goitered gazelle G. subgutturosa. The ‘rhim’/'rheem’ name comes from Hebrew for ‘wild ox’ (used in that part of the Bible that also discusses the leviathan) and has thus been argued to be inappropriate (Spinage 1986). A true desert specialist, the Slender-horned gazelle exhibits several features convergently present in some other desert antelopes (like Arabian oryx O. leucoryx): an unusually pale coat, enlarged hooves that help spread its weight on sand, and an ability to get most (or even all) of its water from plants and dew. As is the case with most other bovids from northern Africa, it has been strongly reduced in numbers by trophy hunters and is possibly endangered.

Aoudad aplenty. A big and pleasant surprise for me were the many Aoudad, Arrui or Barbary sheep Ammotragus lervia at the zoo. The Aoudad is a north African wild sheep (though read on), best known for its splendid mane, which is formed of long, straight hairs that grow from the underside of the neck and can reach the front hooves or even the ground. Aoudads are not sheep in the strict sense, since phylogenetic studies variously find them to be close to the base of the goat-sheep clade, or even close to Arabian tahr or part of the ovibovine goat-antelope clade (e.g., Lalueza-Fox et al. 2002, Calamari 2021).

Caption: an aoudad montage, deliberately included to show rams, ewes and kids… though these terms could be completely inappropriate given that aoudad are not really sheep. At left, the animal staring at the viewer is an adult male, and the animal looking in our direction in the image at right is an adult female. Images: Darren Naish.

Aoudads are light brown with a pale muzzle and possess ridged horns that curve outward and slightly backwards. The Aoudad of tradition is a polytypic species with several different forms, conventionally regarded as subspecies. Thanks to Ridgely S. Wren (who checked at the IUCN page), I know that the Tripoli Zoo animals are part of the locally occurring Libyan subspecies A. l. fassini, though both the Saharan aoudad A. l. sahariensis and Kordofan aoudad A. l. blainei apparently also occur in the south-east of the country. The nominate subspecies – the Atlas aoudad A. l. lervia – is an animal of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia while the Egyptian aoudad A. l. ornata was thought extinct until evidence for its persistence was reported in 2002.

The zoo’s group included adult ewes, at least one ram, and some number of youngsters. At the time of my visit (October 2009), there were at least 17 individuals there. They were very personable and came right up to the walls and fences – sometimes standing on their back legs, frontlimbs on the wall – to interact.

Caption: suggest to an aoudad (or a group of them) that they might talk to you, and you can get images like this. Note the anteroposteriorly short hooves with steep anterior faces: these are hooves of a sort suited for agile movement on rocky surfaces with small areas of support. Image: Darren Naish.

Deer of Tripoli. Tripoli Zoo also had deer of at least two species during my visit. Chital, Axis or Spotted deer Axis axis have been (and likely still are) kept at various zoos in the UK but, despite that, I don’t recall seeing them before: Tripoli had a group of males and females together.

Caption: Chital group at Tripoli Zoo, featuring what I think are two males and four females. Chital are mid-sized cervine deer of the Indian subcontinent (occurring as far south as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; they occur on Sri Lanka too), but they’ve been introduced to Australia, the USA and Croatia. Images: Darren Naish.

They also had a group of Fallow deer Dama dama, some of which were extremely dark. It’s often said that the coat variation present in Fallow deer is connected to a history of semi-domestication and the Tripoli Zoo animals certainly looked more variable than the wild Fallow I’m familiar with in the UK. Again, you’d need to know specific details of the history of these animals to know what’s going on here.

Caption: dark Fallow deer at Tripoli Zoo. The individual at left – which wasn’t the darkest one they had – might be described as semi-melanistic. Note the strong antler asymmetry that’s common in this species. Images: Darren Naish.

The grounds, and some final thoughts. And that about bring things to a close as goes discussion of Tripoli Zoo’s animals. As mentioned, the zoo was moderately spacious. I can’t pretend that the fencing or enclosure walls were attractive (the walls were drab concrete overall) but the grounds were as well planted as space allowed and the animals had sufficient cover. The toilets – housed in a temporary building of the sort you hire for festivals and the like – didn’t seem to have ever been cleaned at the time of my visit (note caveat), and a layer of mush and slurry on the floor meant that visiting was not an experience I’d want to repeat. I don’t recall there being a shop or a restaurant or anything like that, but that could be because my time was limited and I was only there to see the animals. The carpark was really big, presumably indicating high visitor count during at least part of the year (remember that I was visiting in October).

Caption: another of the bas-relief artworks on the walls of the zoo, this one depicting monkeys (macaques of some sort, perhaps), lions, what might be a cheetah, and zebras. It looks like the artist made a mistake at some point and ended up turning some of the monkeys into lions, or vice versa. Image: Darren Naish.

Another thing I certainly remember about the zoo grounds is the presence of several bas-relief pieces of art on the walls surrounding the zoo. I enjoyed these and was amused to see that they combined a number of prehistoric animal reconstructions – heavily inspired by the paintings of Zdeněk Burian – in addition to images of living species.

And that is where we end. I hope you enjoyed this review, and if you know more about Tripoli Zoo and the animals it has (or had), please don’t hesitate to add information in the comments. More reviews are set to appear in time, oh yes.

Caption: a mix of Permian and Mesozoic animals on another bas-relief at Tripoli Zoo, with a 2009 Darren Naish for scale. The animals include representations of Edaphosaurus, Stegosaurus and Moschops. Not sure what the animal at upper left is though.

As ever, here are my entirely subjective scores…

  • Selection of species: 7 out of 10

  • Zoo nerd highlights: Black crowned crane, Slender-horned gazelle, Libyan aoudad

  • Quality of signage: 0 out of 10

  • Value for money: 7 out of 10 (but note caveats about zoo being renovated during 2009)

  • Overall worthiness: 7 out of 10

For previous articles in my zoo reviews series, and articles relevant to some of the topics touched on here, see…

If you like what I do and want to support it, please consider checking in at patreon - thanks!

Refs - -

Calamari, Z. T. 2021. Total evidence phylogenetic analysis supports new morphological synapomorphies for Bovidae (Mammalia, Artiodactyla). American Museum Novitates 3970, 1-38.

Lalueza-Fox, C., Shapiro, B., Bover, P., Alcover, J. A. & Bertranpetit, J. 2002. Molecular phylogeny and evolution of the extinct bovid Myotragus balearicus. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 25, 501-510.

Spinage, C. A. 1986. The Natural History of Antelopes. Christopher Helm, London.