Overview

• The Menschenaffenwald was inaugurated on Oct. 2 and opens to visitors on Oct. 3, with chimpanzees Bally and Limbo already moved in.
• The new house rises eight meters with extensive climbing structures and connects to an outdoor enclosure up to 14 meters high featuring a “Naschgarten” and an artificial termite mound.
• Reporters attribute the 2019/2020 New Year’s Eve blaze that destroyed the former ape house and killed about 50 animals, including eight great apes, to a sky lantern.
• The complex sits within a roughly 20,000-square-meter site, and the multi-phase Affenpark will add an orangutan house next, followed by another chimpanzee building over the next six to eight years.
• Krefeld, the zoo’s majority owner, plans a roughly €20 million contribution, and public reaction includes both warm support and renewed criticism of keeping great apes in zoos.