Qualla: ZOOM Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen

ZOOM Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stand on the African Queen, the small flat-bottomed tour boat that drifts through the Afrika section, and watch a lion drink from the same waterhole a zebra is using. Or rather, the same view of a waterhole. The animals are separated by a deep moat cut into the rock at exactly the height the boat passes - low enough that the visitors see the lion, the zebra, the savanna grass, and the horizon as one unbroken African composition; deep enough that the lion stays well away from the zebra. The hippopotamus pond, twenty meters further on, looks like an open pool. The hippos move freely. The visitors stand at the bank. The fence holding them apart is underwater, invisible, the kind of trick that a zoo only attempts if it is willing to spend the money to do it right.

Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

ZOOM Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen: Founded on Bomb Craters

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Ruhr-Zoo opened on 14 April 1949, on 15.5 hectares of heavily shelled ground next to a port on the Rhine-Herne Canal. Four years had passed since the last Allied bombers worked the city over - Gelsenkirchen, the heart of the German synthetic-fuel industry, had been one of the...

Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

ZOOM Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen: Three Continents, No Fences

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian0918, CC BY-SA 2.5. The new layout divided the park into three themed safari zones, each one mimicking a continental ecoregion. Alaska opened in 2005, Afrika in 2006, Asien in 2010. The trick across all three was the same: do not show the visitor a barrier. Use moats. Use water. Use carefully placed...

Image: Brian0918 | CC BY-SA 2.5

ZOOM Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen: The Grimberger Hof

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Georgie Pauwels, CC BY 2.0. The entrance area is built to resemble a Westphalian farm, with old half-timbered facades and a barnyard plan, and it serves as the gateway to the three continent zones. The Grimberger Hof - opened with Alaska in 2004 - includes a petting zoo with rare regional breeds. Bentheimer...

Image: Georgie Pauwels | CC BY 2.0

ZOOM Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen: Ernie the Hippo

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 31 March 2020, in the middle of the COVID pandemic that had closed the gates, the hippopotamus Ernie celebrated his fiftieth birthday at ZOOM. He had been born in Karlsruhe in 1970 and moved to Gelsenkirchen in 1971, where he had lived ever since. At fifty, he was the oldest h...

Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

ZOOM Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen: Why Big Animals Only

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. ZOOM made a deliberate choice that defines what it is and is not. There is no aquarium house. There is no insectarium. There is no reptile house, no separate bird house, no small-mammal wing. The zoo runs on big mammals and the panoramic sightlines they make possible: polar bears...

Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0