On a recent morning in the Bronx, three vampire bats circled around a bowl to drink their breakfast: warm beef blood.
Nearby, a red-rumped agouti — a South American rodent that looks like a large, long-legged guinea pig — scuttled behind a tree trunk. A few feet away, an Arabian sand cat put its paw inside a log to grab a mouse. The fluttering noise in the distance was coming from several Egyptian fruit bats that were zooming around.
It was a bright and humid day, but inside the World of Darkness at the Bronx Zoo it was a cool dusk. The exhibit, which was originally installed in 1969, closed in 2009 because of budget trouble. It will reopen on Saturday, with a fully updated and reimagined nocturnal experience.
The exterior of the building housing the exhibit, a 13,000-square-foot Brutalist structure near the zoo’s Asia Gate, looks almost the same as it did back in 2009, but with a new charcoal paint job. The original World of Darkness sign from 1969, which provided a creepy thrill for kids for decades, with its spare sans-serif letters (a font called alternate gothic), still stands. And the concept is the same: to use a reverse light cycle, giving visitors a peek into the lives of nocturnal animals that are generally active while humans sleep. When it’s daytime outside, it’s nighttime inside the World of Darkness.
The interior is all new. A soothing soundtrack plays cricket chirps and other nighttime forest sounds. There are acoustic panels shaped like forest canopy and a highly customizable LED lighting system that is tailored to each species and able to replicate the natural transitions of dusk and dawn.
The twilight darkness is disorienting at first. It takes time for human eyes to adjust and, during a sneak preview this week, some onlookers bumped into walls, railings and signage as they slowly felt their way in the dim interior.
Humans may fumble around, but the 25 other species in the building have unique adaptations that help them navigate and survive in the dark. The animals include blind cave fish, two-toed sloths and slow lorises — a type of venomous primate.
“Visitors to the Bronx Zoo’s World of Darkness are entering another world with many strange creatures that many have never had the opportunity to see before,” said Jim Breheny, the director of the zoo.
“The key is to be patient. You need to give your eyes time to adjust and to explore this underworld of shadows,” he added. “Even though the animals in the World of Darkness are active at night, they are shy and secretive by nature. You need to take the time to stop, look and observe.”
A visitor tried. She stared through glass into a deep, black space where there was no perceptible movement.
Suddenly, the ghostly shape of an animal, at least 25 inches long, not including the tail, appeared out of the murk. It was a northern Luzon giant cloud rat, a large species of rodent found only in the Philippines. It sniffed the air and, seemingly unimpressed, retreated back into the shadows.
In another enclosure, a douroucouli — also called a night monkey — hopped from branch to branch, its bulbous eyes shining in the dark.
Moments later, an aye-aye, with its long middle digit, crawled along a vine, probing a piece of bamboo. Since this is the Bronx Zoo’s first permanent installation that is bilingual, the signage pointed out the animal’s “visión nocturna” (“night vision”) and “dedo que golpetea” (“tapping finger”).
Visitors watched a colony of naked mole rats behind glass as they scurried from chamber to chamber in a kind of giant ant farm.
Between waiting for your eyes to adjust and waiting for the animals to manifest out of the gloom, the experience, for humans, is an exercise in slowing down. You can feel your heart decelerate as you become nearly hypnotized by the rhythmic cricket chirps. A serene calm descends upon you in this world, where time has stopped and there is only darkness.
Earlier this week, after the tour ended, the real world quickly intruded.
Out on Boston Road at the elevated West Farms Square-East Tremont Avenue subway station, the 5 train screeched along the tracks and a huge green commercial dump truck clanged and clattered over a pothole. It was a noisy contrast to the chill vibes of the pink-toed tarantulas and the blood python hidden in the dark, just yards away.
Dodai Stewart is a Times reporter who writes about living in New York City, with a focus on how, and where, we gather.
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