Philadelphia Zoo has opened a trail for its big cats, allowing them to leave their usual homes and cross an overhead visitor path to enter a second enclosure.

The new ‘Big Cat Crossing’, designed by Philadelphia architectural firm CLR Design, is a 330ft (100m) mesh-engineered pathway that extends 14ft (4.2m) above the zoo’s main visitor path, allowing large animals such as tigers, lions and pumas to explore overhead.

The first of the trails to open as part of the zoo’s ‘Zoo360’ concept, was a treetop trail in July 2011, which allowed monkeys and lemurs to venture outside their enclosure, while in August 2012 a great ape trail opened, connecting the orangutan and gibbon enclosures.

“Over the next few years we will be developing expansions of that to take them to the far end of the zoo,” zoo CEO Andrew Baker told BBC Radio 5 Live.

Baker also revealed that due to the extended roaming capabilities of a lot of the zoo’s inhabitants – and with future animal crossings to be installed – the zoo is planning an app to allow visitors to follow the animals and mark down their location, supplying a database other visitors can tap into to find animals they are looking for.”

Plans for further trails at the zoo are in the works, with ‘Africa Plains’ coming in 2015, allowing animals such as zebras, rhinos and giraffes to rotate through each other’s exhibits, while in 2016 the ‘Water Hole’ exhibit will allow large hoofstock to use the trail system, also operating as a primary visitor hub.