With a traditional animal park, an indoor aquarium and a botanical garden, the Indianapolis Zoo offers visitors an abundance of sights and activities. We drive you around in VIP golf carts and give you a tour when no one else is here.” “It’s a tour that happens after the zoo is closed. “One of our special options is the twilight tour,” Wilson said. Groups visiting the zoo can choose from a number of interesting experiences, among them a visit to the on-site water park Zoombezi Bay and a behind-the-scenes tour. The newest exhibit area, Polar Frontier, brings polar bears back to the zoo after an absence of nearly 20 years, and the pachyderm exhibit has a baby elephant born in 2009. Visitors can now see four manatees that are being rehabilitated and that will eventually return to the wild. In addition to the primates, the zoo has a manatee rehabilitation and recovery program that is one the few outside of Florida. Her name is Colo - short for Columbus, Ohio - and a lot of people come to meet and see her.” “We have the first gorilla ever born in a zoo, and she’s now the oldest gorilla in a zoo. “We’re really known for our gorilla collection,” said Jennifer Wilson, communications manager at the zoo. Today, Hannah still works with the zoo, which has grown to include a number of impressive exhibits. In July, we’ll be opening our new sea-lion pool, with California sea lions and harbor seals.”Īlthough the institution has been around since 1927, it was executive director Jack Hannah who put the Columbus Zoo on the map with his late-night television appearances beginning in the 1980s. “It will be an immersive exhibit, with wallabies, cocobarras, emus and an Australian aviary. “In June, we’re opening our brand-new Australian adventure,” Bickel said. Two new exhibits this summer bring animals from both the United States and abroad. Visitors can also interact with some of the animals, feeding and petting giraffes, goats, llamas and donkeys. Other highlights at the zoo include river otter and giant-tortoise exhibits. So they’ll train them to present a paw so that we can do a toenail clip or to present a hindquarter if we need to do a blood draw.” “It’s a conditioning and training program where they’re training the animals to participate in their own health and animal care. ![]() ![]() “We do a lion demonstration every day during the summer,” said director of marketing Ryan Bickel. Outdoors, a large-cats exhibit has tigers, snow leopards and lions that are part of fascinating live programs. This 22-acre park features a wide variety of exhibits, including an indoor discovery center with exotic birds and plants, as well as a 15,000-gallon salt-water aquarium. In Salina, Kansas, Rolling Hills Wildlife adventure presents both live and mounted exotic animals from around the world.ĭes Moines’ Blank Park Zoo proves that bigger isn’t always better. Battle Creek, Michigan’s Binder Park Zoo is known for its natural woodland setting, and the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa, gives guests an inside look at the fascinating process of taming a lion. But the smaller zoos in smaller cities have their own advantages, often offering more intimate visits and up-close animal encounters. The Indianapolis Zoo combines traditional animal exhibits with an aquarium and a botanical garden. Louis Zoo and the Columbus Zoo, are among the most highly regarded zoos in the country. Some of the institutions, such as the St. Although most of us are used to seeing zoos in major metro cities, Midwesterners go a step further, with animal parks in smaller cities and towns throughout the area. ![]() I haven’t done a scientific survey on the subject, but I can tell you that after traveling around the United States, I’ve found that the Midwest seems to have more zoos than any other region of the country. Midwesterners may be the biggest animal lovers in the country.
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