In the original animated movie Madagascar, it was all about escaping FROM the zoo to go exploring. In our case, yesterday was all about escaping TO the zoo – specifically the San Diego Zoo, located in Balboa Park.

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I should preface this post by saying that, ever since I was a child and visited my very first zoo – in Detroit in the 1960s – I’ve been hooked. Back then, of course, zoos were still mostly just caged captured animals, but I didn’t know any better. I just wanted to get close to a real tiger, a real elephant, a real lion, a real giraffe! It’s possible that without that up-close experience I might never really have understood the majesty of those creatures, and why it is so very important to protect them.

Zoos are very different today, of course. Even the zoo at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, the oldest continuously operating zoo in the world, is no longer simply about showing off exotic animals in cages.

In fact, there are far fewer cages, and those that still exist are much much bigger than those I first experienced. The San Diego Zoo was a pioneer in the concept of open-air, cageless exhibits that recreate natural animal habitats, even though it’s origin is based in caring for the exotic animal exhibitions abandoned after the 1915 Panama-California Exposition.

Not only fewer cages, but also fewer animals, partly due to the recognition that each animal needs more space. The Detroit Zoo, for instance, no longer has elephants, because (from their website) “Elephants live in large social groups, and the pair of elephants living together may not have met all of their social needs. Based on these, and other factors, the DZS decided to transfer the elephants to a sanctuary in California, prioritizing their well-being over the expectation of finding elephants at the Zoo.”

Back in the early 2000’s, one of the San Diego Zoo’s biggest attractions was their giant pandas, and on our first visit to San Diego, back in May of 2010, the thing that had me most excited was the chance to see them.

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The zoo received their first pair of pandas in 1996 as part of a research loan, at a time when pandas were considered officially an endangered species. On August 21, 1999, Hua Mei was born in San Diego, the first panda cub to survive in captivity in the United States. Since then, 6 pandas have been born at the zoo, and all of them returned to China. The last bears were returned in 2019, so there are none here today.

While no longer considered an endangered species, pandas are still classified as vulnerable. According to the Smithsonian, in 2023 as few as 1,864 giant pandas were living in their native habitat, while another 600 pandas lived in zoos and breeding centers around the world (Schönbrunn, working in cooperation with the China Wildlife Conservation Association, still has a pair).

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The San Diego Wildlife Alliance (of which the zoo is one part) mission statement is: “…committed to saving species worldwide by uniting our expertise in animal care and conservation science with our dedication to inspiring passion for nature.”

There is a TON of behind-the scenes work and research constantly taking place, but what we’re here to see are … the magnificent animals!

There’s no possibility in a single day of seeing all the animals, so I decided before going that we’d take it easy and simply do what we could in 5 solid hours of walking (sorry, Ted) and try not to regret what we missed. That meant choosing to prioritize mammals and birds over reptiles during our time at the zoo.

Ted’s frustration with photographing birds in a zoo environment is that many of them, of necessity, are behind mesh. In the larger aviaries, it’s a bit easier, but in trying to replicate natural environments, the birds are often well camouflaged.

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While the zoo, at just 100 acres, doesn’t rank among the world’s largest (Toronto, for example, is #8 in the world at 710 acres) it’s still big enough that it was nice to be able to climb into one of the Skyfari gondolas to get from one side to the other.

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And finally, the wise-looking De Brazza’s Monkey (below) would probably agree that you can’t do it all. We saw many more animals, and Ted took many more terrific photos, but these will have to do as our record of our 2024 zoo visit.

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The zoo closes at 5 p.m., just before dark, so we had time to head back to our flat, get changed, and go out for a lovely anniversary dinner. It’s not our wedding anniversary, but the 48th anniversary of the day Ted asked me to go on a honeymoon with him (I extrapolated the marriage proposal from that and said yes), and our annual equivalent of Valentines Day.

We ate at La Puerta again, because their food manages somehow to be even better than their inviting ambience and stellar service.

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It was a lovely long day, that merits taking a day off to relax at “home”.