Philadelphia Zoo

The region’s leading family destination and one of the area’s foremost conservation organizations, Philadelphia Zoo is home to nearly 1,300 animals, many rare and endangered. Leveraging its platform as America’s first zoo, Philadelphia Zoo is working double-time to educate more than 1.2 million annual visitors about animal and environmental conservation via a first-in-the-world animal travel and exploration trail system, called Zoo360, that offers animals more room to roam, and KidZooU -- a new KidZooU children’s zoo and education center that serves as a model for children’s zoos nationwide.

Zoo360 is designed for a wide variety of species, and delivers unprecedented animation and animal interaction. Small primates are swinging and strolling their way through mesh canopies in the treetops as part of the Treetop Trail. Large primates are enjoying new, elevated vantage points via Gorilla Treeway. Big cats – lions, tigers, pumas, jaguars and more –will be on the move like never before with the opening of Big Cat Crossing. And gregarious meerkats are digging, running and looking out from their ground-based system called Meerkat Maze. The innovative animal trail initiative enhances the quality of life for the animals, giving them the chance to travel longer distances and explore a greater variety of environments. At the same time, it transforms the Zoo visit for guests, evolving beyond the traditional experience of viewing animals in one-dimensional exhibits. More and more, as visitors move around Philadelphia Zoo, the Zoo moves around them. Truly, Philadelphia Zoo is well on its way to becoming the world’s first fully- animated zoo.

Every Zoo visit is an opportunity for guests to connect with wildlife and be inspired to conservation action. The Zoo’s national and international science-based cooperative zoo breeding programs serve as a safety net for species threatened with extinction in the wild. Among them, the Zoo’s amphibian conservation program is making a potentially species-saving impact among endangered frogs from the Andes and the Caribbean. These and other award-winning education and conservation programs, coupled with state-of-the-art animal exhibits and scientific accomplishments, make Philadelphia Zoo one of the world’s most renowned zoological societies.