Philadelphia Zoo: Rare Animal Conservation Center

 A wonderful combined set of habitats hugging a plaza at the front of the zoo with a beautiful fountain, cafe, and open seating.  Inside are a range of smaller animals, mammals, primates, bats.  Zoo360 allows a rotation of the species into exterior Habitat-trails that ring the plaza and even extend a little way beyond.

It's kind of a backward day thing to end with the beginning, but when I entered the zoo, the crowds were all funneling into the build, and I thought; perhaps, it would be better to stop by later.  So this is a exit to entrance visit!

It is so exciting watching so many zoo's on solid ground and growing their futures with a focus on species survival.  Great things are happening everywhere.  From the Maryland Zoo to the Great Plains Zoo, from ZooMiami to ZooMontana.  Under the auspices of the AZA these institutions have agreed to strive toward best practices, and in so doing they are themselves thriving.  If any scrap of our time survives the coming ecological reckoning of how humans treated animals well, then, certainly the evolution of zoos will be part of that story.  I am a believer.

View of the interior with its animal habitats along the outer wall.

Tree Sloth Habitat.

Hoffmann's Two-toed Tree Sloth

Choloepus hoffmanni

Pied Tamarin

Saguinus bicolor

Mongoose Lemur

Eulemur mongoz

Rodrigues' Fruit Bat

Pteropus rodricensis

Prehensile-tailed Porcupine

Coendu

Top: White-Faced Saki Monkey, Pithecia pithecia

Bottom: Giant Elephant Shrew, Rhynchocyon petersi