Historic Carousel
Open Monday-Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.; Weekends and holidays, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Please note: the carousel will be closed for yearly maintenance Jan. 19 - Feb. 19
A treasured moment in a child's life is to a ride on a carousel and be transported back to another time. A ride on this special, hand-crafted, 1918-vintage carousel is like no other! Fun for the entire family and proceeds help benefit the zoo's animal care and general operations.
$2.00 per ride.
Family Farm and Animal Contact Area
Contact Area open May 1 - September 30
Learn about the role farms play in our daily lives and see some of the animals common to a barnyard setting, from cows to donkeys, chickens, goats, sheep and pigs. During our summer hours, you can even get the opportunity to touch a gentle sheep or goat.
Northern Trail
Explore the rugged terrain of the Northern Trail. Mimicking the habitat of Alaska's tundra and taiga region, the Northern Trail features the animals that make this area their home including brown bears, Roosevelt elk, river otters, arctic foxes, snowy owls, mountain goats, and northern bald eagles. Northern Trail includes the Taiga Viewing Shelter, an indoor viewing area where you see river otters swim playfully underwater and bears hunt for trout. Also check out the Tundra Center, with its beautiful 70-foot long curving mural depicting the Alaskan tundra and special video about the native people who share their habitat.
Temperate Forest Zone
Temperate forests, such as those found here in the Pacific Northwest, are some of the most vast remaining intact habitats on the planet. Despite the cooler temperatures, an abundantly diverse amount of life teems in these forests. Our Temperate Forest zone features red pandas, Asian cranes and Chilean flamingos, as well as animals more familar to us here including wetland waterfowl in the
Temperate Wetlands area. Also in this zone, our amazing
Bug World hosts the smaller life that crawls around us as well as the popular
Family Farm exhibit with mini-cows, sheep, chickens and goats.
Australasia Zone
Australasia encompasses the wide swath of Pacific Ocean area that includes Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the thousands of islands of the South Pacific. The animals that inhabit this area are both familar and strange to many with pouched mammals including wallabies and wallaroos (both kangaroo species), the raucous kookaburra, and stately emus. Also within this zone is
Willawong Station, an Outback post featuring small parrot species of Australia that you can feed right from your hand.
African Village
The people of rural East Africa co-exist every day with the animals of the savanna. In tiny communities across the grasslands, a number of groups live directly off the land, smetimes in competition with, but mostly in harmony with the wild animals around them. We pay tribute to the people whose lives are intrinsically tied to the habitat and animals around them at African Village, a faithful reproduction of a modern rural village of East Africa, perched on the edge of our award-winning
African Savanna exhibit.
Tropical Asia Zone
The dense tropical forests of Asia hold some of the world's most endangered species including Asian elephants, orangutans, Malayan tapirs and more. Our Tropical Asia zone features two areas: the award-winning Elephant Forest and Trail of Vines featuring orangutans, siamangs and tapirs. This unique part of the world has some of the most densely human populated cities as well as the last vestiges of wild habitats--a balancing act that is increasingly putting animals on the brink of extinction. See the amazing animals from Asia and discover how you can help protect them.