snowleopard: Of all the zoos (and aquariums!) where you have now see meerkats, where are your favorite meerkat exhibits and what features make them your favorite?
Have you ever seen a bad meerkat exhibit?
The San Francisco Zoo actually has a pretty cool meerkat exhibit in their children's zoo that is paired with a prairie dog exhibit to illustrate social animal societies.
There are plenty of meerkat exhibits all across AZA-accredited zoos in the United States, and most of us take for granted that our local zoo will have some kind of enclosure containing the lovable, active little critters. It is interesting to study the 60 best zoos in the nation (according to the book “America’s Best Zoos”) to locate all of the notable meerkat habitats. Animal collections change all the time but as far as I can ascertain there are 47 out of the 60 zoos with meerkats, and the 13 zoos that currently do not have any are: Maryland, Bronx, Roger Williams Park, Montgomery, Jacksonville, North Carolina, Audubon, San Antonio, Fort Wayne, Binder Park, Cincinnati, Columbus and Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
Having seen 59 out of the 60 best American zoos in the past few years I feel as if I’ve seen enough meerkats to last a lifetime, but nevertheless I feel an urge to narrow the list down to my 5 favourite exhibits. Without a doubt Nashville is #1 for me, as the habitat there is surely the largest in the nation, well-planted, and it even includes pop-up bubbles for humans. Houston has an excellent meerkat exhibit as part of its award-winning Natural Encounters area; Sedgwick County has two meerkat enclosures adjacent to each other in the Pride of the Plains section of the zoo; Caldwell has meerkats in an exhibit that once held blue monkeys and black-backed jackals; and Riverbanks has a very grassy meerkat enclosure that has an African elephant exhibit in the background. In my opinion those are the 5 best, although there are many other excellent exhibits for meerkats and other than the one found in Nashville it is a tough choice narrowing down such a list. Honourable mention goes to El Paso, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Dallas and many others.
