Persephone
Well-Known Member
I wasn't expecting much here. It was a cold day, around 32 degrees, and the bird flu meant that almost all birds were off exhibit. In same ways this did hamper my experience - nearly all of the African species were off display. But at least the zoo was nearly empty. Some of the animals were active as well.
The zoo is split into roughly three sections. I'll address each in turn.
The first is the Entrance / Discovery Center. Before the gate there is a very large domestic Bactrian camel / sarus crane exhibit. The cranes were off display, but the camels were perfectly content with the cold weather and moving around. Inside is the Discovery Center, an indoor tropical* complex with a fairly decent free flight aviary, a few terrariums, and some aquariums. There are also three larger display areas.
The first is the indoor portion for red pandas (oddly enough they did not seem to be on exhibit that day, even after checking the indoor and outdoor areas in rapid succession). Even combined the red panda areas are a little smaller than I'm used to. Which is odd because the rest of the zoo almost never had that problem. The red pandas are in a room with scenery designed to resemble a coniferous mountain forest. It's nice. Kind of wish there were actual animals there besides the red pandas.
After the red pandas there's a pretty solid rockwork cave, complete with darker areas with very limited visibility. The cave has two terrariums and a glass 'hole' in the floor that gives a view of a third. The free flight aviary is decently planted and has some cool water features. They had some interesting birds, although the victoria crowned pigeons and other 'ground birds' were off display due to avian influenza. Everything else was out which I was not expecting. Inside the aviary are a few terrariums, including a pretty big one for woma pythons, and a netted off portion that resembles a primate enclosure. The netted enclosure actually just has a single green iguana. Cool guy. I got to see him do the lizard head bob. Still a lot of space for an ambassador animal. I'm guessing it used to contain lemurs before they got moved outside.
There's a small nocturnal area that's really just an egyptian fruit bat area and some frogs. Weirdly enough the fruit bat area doesn't have much in the way of cave rockwork, even though there is a cave area literally right above it.
The aquarium has a decent reef tank, a cold saltwater tanks, and two mid-size Amazon tanks. Caimans are always cool and I think theirs is the second-largest reptile in the zoo. The other Amazon tank had two of the larger South American species. Finally there were a few minimally decorated diamondback terrapin tanks, a perfectly adequate tamarin enclosure, and something called 'the macaw room.' The macaw room was locked and I cannot find much evidence that it actually was open at some point and contained macaws.
This leads into the 'zoo proper' as I think of it. There are a few groupings (domestics, Australia, big cats) but most of it is just miscellaneous exhibits. Aside from the tiger exhibit they were all pretty well sized. Even then I've seen worse from tiger exhibits. Cassowary were off exhibit from the bird flu. Weirdly enough all of Australia was closed even though some of the animals were still clearly visible. I didn't include it in my species list but I at least saw the wallabies.
There's also an exhibit behind the train station that's easy to miss. The area is named after wallaroos and there are little signs with emu facts but neither the wallaroo nor the emu have full signage. I included them as signed and I think I saw the wallaroo (or at least some wallabies that looked larger than the rest) but take this with a grain of salt.
I got to see the seals get fed. They had a whole training routine where they made them wiggle their way onto land and back. Sea lions were taken off exhibit and fed separately. The penguins were the only outdoor birds visible and they were confined to a kind of pathetic indoor section. The aldabra tortoises were being washed with a hose and seemed quite pleased with themselves.
Oh, because no one had been through the farm animals were all super hungry. I caved and bought them three cups of food (really expensive for the price, $2 for what would cost a quarter at some zoos). They downed each cup almost instantly. Great experience. I could've easily given the zoo twenty bucks if I had no restraint.
The Japanese macaque exhibit was under construction and the species was off display. There was also signage in the farm area suggesting alpaca were coming the following year. They already have a llama so I'm unsure of the value in an 'alpaca experience' but what do I know. Maybe Iowans really dig alpacas.
Almost all of the African species were either indoors or off display. I only saw the addax and zebra outdoors. Since Africa makes up about half the zoo this really did cut the experience in half. I'm sure in a normal year where more of the birds were out it would be a little better, but only just.
(I saw the baby giraffe and they were adorable.)
Overall thoughts: Don't drive twelve-hours round trip to see this. I did. It wasn't worth it until I heard a zebra fart. You probably won't hear a zebra fart, or at least won't have such a juvenile sense of humor that you find that to be worth the drive. If you live in Iowa its probably worth a visit. A nice enough small zoo. If the Africa area was replaced with more temperature appropriate animals I probably would've had a better time.
Species List
Italics means it was signed but unseen. For birds assume the species is usually there. The signage in the Discovery Center was terrible as you'll soon discover. The Australia section was unseen and is lifted from the most recent species list. Credit to @birdsandbats.
Outside the Zoo
1) Domestic Bactrian Camel, Sarus Crane
Discovery Center
1) Long Snout Seahorse, Unidentified Snail
2) Red Panda
3) White's Tree Frog
4) Golfodulcean Poison Frogs
5) Unsigned fish
6) Crested Pigeon, Speckled Mousebird, Nicobar Pigeon, Silver-Eared Mesia, Australian Wood Duck, Hooded Pitta, Pheasant Pigeon, White Cheeked Turaco, Ringed Teal, Victoria Crowned Pigeon, Unidentified Turtle (bigger than the pond slider birdsandbats reported)
7) Prehensile-tailed Skink
8) Green Iguana, Unidentified Fish
9) Woma Python
10) Egyptian Fruit Bat
11) Green and Black Poison Dart Frog, Yellow-Banded Poison Dart Frog
12) Panamanian Golden Frog
13) Dwarf Caiman, Red Piranha, Unidentified Fish
14) Pacu, Red-Tailed Catfish
15) Misc. Africa Cichlids
16) Dragon Moray Eel
17-18) Diamondback Terrapin
19) Golden-headed Lion Tamarin
The saltwater reef aquarium signage was clearly inaccurate in both the species present and not present. I'm not even bothering to transcribe that mess. The cold saltwater tank had no signage at all. A few fish species and starfish.
Whatever was in the macaw room.
Australia (taken from birdsandbats)
1. Walk-through: Black Swan, Bennett's Wallaby
2. Domestic Budgerigar
3. Corn Snake
4. Pilbara Rock Monitor
5. Laughing Kookaburra
6. Southern Cassowary
7. Southern Cassowary
8. Bush Thick-Knee, Tawny Frogmouth, Dollarbird, Egyptian Plover, Blue-faced Honeyeater
Zoo Proper
1) Chilean Flamingo
2) North American River Otter
3-4) Aldabra Tortoise
4-5) Magellan Penguin
6) Ring-tailed Lemur
7) Common Wallaroo, Bennet's Wallaby, Emu
8) Trumpeter Swan
9) Nigerian Dwarf Goat, Llama
10) Miniature Donkey
11) Koi
12) California Sea Lion, Harbor Seal
13-14) African Lion
15) Amur Tiger
16) White-handed Gibbon
17) Bald Eagle
18) Japanese Macaque
Africa
1) Nyala
2) Addax, Slender-Horned Gazelle, Reticulated Giraffe, Domestic Guineafowl, Grey Crowned Crane
3) Superb Starling
4) Kori Bustard
5) Red River Hog
6-8) Black Rhino
9) Okapi, Yellow-Backed Duiker
10) Reticulated Giraffe
11) Mountain Zebra
The zoo is split into roughly three sections. I'll address each in turn.
The first is the Entrance / Discovery Center. Before the gate there is a very large domestic Bactrian camel / sarus crane exhibit. The cranes were off display, but the camels were perfectly content with the cold weather and moving around. Inside is the Discovery Center, an indoor tropical* complex with a fairly decent free flight aviary, a few terrariums, and some aquariums. There are also three larger display areas.
The first is the indoor portion for red pandas (oddly enough they did not seem to be on exhibit that day, even after checking the indoor and outdoor areas in rapid succession). Even combined the red panda areas are a little smaller than I'm used to. Which is odd because the rest of the zoo almost never had that problem. The red pandas are in a room with scenery designed to resemble a coniferous mountain forest. It's nice. Kind of wish there were actual animals there besides the red pandas.
After the red pandas there's a pretty solid rockwork cave, complete with darker areas with very limited visibility. The cave has two terrariums and a glass 'hole' in the floor that gives a view of a third. The free flight aviary is decently planted and has some cool water features. They had some interesting birds, although the victoria crowned pigeons and other 'ground birds' were off display due to avian influenza. Everything else was out which I was not expecting. Inside the aviary are a few terrariums, including a pretty big one for woma pythons, and a netted off portion that resembles a primate enclosure. The netted enclosure actually just has a single green iguana. Cool guy. I got to see him do the lizard head bob. Still a lot of space for an ambassador animal. I'm guessing it used to contain lemurs before they got moved outside.
There's a small nocturnal area that's really just an egyptian fruit bat area and some frogs. Weirdly enough the fruit bat area doesn't have much in the way of cave rockwork, even though there is a cave area literally right above it.
The aquarium has a decent reef tank, a cold saltwater tanks, and two mid-size Amazon tanks. Caimans are always cool and I think theirs is the second-largest reptile in the zoo. The other Amazon tank had two of the larger South American species. Finally there were a few minimally decorated diamondback terrapin tanks, a perfectly adequate tamarin enclosure, and something called 'the macaw room.' The macaw room was locked and I cannot find much evidence that it actually was open at some point and contained macaws.
This leads into the 'zoo proper' as I think of it. There are a few groupings (domestics, Australia, big cats) but most of it is just miscellaneous exhibits. Aside from the tiger exhibit they were all pretty well sized. Even then I've seen worse from tiger exhibits. Cassowary were off exhibit from the bird flu. Weirdly enough all of Australia was closed even though some of the animals were still clearly visible. I didn't include it in my species list but I at least saw the wallabies.
There's also an exhibit behind the train station that's easy to miss. The area is named after wallaroos and there are little signs with emu facts but neither the wallaroo nor the emu have full signage. I included them as signed and I think I saw the wallaroo (or at least some wallabies that looked larger than the rest) but take this with a grain of salt.
I got to see the seals get fed. They had a whole training routine where they made them wiggle their way onto land and back. Sea lions were taken off exhibit and fed separately. The penguins were the only outdoor birds visible and they were confined to a kind of pathetic indoor section. The aldabra tortoises were being washed with a hose and seemed quite pleased with themselves.
Oh, because no one had been through the farm animals were all super hungry. I caved and bought them three cups of food (really expensive for the price, $2 for what would cost a quarter at some zoos). They downed each cup almost instantly. Great experience. I could've easily given the zoo twenty bucks if I had no restraint.
The Japanese macaque exhibit was under construction and the species was off display. There was also signage in the farm area suggesting alpaca were coming the following year. They already have a llama so I'm unsure of the value in an 'alpaca experience' but what do I know. Maybe Iowans really dig alpacas.
Almost all of the African species were either indoors or off display. I only saw the addax and zebra outdoors. Since Africa makes up about half the zoo this really did cut the experience in half. I'm sure in a normal year where more of the birds were out it would be a little better, but only just.
(I saw the baby giraffe and they were adorable.)
Overall thoughts: Don't drive twelve-hours round trip to see this. I did. It wasn't worth it until I heard a zebra fart. You probably won't hear a zebra fart, or at least won't have such a juvenile sense of humor that you find that to be worth the drive. If you live in Iowa its probably worth a visit. A nice enough small zoo. If the Africa area was replaced with more temperature appropriate animals I probably would've had a better time.
Species List
Italics means it was signed but unseen. For birds assume the species is usually there. The signage in the Discovery Center was terrible as you'll soon discover. The Australia section was unseen and is lifted from the most recent species list. Credit to @birdsandbats.
Outside the Zoo
1) Domestic Bactrian Camel, Sarus Crane
Discovery Center
1) Long Snout Seahorse, Unidentified Snail
2) Red Panda
3) White's Tree Frog
4) Golfodulcean Poison Frogs
5) Unsigned fish
6) Crested Pigeon, Speckled Mousebird, Nicobar Pigeon, Silver-Eared Mesia, Australian Wood Duck, Hooded Pitta, Pheasant Pigeon, White Cheeked Turaco, Ringed Teal, Victoria Crowned Pigeon, Unidentified Turtle (bigger than the pond slider birdsandbats reported)
7) Prehensile-tailed Skink
8) Green Iguana, Unidentified Fish
9) Woma Python
10) Egyptian Fruit Bat
11) Green and Black Poison Dart Frog, Yellow-Banded Poison Dart Frog
12) Panamanian Golden Frog
13) Dwarf Caiman, Red Piranha, Unidentified Fish
14) Pacu, Red-Tailed Catfish
15) Misc. Africa Cichlids
16) Dragon Moray Eel
17-18) Diamondback Terrapin
19) Golden-headed Lion Tamarin
The saltwater reef aquarium signage was clearly inaccurate in both the species present and not present. I'm not even bothering to transcribe that mess. The cold saltwater tank had no signage at all. A few fish species and starfish.
Whatever was in the macaw room.
Australia (taken from birdsandbats)
1. Walk-through: Black Swan, Bennett's Wallaby
2. Domestic Budgerigar
3. Corn Snake
4. Pilbara Rock Monitor
5. Laughing Kookaburra
6. Southern Cassowary
7. Southern Cassowary
8. Bush Thick-Knee, Tawny Frogmouth, Dollarbird, Egyptian Plover, Blue-faced Honeyeater
Zoo Proper
1) Chilean Flamingo
2) North American River Otter
3-4) Aldabra Tortoise
4-5) Magellan Penguin
6) Ring-tailed Lemur
7) Common Wallaroo, Bennet's Wallaby, Emu
8) Trumpeter Swan
9) Nigerian Dwarf Goat, Llama
10) Miniature Donkey
11) Koi
12) California Sea Lion, Harbor Seal
13-14) African Lion
15) Amur Tiger
16) White-handed Gibbon
17) Bald Eagle
18) Japanese Macaque
Africa
1) Nyala
2) Addax, Slender-Horned Gazelle, Reticulated Giraffe, Domestic Guineafowl, Grey Crowned Crane
3) Superb Starling
4) Kori Bustard
5) Red River Hog
6-8) Black Rhino
9) Okapi, Yellow-Backed Duiker
10) Reticulated Giraffe
11) Mountain Zebra
