lemonheadfu
New Member
Hello! I am a zoo nerd and I never knew there was a whole COMMUNITY of zoo nerds here so I just had to join and say hello!
I did once find another zoo nerd in the wild. I was at a very upscale restaurant in Washington DC with my husband discussing what activity we should do with our kids the next day. (We were taking our 3 kids to DC and Colonial Williamsburg as a 2 week family vacation a few summers ago; they were I think ages 5-10 and had stayed back at the hotel with Grandma while we had date night out.)
Me: We should go to the National Zoo.
Hubby: You ALWAYS want to go to a zoo. Why don’t we go to [insert some non-zoo attraction here] instead?
Me: But the National Zoo is almost consistently in the top 5 zoos in America, so this isn’t like some random old zoo.
Hubby: There isn’t some universally acknowledged ranking of zoos in America, you’re just making that up because you want to go to the zoo.
Nice lady from one table over: I couldn’t help but overhear, and I just wanted to say she is right the National Zoo is consistently ranked as a top zoo. Well obviously number one is San Diego and number two is Henry Doorly and rankings three through five are debated but DC consistently makes one of those spots.
Me: [heart eyes because I found someone else who shares my love of Henry Doorly zoo and zoo rankings. I had never actually met such a human before, possibly because I live in California and everyone thinks the list of “good zoos” starts and ends with San Diego.]
Needless to say, I won the argument and we did go to the (quite excellent, but certainly not on par with San Diego or Henry Doorly) National Zoo the next day.
I’m so glad to have found this forum! I stumbled across it because I was trying to do research on the Taipei Zoo (glad to see there are a lot of fans here!) which I have been to a few times but I especially loved their dwarf lemurs when I went ~20 years ago but when I went ~10 years ago they had closed their nocturnal house. I’m excited to read that they built a new and better exhibit over the old spot of the nocturnal house and the dwarf lemurs are back on display!! I’m literally so excited about this and all my family is like 
.
I did once find another zoo nerd in the wild. I was at a very upscale restaurant in Washington DC with my husband discussing what activity we should do with our kids the next day. (We were taking our 3 kids to DC and Colonial Williamsburg as a 2 week family vacation a few summers ago; they were I think ages 5-10 and had stayed back at the hotel with Grandma while we had date night out.)
Me: We should go to the National Zoo.
Hubby: You ALWAYS want to go to a zoo. Why don’t we go to [insert some non-zoo attraction here] instead?
Me: But the National Zoo is almost consistently in the top 5 zoos in America, so this isn’t like some random old zoo.
Hubby: There isn’t some universally acknowledged ranking of zoos in America, you’re just making that up because you want to go to the zoo.
Nice lady from one table over: I couldn’t help but overhear, and I just wanted to say she is right the National Zoo is consistently ranked as a top zoo. Well obviously number one is San Diego and number two is Henry Doorly and rankings three through five are debated but DC consistently makes one of those spots.
Me: [heart eyes because I found someone else who shares my love of Henry Doorly zoo and zoo rankings. I had never actually met such a human before, possibly because I live in California and everyone thinks the list of “good zoos” starts and ends with San Diego.]
Needless to say, I won the argument and we did go to the (quite excellent, but certainly not on par with San Diego or Henry Doorly) National Zoo the next day.
I’m so glad to have found this forum! I stumbled across it because I was trying to do research on the Taipei Zoo (glad to see there are a lot of fans here!) which I have been to a few times but I especially loved their dwarf lemurs when I went ~20 years ago but when I went ~10 years ago they had closed their nocturnal house. I’m excited to read that they built a new and better exhibit over the old spot of the nocturnal house and the dwarf lemurs are back on display!! I’m literally so excited about this and all my family is like
.
