ABQ Biopark BUGarium Review of ABQ BioPark BUGarium - visit May 22 2022

[SwampDonkey]

After going to the zoo and the aquarium it was time to stop in the BUGarium. The BUGarium is part of the botanical gardens, but is a stand alone building along with a butterfly aviary and dragonfly pond.

This was a cool place, if you like insects you should stop by if you are in ABQ. The butterfly area was closed when we were there, unfortunately. Entering the building puts you in the desert area along with leaf cutter ants. Next up is a nice night cave with a variety of standard tarantula and scorpions. More centipedes would be nice, but it was still well done. After the cave you are in a open area with a wall of tarantulas and beetles, and on the other side is a kind of odd exhibit of naked mole rats. Rather than any kind of habitat they are simply in plastic boxes connected with tubes. The beetle collection was nice, if unimpressive.

Overall the insects are cool, and the setup is great, but there were not any truly special animals here. It took us about 30 minutes to go through...but if you had someone more interested in them than my wife you could make it an hour easily.

 

[snowleopard]

This looks like a really neat place and I think it's cool that a zoo, an aquarium and a 'BUGarium' are so close to each other. Thanks for the review.

 

[Aardwolf]

It's especially nice that the collection shows a bit more diversity than many insect zoos (I suspect that many places are steered more heavily towards tarantulas and the like because of the pain of acquiring PPQ permits for so many insects). Do they still have that open-air leafcutter exhibit? I really enjoyed that.

 

[SwampDonkey]

This looks like a really neat place and I think it's cool that a zoo, an aquarium and a 'BUGarium' are so close to each other. Thanks for the review.

No problem! I am glad that I ended up going to the Biopark, it was not initially on my list for the trip as it was not technically a "zoo" trip.

It's especially nice that the collection shows a bit more diversity than many insect zoos (I suspect that many places are steered more heavily towards tarantulas and the like because of the pain of acquiring PPQ permits for so many insects). Do they still have that open-air leafcutter exhibit? I really enjoyed that.

Yeah, they also had the obligatory stick insects and similar. They do have the open-air leaf cutter "tree" which is surrounded by a moat, which was pretty cool; I should have taken more pictures of the whole place.
They have a door system where there are two entry/exit doors that one must pass through to go in or out, so there is always at least one door closed to the inside, the doors are set so that you cannot have both open at one time. I suspect this is due to the possibility of escapees?

 

[DavidBrown]

Thanks for the review. Some day I would like to do a zoo tour of the great invertebrate exhibits in America, and this would certainly be on the list.

 

[SwampDonkey]

Thanks for the review. Some day I would like to do a zoo tour of the great invertebrate exhibits in America, and this would certainly be on the list.

That sounds like a great idea, I would like to visit some more of these insect specialized places.