Stop Eight - Nashville Zoo
The end of July brought our first unplanned trip of the year, as one of our friends convinced my wife to join a couples' trip to Nashville at the end of the month. So, as we said yes and quickly booked flights, it was really easy to convince my wife for us to make a side visit to the Nashville Zoo. Thankfully, the trip was one of those where most of the day each couple went their own way, until the evenings where we would join back up for dinner and then a bunch of adult beverages and music on Broadway to close out the night. Luckily for me, with Nashville growing at the rate that it is, one can find a lot more than both kinds of music played at Bob's Country Bunker, country AND western. I honestly believe that the song we heard the most was Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses! As a purveyor of rock music, I greatly appreciated this, maybe not that singular song, but the fact it wasn't my greatest fear of weeklong country music.
Nashville is one of the zoos that I hadn't really heard much about until joining this site and reading about it as news would pop up. I looked at their map and saw a zoo that had a couple loops, but not the big sprawling campuses of Omaha, Saint Louis, Denver, or San Diego and is a place that has more or less been open for less than 30 years. It wasn't until I continued to read about the place that it was becoming clear that this was a zoo that was gaining steam, and pretty quickly. With their massive African expansion on the way, I felt that our visit would come after this major addition, but alas, when presented with an opportunity to visit now, I couldn't pass it up to see what all the buzz was about. I wasn't disappointed.
Before entering the zoo, we stopped at the entrance plaza quick to make sure we didn't leave anything in the rideshare we got to the zoo, and to use the restroom quick. Now I was aware that there were exhibits in one of the restrooms at this place, I assumed that both were in the same restroom complex. I forgot that it was the entrance men's restroom that held the Boelen's Python exhibit, so imagine my surprise when I got a feeding frenzy display early in the morning!
I asked my wife if there were any animals in the women's, and she gave me a crazy look like, "No..." Again, my assumption was off, but this would later come up. Upon entering the zoo, it has the feel of entering Disney's Animal Kingdom, with safari style buildings and dense, lush forest and creeks along the main path. I was instantly in love with this entry, and it certainly was a precursor for the quality to come.
After a couple of bird exhibits featuring Hyacinth Macaws and Blue Cranes, you come to some heavily planted islands featuring White-cheeked Gibbon and Siamang that has massive trees that are fully climbable. It was almost like playing "Where's Waldo?" looking for the apes amongst the vegetation, but it also gave us the opportunity to see them swinging through the branches when they really got going. Adjacent to this pair of islands is the main food court area, dressed up in Indonesian style architecture that was really well done.
As we head off to the northern part of the zoo, you pass by a huge Meerkat exhibit that is probably the best I've seen. It has a lot of plantings in it rather than just an empty sand and dirt bottomed enclosure that only provides digging opportunities. I also liked that it was in the side of a small hill that provided you different viewing angles from three different levels. Following the Meerkats, there is an awesome Saddle-billed Stork exhibit, again heavily planted and like most of the exhibits at this zoo, seemingly no back fence as vegetation screens the rear of a lot of these habitats. What I like about this stork exhibit is that it is pretty much a natural wetland, as there are tons of creeks and streams throughout this zoo, lending to lots of bridges (which makes traversing this zoo feel more adventurous, at least to me anyway). There is a touch of theming here too, in the form of a single old canoe, but it adds just enough touch that to me feels like there have been expeditions into this dense jungle before, and maybe not all who ventured made it out. That part is me thinking through a story that could pop into a guest's mind while exploring exhibits, and I know a fair amount on this site doesn't care for, but for me, it takes ordinary exhibits to another level.
Beyond the Saddle-billed storks, you will come to one of my favorite exhibits in the zoo, in a zoo full of awesome exhibits, the Unseen New World. I'm not one that really looks at photos of exhibits at zoos prior to my visits so I can go in with a completely open mind and I don't know what I was really expecting here, but it wasn't a complex that delved into the exploration of the Americas (duh, New World, makes a lot of sense after looking at the front of the building). This was a similar take on the Islands of Life exhibit at Pueblo that I discussed earlier, except on a much larger (and more modern) scale, but also a heavy focus on reptiles and amphibians, with a small walkthrough aviary near the end, but also some great Amazon River exhibits featuring the usual river giants. What I love about this building is that it takes you through the story of the discovery of the Americas and presents awesome graphics and signs noting how far you are in your journey.
Each region represented in here, West Indies, North America, South & Central America, are all extremely well done featuring eye-pleasing terrariums and aquariums and featuring some interesting species like Haitian Galliwasp, Surinam Toad, and South American Bushmaster. There are tons of species in this building and easily could spend a half hour or more in here. The walkthrough aviary has 12 species of birds and a Two-Toed Sloth that roams about.
Continuing along the main path, you come to the Critter Encounters area, more or less a petting zoo at first glance, and as we were about to pass by, I noticed some netted over aviaries along the side of the massive goat yard and decided to enter to see what these contained. I'm glad I did, otherwise I would have missed out on Blue-billed Curassow and a pair of Maleo! The only thing that appears on the map for this area that isn't domestic are Galapagos Tortoise and Toco Toucan. The tortoises are easily seen from the main path, but geeze, to have such a rare bird in an area where a lot of people are going to pass by this area without a second thought is tough. So, my biggest advice for Nashville, don't pass by the Critter Encounter yard!
The rest of the jungle loop essentially begins after this point, passing by a Caribbean Flamingo group of ponds that you can cut through via bridge before you encounter a Baird's Tapir yard and an exhibit for African Crested Porcupine. This brings you to a spacious netted exhibit for Mexican Spider Monkeys, and also includes a lot of educational graphics about the 238 species of monkey in the New World. This jungle trail works extremely well and is surrounded by dense forest which makes for an extremely immersive environment. I'm big on the sense of "discovery" in zoos as to me it adds to one's excitement level, on top of being already excited to see exotic species.
Before you get back to more awesome exhibits found in dense bamboo thickets for Clouded Leopard, Babirusa, lemurs, Rhinoceros Hornbill, among a few others, you pass by probably my least favorite exhibit in the zoo. The mountain lion exhibit is not bad per se, but with 20-foot high chain link fence surrounding this exhibit, in plain sight, is a far cry from the rest of this area. The planting is good and provides a lot of terrain change, but the look of this exhibit makes it one of those "One of these things is not like the other" and is quite jarring between stunning exhibits.
After passing through the bamboo forest as mentioned earlier, you will come to an exhibit that I thought extremely highly of and was just recently covered in
@pachyderm pro's America's 100 Must See Exhibits thread, Expedition Peru: Trek of the Andean Bear. I greatly appreciate you already showcasing it as I don't have to add too much to it! I also love the theming here, again, it feels like something taken from Disney's playbook. My wife did stumble upon the Cotton Top Tamarin exhibit in this restroom, which made me laugh as she described walking into find it. One thing I didn't care a whole lot for, even though it was a neat little village, was the inclusion of Guinea Pigs as an exhibit animal. I griped about this in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo review, but they fit a lot more here, but still, I guess I would rather see something else take up real estate in a zoo. Minor quibble aside, again, I loved this portion of the zoo.
Leaving this area, you pass by an American Alligator exhibit that features above and below water viewing, by which the best views are from the above water viewing shelter. On my visit, one of the bridges by the tiger exhibit was under reconstruction so I was not able to see this exhibit. From what I can tell, this is yet another fantastic exhibit at this zoo. Before heading back down the hill, you come across one of the current African Savannahs that is filled with Common Eland, Bontebok, Ostrich, and Plains Zebra. With the ongoing construction of the new African expansion, the backdrop for this exhibit currently is disrupted with construction equipment and fencing, but this large yard gets the job done for its inhabitants, but viewing can be hard from one vista point if the animals are at the back of the exhibit.
Before joining back up with the main path at the Meerkat exhibit, you will pass by an Australian Walkabout area with Red Kangaroo, but as many zoo-goers were focused on this area, I was way more focused on the other side of the bridge as there are two really good Southern Cassowary yards nestled into the forest. Just standing there for a good 10 minutes getting fantastic photos of the birds, I feel hardly anyone knows that these exhibits actually exist due to their proximity to the kangaroos. I could probably count on one hand how many people actually stopped to view these exhibits.
After completing this loop, which is the bulk of the current zoo, there are a couple of attractions including a 4D Theater and a zipline as you head up the hill to see a spacious yard for Southern White Rhino and another for Masai Giraffe. There is a lot of construction in this area, and I'm sure the quality will be high like the rest of the zoo. The rhino exhibit is somewhat of an optical illusion from some angles. From one viewing point, it looks like a shade shelter is at the edge of the exhibit, but from another vantage point, it is actually closer to the center. Makes different viewing of this exhibit pretty interesting and almost necessary to get the full picture.
Around the rhino exhibit will be future smaller exhibits with smaller mammals, but one that currently exists is one for Red River Hog that is very nice. Up the hill from here is the massive vet hospital that shows off new births, which you might catch some of the species kept off display (we did not). The new Komodo Dragon exhibit is in construction adjacent to this facility and looks to be quite awesome when completed. The final area of this zoo is the Historic Grassmere Farm that features a good number of domestics, but we didn't spend a whole lot of time back here. Neat to see an older area preserved in time, but as someone who grew up around farms in east central Nebraska, not all that impressive or new to me or my wife.
After visiting, I definitely can see this place quickly going up the ranks into the upper echelon of zoos in this country. With the new projects on the way, you wouldn't get an argument from me with ranking them fairly high. This is a place you can tell they focused a lot on quality on what they had on display than displaying a ton of species for the sake of displaying species. And it is paying off. There are very few if any exhibits that are in dire need of replacement, which makes it a lot easier to focus on adding new things than replacing things. This zoo is also acquiring rarely kept species, granted most of them are behind the scenes, but you may catch glimpses of them (as was the case with the fanaloka earlier this year). While maybe not quite a destination zoo just yet to some, certainly after the Africa expansion is completed, I think it certainly will be.
