What zoos get you interested in zoos

I have always loved animals but think that the place that sparked my love for zoos was the Moss Bank Park animal world and I would visit there a lot before it shut down. Such a shame as it had a butterfly house and quite a few exotic species such as coatis and muntjac deer.
 
Pygmy Mouse said:
....what zoo or zoos have you visited that got you interested in animals and zoos
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My parents often used to take me to London Zoo when I was a very young child in the 1950s.

These regular visits to London Zoo, back in the days when it had one of the largest collections of animals in the word, triggered a life-long fascination with zoology and an obsession with zoos.
 
I visited London Zoo with my family in 1965 and joined the XYZ Club in 1968. London Zoo had far more species in the 1960s than it has now and I regret the fact that my family always tended to visit the same exhibits and that I never saw some of the animals, such as the solenodon on show in 1967. I think the animals that made most impression on me were the hoolock gibbons in the old Monkey House. I have never seen the species since.
 
I think that most ZooChatters would say that their interest in zoos was stimulated by the first zoo they visited and this will generally have been the one nearest their childhood home. I was fortunate to have been born and raised in Cheshire and I first visited Chester Zoo in 1958 (I think). In the next 10 years or so I went to Chester several times on school trips, family visits and eventually on my own (an adventure, as it involved journeys on both a train and a bus). I only started to visit other zoos when I was an undergraduate and I went to London and Bristol, then Cotswold, Marwell, Whipsnade and Twycross and so on.
 
As @gentlelemur saysthe first zoos I visited were the two that aroused my interest, Birmingham Nature Centre and Dudley. Both were local, both were visited regularly and both were different enough to be a nice contrast,
BNC (as was) had a nice collection of European animals and a smattering of exotics and was free to enter, my grandfather used to take me most weekends so that definitely helped! As for Dudley, it wasn't very nice but at four years old I was in my element. Hippo's, elephants, polar and black bears, big cats, three species of great ape, giraffes, hyaenas, pinnipeds... It was zoological heaven for little Brum! :p
 
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I grew up in Los Angeles and like most people went to the zoo as a child and then stopped in junior high and high school. When I was in college and just getting into photography, some people asked me to take photos of a special behind the scenes koala meet for a friend who was a koala fanatic. (I am talking about Los Angeles Zoo). After the session I wandered on my own and saw two tigers sparring, which I thought was fun to photograph. I soon bought a membership and it grew from there.
 
What first got me interested in zoos was probably when I was a very young child living in Bangkok, my parents took me to Safari World every weekend. Apparently what I liked most about those trips was being able to take my seatbelt off and stand in the car while driving through the safari park, and the earliest thing that I can think of that I'm sure is a legitemate memory is of huge gates when entering the big cat sections of the drive through safari.

They also actively encouraged me to like animals by buying me books about animals and taking me on trips to see wildlife. I bet they're regretting that now! :p
 
Some really good zoos the two parks that really got me hooked on zoos actually weren't the first zoo that's I visited I actually didn't visit them till now years ago and they were the aspinal parks
Port lympne and howlers but the first one was the one that I returned to the most
 
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