Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure
Salina, Kansas
In Salina, a small town in central Kansas, visitors will find exotic animals from around the world at Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure. This attraction started with a team of Belgian horses in a local man’s barn and grew to include dozens of dioramas and live animal exhibits.
Today, the zoo has large and exotic animals from all over the world, including rhinoceroses, orangutans, leopards, lions, tigers and a host of others.
“Everyone’s favorites are the rhinos,” said group sales manager Debbie Tasker. “You’re close enough to really see how gigantic they are.”
Groups can take a tram tour through the zoo, where they see as many as 130 species eating, resting and playing. There are hundreds more to see in the accompanying museum, which displays an impressive collection of mounted animals surrounded by scenery from their native areas of the world.
“Most of these mounts come from a man who had a collection in California,” said Tasker. “It’s all completely interactive. We have four waterfall effects and 14 animatronic robots telling you about a day in the life of the animals. There’s no glass between you and the dioramas.”
St. Louis Zoo
Missouri
Located in St. Louis’ Forest Park cultural area, the St. Louis Zoo offers free admission and one of the largest and most diverse collections of animals in the region.
“We have a penguin and puffin exhibit that is really unique,” said group sales director Kathy Lunders. “We also have Jungle of the Apes, a million-dollar exhibit that is just beautiful. During the summer months, we have a stingray exhibit, where people can feed and touch the stingrays. It’s a fun, hands-on experience.”
With 90 acres of property and thousands of animals, the zoo offers plenty of experiences for visitors. Popular spots include Big Cat Country, the Insectarium and Elephant River. The zoo’s railroad takes visitors from one side of the park to the other, and a motion simulator serves up high-tech, nontraditional thrills.
For groups of 15 or fewer, the St. Louis Zoo has created a wide range of behind-the-scenes programs, giving visitors experiences with snakes, lemurs, cheetahs, sea lions and numerous other exotic creatures.
“If they’re doing the penguin encounter, they go behind the scenes, back where the penguins live,” Lunders said. “They bring these showstopper penguins out, and you’re right up next to them. You get to see how they’re cared for, what they eat and how their food is prepared.”
Groups can also take standard tours of the zoo, with docents who give special information about some of the zoo’s most popular residents.
Binder Park Zoo
Battle Creek, Michigan
With a considerable amount of undeveloped woodlands, the Binder Park Zoo takes advantage of its surroundings to give guests an outdoorsy experience.
“We’re known for how natural the environment is around here,” said Carmen Lovett, marketing assistant at the zoo. “We’re in some natural Michigan woodlands and wetlands. You aren’t going to see a whole lot of fencing. We use about 180 acres of the 430 acres that we own.”
The zoo’s layout makes the most of the woods. Visitors walk a forest trail between exhibits; signage points out some of the flora and fauna native to the area. There’s also a pond with a 3/4-mile-boardwalk Swamp Adventure exhibit, inhabited by wetland animals.
Binder Park also features numerous exhibits with African animals.
“Wild Africa is a 19-acre exhibit, with giraffes, zebras, gazelles and antelopes all running through the savannah,” Lovett said. “There are also monkeys and river hogs, and we have a forest farm with cattle, pheasants and other animals that you would find in a forest farm in Africa.”
Big cats from Africa and other continents, such as a pair of snow leopards and five cheetahs, live at the zoo. Visitors can see exotic birds fly by their heads in the zoo’s walk-through aviary or “love birds” in a second enclosed aviary.
