Taking into account the entirety of a city's zoological offerings, which one offers the best experience? Feel free to use whatever criteria you wish but please explain your methodology. City = metropolitan area
I think Berlin is the best city for zoological offerings. It has the zoo, Tierpark and natural history museum.
Singapore. Has the Zoo, Night Safari, River Safari, Jurong Bird Park, and Turtle and Tortoise Museum... Also the SEA Aquarium if you include Sentosa Island as being in the city. Plenty of wild animals throughout Singapore as well including monkeys, colugos, otters, hornbills...
Add to that the Sea Life, ACTP (parrot breeding centre) and the private carnivore zoo in Sydower Fliess . So in Europe it is probably the best. Though I also like Paris, which has 2 zoos, 2 aquaria and a fantastic natural history museum within the city proper, and a safaripark (Thoiry), Parc des Felins close to the city.
Defining if that is a metropolitan area, the greater tokyo area is the best.I doubt any metropolitan area have more zoo/aquarium with it.Inside it enormous area,the zoo/aquarium are:Ueno zoo,tama zoo,zoorasia,nogeyama zoo,kanazawa zoo,tokyo sea life park,epson aquarium,sumida aquarium,yokohama sea paradise,kamogawa sea world,and more.....
What do you think of my native San Diego? Zoo, safari park and SeaWorld are the big three. Two smaller aquariums are also here, namely Birch and SeaLife.
Melbourne - Melbourne zoo - Melbourne Sealife Aquarium - Healesville Sanctuary - Moon Lit Sanctuary - Werribee Open Range Zoo - Gumbaya - Melbourne museum also has a few cool animals on display
We get into difficulties with distances here. For an Australian (or American) Healesville is just a short drive outside the city, but most Europeans would consider it a huge distance, and certainly not eligible for this thread.
While it would technically fit my criteria, Tokyo is kind of in a league of its own when it comes to scale.
In comparative terms for a UK/European viewpoint, the distance between Melbourne Zoo and Healesville Sanctuary as the crow flies is similar to the distance between: Liverpool and Manchester Glasgow and Edinburgh Vienna and Bratislava Antwerp and Rotterdam Tallinn and Helsinki
I would definately suggest Tokyo. Tier 2: Berlin, New York City, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Diego, Chicago, Seattle-Tacoma. Tier 3: Tampa, Boston, and San Antonio (SA Zoo, Snake Farm, Sea World, Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch are within the metro area. Overall varying quality...but pretty rich collection. San Antonio maybe should be moved to Tier 2 really.)
Dallas-Fort Worth You have the "Big 4" in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex: -Fort Worth Zoo -Dallas Zoo -Dallas World Aquarium -Fossil Rim Wildlife Center - Glen Rose Plus 8-10 other smaller institutions like Sea Life Grapevine, Children's Aquarium at Fair Park, Texas Discovery House, and the Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary...if you want to venture out a bit further, you could even do things like the Frank Buck Zoo, East Texas Gators & Wildlife Park, International Exotic Animal Sanctuary, and more. Heck, even Waco (Cameron Park Zoo) is only an hour and a half away.
Chicago has Brookfield Zoo Lincoln Park Zoo Shedd Aqaurium Peggy Notebaert Nature Mueseum It also has the Lincoln Park Conservatory, which although it is not a zoo, it has a Goldfish pond.
If "best" means: Biggest diversity of living animals, then 1 San Diego 2 Chicago (mostly because of Shedd's fishes and invertebrates, negative: lack of elephants) 3 Berlin (negative: lack of cetaceans) 4 Singapore 5 Dallas/Ft. Worth 6 Tokyo 7 Melbourne (negative: cleary fewer exotics then other cities) 8 New York 9 Peking 10 Shanghai followed by San Antonio, Plzen, Tampa, Prague, London, Paris. Note: If we are looking at the distances, probably the entire Ruhr area in Germany might be No. 1.
For latín América México city Chapultepec zoo San Juan de Aragón zoo Los coyotes zoo Acuario Inbursa Havana Zoológico Nacional Acuario Nacional Havana city zoo Acuario Parque Lenin Sao Paulo Sao Paulo aquarium Sao Paulo zoo and Safari park Guarlhos zoo Sorocaba zoo
Havana came also to my mind, but then I had doubts about the number of species in those institutions (and how accurate "official" datas are). Any idea? Also, I was not able to figure out how many species Sao Paulo Aquarium has. And would all 4 Institutions together in SP reach 1200 species and more?
Sorocaba is far out, and if you're going that far you can count Zooparque Itatiba and many other collections. Even if the boundary is limited to Guarulhos, don't forget Instituto Butantan!
Estimado devilfish, Yes you are Right, Sorocaba should be replaced by instituto butantan. So Sao Paulo would be Sao Paulo aquarium Sao Paulo zoo and Safari park Guarhlhos zoo Instituto butantan I do believe that Sao Paulo is the best zoo city in latín América because the collections have the largest number of and most diverse species,which is not surprising due to the great biodiversity that Brazil has.
The México city zoos all together have about 350 or 380 species. Acuario Inbursa is growing still and adding new species but it now has over 350 species. Zoológico Nacional is the largest animal collection in Cuba and could have about 350 species though information is hard. to find. Havana city zoo has 180 species. Acuario nacional has 350 species. I could find no official information on the small aquarium at parque Lenin.
