I'm sure that is most the reason. A person in Australia probably won't spend much time at a kangaroo exhibit. If you ever get the chance, it is incredible to see bison in the wild. They are majestic. Even though I have seen them in the wild I do like to see wolves and bears in zoos.
I think the pack dynamic with wolves is fascinating. And bears are always fun! So I can definitely understand that.
On a visit to Yellowstone some years ago, my friends and I got caught in our hire car in the middle of a herd of bison rushing across the road to the river. It was both exciting and terrifying (mostly because we were in a hire car). We longed to see a glimpse of the wolves when there, but to no avail, nor moose. But we did see elk and pronghorn, and a couple of distant glimpses of bears (too far away to determine if they were black or grizzly bears). One day I am determined to go back and spend more time wildlife watching there.
The Detroit Zoo has a substantial amphibian house and while since I live nearby and go often I don't hit everything each visit, I do stop by at Amphibiville from time to time but I'm not able to summon up much interest in the amphibians.
The only ones I actively avoid are anything with bats. I got attacked by a bat years ago and it created a severe phobia. I've gotten better - I can talk about them! and I've managed to walk really fast past some smaller bat exhibits - but I'm not yet at a point where I can actually stare at them, or be near them if you can hear their noises from outside their exhibit (like in Philly). I only recently became interested in birds, and now I find the aviaries to be some of the most exciting places in zoos. I generally skip alligators/crocs and tortoises, they're usually doing absolutely nothing and the exhibits rarely have enough light for me to get any decent photos.
I've never been comfortable with cetaceans in captivity - as I've mentioned on other forums - so tend to avoid those exhibits.
Came across a bison while walking on a trail at Caprock Canyon state park. It got ten feet away from us, I thought I was gonna die, lol. Really cool though. Also saw big groups at the park, love seeing animals interact with each other. Same here. Other than that, there aren't really any exhibits I avoid. Usually when I go to zoos and aquariums I make it a point to go early enough so I have time to see everything, so there's no reason to skip stuff. Well, I don't usually bother with petting zoo/farm areas, but that's about it.
I usually try to see everything when I visit a zoo, though I often skip the farm sections, since I find domesticated animals a lot less interesting than wild species. I do like chickens though. As for the animatronic dinosaurs mentioned previously in this thread, I would like them a lot more if they all weren’t so dang inaccurate.
Petting zoo exhibits and animatronic dinosaurs. Prefer living wild animals to domesticated ones or models of extinct ones. Knowing that, because I'm only 14 and always with my family when I go to zoos, my time will always be limited, I often skip bug houses and butterfly walk-throughs by default, as invertebrates fascinate me the least. If my time budget is even smaller, I might skip reptile or amphibian houses or aviaries in favor of the exhibits of mammals, my favorite taxa, unless they've got something really notable I couldn't find at another facility easily. (And sometimes not even then-- I can remember going to the Detroit Zoo at least six times, yet I've never seen the world-famous Amphibiville, as with the route we usually take around the zoo, by the time we get to it my siblings are always nagging to leave.)
I always skip dinosaur animatronics, and often petting zoos. Except those, I always try to see every exhibit.
