Zoo Review: Naples Zoo

Before there was a Naples Zoo, there were the Caribbean Gardens.  In 1917, Dr. Henry Nehrling, a Wisconsin-born botanist who had moved to Florida to pursue his passion for horticulture, had come to the sad conclusion that even Central Florida had the potential to get too cold for his favorite plants.  After losing much of his collection to a cold snap, the good doctor relocated two years later about as far south as he could get, to Naples on Florida's southwest coast.  Here his collection thrived... at least until his own death ten years later, after which it sank into disrepair.

A few decades later the gardens were reopened to the public by Julius Fleischmann Jr, who re-branded them as the Caribbean Gardens. Tropical garden attractions are a dime-a-dozen in southern Florida, and Caribbean Gardens might have shuttered its gates again if not for a twist of fate -  a visit from Colonel Lawrence and Nancy "Jane" Tetzlaff.  Known popular as "Jungle Larry" and "Safari Jane," the Tetzlaffs were animal collectors who were looking for a place to winter their collection.  In 1969, Caribbean Gardens reopened as a botanical garden and a zoo.

Like Zoo Miami, a modest drive across Florida's southern tip, Naples Zoo (as it has since been renamed) is a subtropical paradise that allows many tropical and Florida native species to be exhibited in lush, densely planted habitats, all amidst a verdant jungle-like setting.

The first thing most visitors will see upon entering the zoo is the spectacular Safari Canyon, an open-air wildlife theater where educational demonstrations with animals (including venomous reptiles) are presented to the public.  Servals, parrots, and sloths are among the other animals that might make a guest appearance to the delight of zoo visitors.  Overshadowing the theater in a quite literal sense is a massive ficus tree that predates the zoo.

The first animal exhibit that you are likely to encounter is Alligator Bay, a massive lagoon that houses several large American alligators... because it's Florida, and state law requires an alligator exhibit wherever you go.  Cynicism aside, it's easily one the best gator exhibits I've ever seen - what it lacks in intimacy (no underwater viewing, no up-close views), it makes up for with panoramic viewing of a large habitat that looks so natural that if there weren't signs and you weren't in a zoo, you'd probably just assume that they were wild alligators swimming around or hauled out on the beach.  Feeding and training demonstrations give visitors a new insight into the surprisingly complex behavior and learning ability of what most tourists (and locals) assume to be big, dumb eating machines.



Meandering down the trail, visitors will pass habitats for giant anteater, red-rumped agouti, and cotton-top tamarins, all very much at home in the warm climate.  A hillside yard houses two African antelope from very different habitats - strikingly-colored bongos from the rainforests of Central Africa and sandy, highly-endangered slender-horned gazelles from the northern deserts.  Further down the trail is a habitat of beautiful clouded leopards, as well as African lions, which can be viewed up close through windows.  Visitors can watch a small herd of zebras nearby while they wait for their turn for the zoo's main attraction.

Dwarfing even Alligator Bay is the zoo's version of Lake Victoria, a large body of water studded with several small islands.  Each of those islands is home to primates - siamangs, ring-tailed lemurs, and black-and-white colobus monkeys among them.  Of course, monkeys and lemurs and gibbons can be hard to see from shore, but thankfully the zoo has a solution.  Visitors are loaded onto boats and taken for a guided tour of the lake, cruising close to the animals while receiving narration about their lives, behavior, and conservation.  Guided tours are always kind of hit-or-miss with me -  I like the information, but I also enjoy seeing the animals at my own pace, having the chance to loop back for second looks or sit and watch a while longer if something catches my eye.  It's a relatively short ride, but it does offer some cool views of some neat primates.  At the time of my visit there were a few relative rarities among the collection (such as a Hanuman langur, the only one I'd ever seen), but they were older specimens and in the act of being phased out, I suspect, to make room for other species that are part of Species Survival Plans.

Like every other visitor, I suspect, I did ask the guide if there were alligators in the water around the primate islands.  They said that there were not, as that water is actually brackish, which gators tend to avoid.  The boat takes you back to where you started, over by the zebras and lions.  From there, you're free to explore the rest of the zoo, which we'll tackle in the next post.

Naples Zoo