Zoo Review: Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Part II

Continuing from yesterday, visitors to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum will enter the Desert Grassland, home to many seldom-seen but fascinating residents of the desert.  Compared to the giants seen in the Mountain Woodland trail, many of the animals seen here are cryptic and smaller.  The most popular with many visitors will be the black-tailed prairie dogs, which once shaped the landscape with their vast, sprawling colonies.  Those colonies were historically (and to a lesser extent still are) home to a wide variety of grassland residents, such as burrowing owls and snakes, which can be seen here in a series out outdoor, glass-fronted habitats. 

For me, the most extraordinary animal that I saw in the entire museum was here – the grasshopper mouse.  Granted, it was very hard to see, in a small, nocturnal exhibit with horrible glare from the sun.  Still, this was the only occasion on which I’ve ever seen these awesome, predator little rodents, known for their habit of howling at the moon and chasing down and eating scorpions and other small animals.  It took me several loops though the grounds before I finally caught sight of the little critter, and the pictures I took barely show it, but I was still thrilled to get a chance to finally see this animal I’d heard so much about.  I would have loved for this species to have had a display that highlighted it better, but with a tiny, nocturnal animal, I’m not sure what that would look like, to be honest.  It would be a fascinating challenge, to be sure.

Even more small desert dwellers can be seen in the nearby Life on the Rocks, a series of multi-species habitats of birds (including charismatic roadrunners), amphibians, and lizards from the region in large dioramas.  There are a decent number of model animals scattered around the area, and I will confess, there were times when I was uncertain as to whether I was looking for live animals or being directed towards a model, outside the enclosure.  Still, it was a great exhibit with natural habitats that conveyed an important lesson about how animals are able to survive in such a seemingly hostile environment.  Kids can get their own idea of what “Life on the Rocks” is like in the nearby Packrat Playhouse, a darkened indoor playroom where kids (and adults) can pretend that they’ve been shrunk to the size of a rodent and explore the wonder – and danger – of a desert from that vantage point.

Life on the Rocks is part of Desert Loop Trail, which features vast, open habitats for two of the Sonora’s most iconic species.  Unlike the wolves, bears, and pumas seen in the Mountain Woodland, collared peccaries and coyotes are still very much present.   Here they can be seen not as backyard nuisances – tippers over of trashcans, snatchers of small pets – but as true wild animals.  When I first saw the peccaries, I actually froze for a second – I thought they were actually free-roaming, an illusion heightened by the fact that their exhibit is on both sides of the path, connected by an underpass.  When I walked by the enormous coyote habitat, I thought to myself, I’m sure this would look cool, if you were to ever see one in here.  At that exact moment, a coyote seemingly materialized in front of me, than trotted off across the meadow and disappeared into some scrub.  It was beautiful.

More carnivores can be seen in Cat Canyon, home to bobcat, ocelot, and gray fox, which can be viewed from above or from a cool, glass-fronted viewing gallery at eye-level.  Nearby, the Riparian Corridor, seemingly out of place in a desert museum, houses such unexpected animals as beavers and river otters.  These aquatic mammals can be seen underwater in a viewing gallery, which also includes a sneak-peek into the beavers’ lodge and exhibits of freshwater fish and invertebrates.  White-nosed coati inhabit a sprawling yard outside, just next to what is perhaps the ASDM’s most iconic habitat – a towering mountain home for bighorn sheep, with a handsome ram overseeing the herd.

Life Underground is a dark tunnel that is supposed to transport visitors to the hidden world of small animals that live under the surface.  I saw “supposed to” because apart from a single gecko, I didn’t actually see any.  It was unclear as to whether this gallery was still in use, or if it had been phased out by some of the newer habitats.  I don’t like to judge exhibits unless I see the animals in them, but I have to admit I found this area somewhat dreary and bland, with small habitats.  I think that the concept is great and it has the potential to be a great immersive experience – it just definitely needs some freshening up.

Finally, we come to two walk-through aviaries.  The first is a traditional desert aviary – beautifully landscaped, though I have to admit I was disappointed by how few birds I actually saw in it.  I’d been really looking forward to this exhibit as a chance to see some local desert birds that I had never seen before.  Instead, I saw some quail, a few ducks, and cardinals. 

I was far, far more impressed with the hummingbird aviary.  I’m from a part of the country with a single species of hummingbird, and almost never see any – of any species – in zoos.  Here, there were a half-dozen species, flitting around beautiful to the obvious delight of visitors.  In the wild, my views of these birds have always been very fleeting, barley registering them as birds instead of, I don’t know, very fast butterflies.  I was surprised at how well I was able to observe the birds here, seeing several of them actually perching, which let me get very good looks at them from surprisingly close-up.  If there was one thing I would have changed about this aviary, it would have been better identification signage.  Even with all the pictures I took, I’m still not sure what some of the species I saw in there were. 

At certain times of the year, even more birds can be seen in a beautiful free-flight demonstration with Harris’ hawks and other native raptors.


Again, it is worth remembering that the campus is more than a zoo – it is also an art gallery, geological museum, and, perhaps above all else, a botanical garden.  Besides the natural landscaping, which provides an excellent opportunity to see animals in their natural habitat, there are several themed, planned gardens, such as agave, cacti, and pollinators.  Not only do these gardens serve an educational and aesthetic purpose, they also serve to draw more native wildlife to the grounds and provide suitable habitat.

What struck me as odd as I walked around the grounds of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum was how little I had heard about it lately.  When I was younger, just beginning to seriously delve into the world of zoos, it seemed like I read about it in every book I took home from the library – how progressive it was, how it was the future of zoos, etc, etc.  I don’t hear nearly so much about it anymore.

Part of that, I suspect, is that we often hear about zoos and aquariums as they expand and grow, and the ASDM does relatively little of that.  It has a pretty narrow focus, so it’s limited into how much it could add on or change its collection.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course.  It just makes it harder to stay in the news when so many other facilities (including neighboring Reid Park Zoo and Phoenix Zoo) are growing and changing constantly.

Also, to be honest, some of the exhibits have aged poorly, and while they may have been beautiful and revolutionary when they opened, seem a little dull now.  Life Underground was the biggest offender in my book, but Cat Canyon underwhelmed me also, and even the large carnivore exhibits in the Mountain Woodland paled in comparison to the beautiful habitats for coyotes and peccaries in the Desert Loop.  There is a limit to how much change the museum will actually see, but I think freshening up and redoing some of those habitats would make a huge improvement, both in terms of the visitor experience and animal husbandry.

It would have been almost impossible for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum to live up to all of the hype I had in my mind, though I did still enjoy it very much.  Partially it was the innovative exhibits, such as the hummingbird aviary and Life on the Rocks.  Part of it was the chance to see so many smaller, cryptic native species that I had never seen anywhere else, such as the grasshopper mouse, elf owl, and Sonoran green toad, to name a few.  Largely, it was an expression of how happy I was to see in person a concept that I had always admired – the marriage of the zoo, aquarium, botanical garden, and geological/natural history museum.  I feel like the concept could be expanded on even more, tying in the history and anthropology of the region (done tastefully, in cooperation and under the supervision of local First Nations, for example). 

I came to the Desert Museum as a zoo professional, and it was the animals that I was most excited to see.  An ecosystem is more than her animals, though – it’s the combination of all of the living and nonliving factors, blended in harmony.   The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum does a great job of teaching that lesson.

PS: One final word of advice.  All of the animals seen in this facility are native to the Sonora.  They are able to survive here, in many cases, by not being active during hot midday periods, either sleeping in the shade, hiding underground, or whatever.  Plan your visit accordingly.  This might not be a best place to visit on a July noon.

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum