Zoo Review: Chattanooga Zoo at Warner Park, Part I

Among the zoo-loving community, Chattanooga, Tennessee, is best known as the home to the Tennessee Aquarium.  The pleasant, mid-sized city along the Tennessee River is also home to the pleasant, mid-sized Chattanooga Zoo in Warner Park, just a few minutes drive away.  Chattanooga Zoo is often overshadowed not only by the Aquarium, but by the larger Tennessee zoos - Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and even Zoo Atlanta really isn't that far away.  For it's small size (13 acres, or twice the size of the diminutive Central Park Zoo, and much of that is taken up with an event field), it manages to hold a surprising variety of popular zoo species, while managing not to feel too overcrowded.

The current zoo actually represents Chattanooga's second zoo, the first being a short-lived attraction at the turn of the last century.  This zoo opened in the late-1930s, consisting of a pair of monkeys.  The zoo is geographic in theme, with the African area being the first section most visitors see.  It isn't overburdened with megafauna, which is just as well considering the zoo's small size, but does manage a representative selection of the continent's wildlife in two exhibit areas.

Makazi ya Twiga (Swahili for "House of Giraffes") is the newest exhibit in the zoo.  I don't consider it to be an especially impressive habitat, though to be fair, I find most giraffe habitats kind of meh, as if there is something about their occupants that just tends to not inspire imagination among zoo planners.  It's a basic paddock with the inevitable feeding platform, as well as indoor viewing that also features habitats for duikers and African birds.

The second half of Africa is represented in Gombe Forest, home to the zoo's chimpanzees.  The chimps have an outdoor habitat, along with a dayroom which is visible from inside a second building, which also features black crested mangabey monkeys and a few herps and inverts.  Again, the chimp exhibit is adequate, though a little uninspired, and perhaps standing to benefit from more vertical opportunities.  The exhibit was built to house Hank, a wild-born chimp who came to the zoo in 1976 and was its star resident  until his passing in 2011.  There is an adjacent outdoor aviary to the building, though at the time of my visit it was closed off, presumably due to concerns about avian influenza, which has been responsible for the closure of many aviaries to protect the health of the occupants.

Compared to Africa, I preferred the smaller, more compact Himalayan Passage, the stars of which are the red pandas.  Red pandas can be notoriously sensitive to heat, so they have indoor and outdoor habitats, allowing them to enjoy air conditioning in the summers (the indoor habitat here is apparently the largest indoor red panda habitat in the country, if not the world).  The Himalayan-themed pagoda also includes a few small reptile exhibits, while outdoors are balcony-level views of habitats for white-cheeked gibbon and snow leopard.  These two exhibits can also be seen on the ground level, alongside an aviary of endangered Bali mynah (an Indonesian species, incidentally - some of the small side-exhibits at Chattanooga don't always quite match thematically with their main exhibits).  A habitat for Chinese alligators is nearby.

Nearby is the Warner Park Ranch, where visitors can meet domestic animals in a petting barn setting, including dromedary camels.  

We'll continue the exploration of the Chattanooga Zoo at Warner Park tomorrow.

Chattanooga Zoo at Warner Park