2022 US Trip – Day 4 (Bronx Zoo)

If you book in advance, then Wednesdays are free of charge at Bronx Zoo. And, I wasn’t going to turn that chance down, I love a zoo and needed to cut costs somewhat with the dreadful exchange rate. I might be mentioning that a lot during this trip.

Here are some of my favourite photos from the day, with a few of my random comments at the end.

The zoo would have cost me just under £40 to go in if I hadn’t got free admission, which would have been a lot. However, I enjoyed my time at the zoo although the signage was a bit ropey in places. My free admission enabled me to get into most parts of the zoo, although there were some exhibits that were chargeable and so I skipped those. I’ve also never seen a zoo with so many food concessions dotted around the place, there were tens of them. New Yorkers must spend big on refreshments whilst perambulating around the zoo.

I didn’t see some of the big ticket animals, although I had better not start a debate on speciesism, fascinating though that debate is. There was though still plenty to see, with a particularly strong focus on reptiles and birds, which form most of the above photos. I only discovered after my visit that a snake escaped in 2011 (they’re shifty like that) and managed to hide for a week before they found it. The zoo hadn’t closed during that time, but they thought they’d better shut the reptile house until the venomous snake was found.

I saw a bear from a distance, but didn’t see any sign of the gorillas, elephants, tigers or numerous other animals, but there was enough else to keep me occupied. The zoo was instrumental in saving the bison from going extinct in the United States, which now makes me feel guilty as I had bison burgers yesterday. For one shocking story, the article on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ota_Benga is, well, odd to say the least, it’s from a time when the zoo put a pygmy on display which I’m not sure was an entirely well thought through decision even for the early twentieth century.