Despite living in Fresno for the last 8 years, I have not once been to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, even though I have heard nothing but good things about it, and have seen shows sponsored by the zoo at unrelated events (like Academic Decathlon, where I first heard about Fresno Chaffee Zoo). I was pleasantly caught off guard on how well done the zoo is. There’s a large variety of animals from various regions, be it from the continent of Africa, Asia, or Australia. I think it’s fair to say the Chaffee Zoo is the best zoo in the Central Valley (though, it’s the only one I’ve visited in the CV).
The largest section of the zoo is currently African Adventure, a relatively vast expanse composing of rhinos, elephants, giraffes (which were not roaming now; instead they were only at the giraffe feeding location), and various other ungulates (most notably, the Greater Kudu, which has very distinctive horns). In case you were wondering, the zoo does have safari activities, but since COVID-19, details about that are murky. Chaffee Zoo has a livestream of its African Adventure (if you’re watching it now, you may pick up on some naughty rhino activitiy…).
You may have noticed that most of the exhibits did not have any obvious barriers between the animals and humans, a concept which aims to show kids animals that aren’t in some kind of prison behind bars. Of course, barriers are there for potentially dangerous predators like lions and komodo dragons (or those with a very high flight risk, like birds for example, pun intended). There is much more about the zoo I could write about, but most of the fun and adventure is going there yourself (and when their new installation Kingdoms of Asia is finally open).
