The Bronx Zoo Children’s Zoo Grows Up

©WCS/Julie Maher

Never criticize a turtle until you’ve walked a mile in its shell. That’s the lesson the Bronx Zoo’s Children’s Zoo has been teaching kids since it opened in May 1981. And for the past 25 years, the Zoo’s smallest visitors have not only been climbing in and out of turtle shells, but popping up in prairie dog towns, birds’ nests, and rock grottos, too. In addition to getting a feel for different types of animal homes, generations of children have experienced firsthand how a variety of creatures move, defend themselves, and sense the natural world. They have dashed out of trouble like lizards on tree slides and warned off danger by releasing a whiff of stinky skunk. They have hopped like wallabies, scuttled like spiders, and fed many, many handfuls of grain to goats, sheep, and llamas.

©WCS

The Children’s Zoo wasn’t always quite so wild. When the original exhibit opened in 1941, its nursery-rhyme theme taught children to fear spiders and wolves and to pity a trio of blind mice. But in 1979, General Director Richard Lattis, then curator of education, decided the Children’s Zoo needed a new approach. “As a conservation organization, we had to think about what message we were passing onto kids,” he said, when asked about Mother Goose’s dubious lessons. As a boy growing up in the country, Lattis spent days looking under rocks to see what was hiding beneath them, and studying the natural world. “I wanted to give urban kids the same opportunities to explore as kids in a rural area get,” he said. In fact, he added, he wanted them to be able to “relate to animals in a way that you can’t do even in the wild.”

And so Lattis replaced the clock, the wishing well, and the toadstool with a marsh, a woodland edge, a desert, and a forest, and filled them with many of the creatures that live in these wild habitats. The cozy, three-acre setting has become a fantasy for young explorers. By watching prairie dogs snack on veggies or night herons build stick-nests, visitors who love snack time or playing with building blocks can see that they are part of the animal world. “Having a special place of their own is very important for children,” Lattis said. “And developing an appreciation for wildlife is a stepping stone to becoming a grown-up conservationist.”

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