Cameron Park Zoo

Hello again! It’s time to write about Cameron Park Zoo – maybe well past time.  It’s in Waco, so I visited frequently when I was at Baylor.  I like it very much.  Whereas the last three zoos I’ve reviewed here – San Diego, Memphis, and Phoenix – are really big zoos, Cameron Park Zoo is pretty small.  But don’t let that deter you from visiting.  In terms of layout and upkeep (two idioms that are pretty strange) it’s really great. If you haven’t visited Waco (and there’s a good chance you haven’t), you probably don’t realize that McLennan County is naturally quite pretty, especially along the Brazos River.  I surprise some people when I say this since Waco has a pretty ugly reputation, but Cameron Park – which is just next to the downtown area – has some great scenery.  This helps the zoo to look good too.  Take a look. What you see above is the gibbon exhibit to the right of the river and a viewing area on the left.  This is the just about the first thing you see when you come into the zoo.  Not bad.  There are lots of catfish and turtles in the river.  I’m sorry, of course, that you can’t see the gibbons, but they weren’t cooperating. The first stretch of the zoo path is covered by a brightly-colored awning.  I like it, so here’s a picture.

Along this pathway are several smaller exhibits.  First is a bald eagle enclosure which, due to the mesh it’s made of, doesn’t photograph all that well.  The eagles are, like most zoo eagles, injured, and therefore incapable of lasting long in the wild.  It’s a bittersweet site, really.  No one likes to see huge soaring birds unable to soar, but it’s something of a blessing that they’ll be able to spend their handicapped years helping to teach people to appreciate them. Then comes a nice exhibit for Galapagos tortoises.  These are an old favorite of mine.  We used to have them at the San Antonio Zoo – might still, I need to check.  But the old exhibit (in a section of the zoo now redesigned beyond recognition) allowed small children like me to get all too close to them, dividing viewers from living liaisons of prehistory by only a short wooden fence, probably not two-foot tall.  Honestly, I think this close-up experience might have been worth the risk of losing a finger or two (portrayed memorably in a pictograph on a sign for the illiterate), but it probably wasn’t great for the tortoises’ well-being.  This may be why the exhibit was remodeled.  Anyway, the exhibit here in Waco also allows a pretty close examination of these giants, and it has a pretty nicely sized space for them to amble around in, complete with a wee creek for cooling off.  Due to their famously sluggish pace, these turn out to be some of the most photogenic animals out there.

I really like the next exhibit, but can’t photograph it in a way to do it justice.  It’s a South American panorama, maybe a sort of miniature descendent of the kind that Carl Hagenbeck made famous.  The layout (unlike Hagenbeck’s) isn’t actually that complicated, but the effect is really great.  In one exhibit, you have a cliff for birds to nest in, a waterfall that feeds into a swimming hole for capybaras, and a few smaller climbing structures for squirrel monkeys.  I like it very much.  Hagenbeck himself had would have a variety of tiers and carefully hidden walls dividing several species – sometimes predators and prey  – from one another, but giving off the illusion that they were in the same environment.  The idea intrigues me, but the more modern approach seen here, in which several amiable species share the same exhibit, seems safer all around.  The goal of either, though, is to give viewers a look into an ecosystem rather than just a look at a caged animal.  I like it very much.

I apologize for the terrible quality of the following picture.  It’s a king vulture, and it shares the South American panorama exhibit discussed above.  It’s a cool looking bird, so I wanted to include a picture, even if the quality was poor.      

Now we enter one of Cameron Park Zoo’s more unique areas: the Brazos River Country.  This section of the zoo might take up about a third of its property, and exhibits wildlife that lives along the Brazos River in various regions along its steady wind down to the Texas coast.  That being said, though, it begins with coastal wildlife and works it’s way upriver, so the entry point is a model of a sunken ship.

Inside are fish.  What you see is a pretty nice aquarium area complete with saltwater fish you’d find down at the coast.

From there the path takes you out to a walk-through aviary filled with cackling seabirds.  I have yet to see such an exhibit at any other zoo, though I’m not so fond of seagulls that I’ve been looking very hard for one.  That said, it’s a really well-designed exhibit, with plenty of water for the gulls, pelicans, and ducks to paddle around in. The signs have said for years that theirs also a nutria in there, but I’ve never seen it.  The nutria, we should note, is not native to Texas, but was imported from South America and now runs rampant in Texas and Louisiana waterways.  We have them up in the hill country and they’re the cause of quite a bit of damage.  Those of you who know Latin are probably imagining otters right now, as nutria is the Latin name for the otter.  This is one of many New World mis-namings including, but not limited to, calling the jaguar “el tigre”, the skunk a “polecat”, and the elk an elk (we won that battle, but the word “elk” originally meant “moose”).  What can I say? Discovering a new world of plants and animals doesn’t make for an easy time with names.  Since none of us English speakers are likely to ever start calling the otter a nutria, there’s no harm done.  But for those of you who are really picky, the nutria is also called a coypu.  But that got us off topic.   Here’s the seabird exhibit.

Just past this aviary is the alligator exhibit.  To many Texans – especially those from coastal areas – these might not seem unusual enough to warrant zoo exhibits.  They’re not all that hard to find these days, but I’m told that they were on the Endangered Species List not long ago.  A few protective laws and a lot of citizen cooperation later, they seem to be thriving.

You’ll be interested to know that the alligator is, in fact, another case of a misnamed animal.  The word alligator comes from the Spanish, “el lagarto”, or “the lizard”.  By today’s system of classification, this is not a lizard.  But as this was a newly discovered species (distinct from the crocodile and not quite the same as a cayman) it needed its own name.  Alligator now sounds so different from “lagarto” that we’re saved from a nomenclature crisis.

I really like it when aquatic exhibits incorporate an underwater viewing glass.  Cameron Park has done this for their alligators, and the result is good.  But they’ve also designed a great secondary underwater viewing area for kids that, I think, is much better than average.  There’s a little crawl space designed to look sort of like a beaver’s lodge.  Kids (or adults, if there aren’t any kids around) can crawl in here and get a beaver’s-eye view of the alligators.  Don’t let the information sign about beavers fool you, though.  There are not any beavers at this zoo.

Moving away from the coast, we come to the cougar exhibit.  The cougar (puma concolor) is one of the widest ranging cats out there, its territory formerly covering most of North and South America.  These days it’s pretty much extirpated east of the Mississippi but for a little pocket of them in Florida, but there’s talk of cats from the west moving eastward every so often, so things could change.

This exhibit looks to me to be a little too small for the big cats, but since this really isn’t my field I can’t claim to know that with any certainty.  I once met one of the directors of the zoo when he gave us a lecture at Baylor.  I remember him telling us about some of the different factors that went into designing an exhibit, and I got the impression that there are a good few he didn’t mention for fear of boring us, the AZA accreditation process among them.  Given that the zoo is, indeed, accredited by the AZA, I don’t guess that a detail as important as size was left out of the planning for these exhibits.  Another reason not to take my judgements with too much seriousness.

Here we have the American black bear (ursus americanus), one of the most iconic critters in the American wilderness and the mascot of my alma mater.  These bears used to live just about all over the continental U.S. and most of Texas.  They’re still pretty common in a lot of places, and here in Texas are hanging around in parts of East Texas in the Pineywoods and in far West Texas around Big Bend. Their exhibit is pretty slick – it remains the only black bear exhibit I’ve seen that has a prominent underwater viewing glass for in the bears’ swimming area.  The first time I went to this zoo I saw the bears playing with a big ball in the water.  It was sort of like watching gigantic overweight labrador retrievers, which is to say, very entertaining.  On this day, though, they were just sitting there. One thing that’s quite unfortunate about this exhibit – and that I don’t think the zookeepers can do anything about, sadly – is that there are usually somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy buzzards perched all over the rocks making an enormous mess.  I doubt it’s all that enjoyable for the bears to have hoards of neighbors who aren’t toilet trained hanging around their home at all times.  I don’t know how that would be fixed, though.  The buzzards are native, though, and tend to be all over the park.

Right next to the bears we have the otters, who have great little exhibit.  As you can see, they have a big swimming hole – in which they are usually pretty actively flipping and paddling about – and you can watch them through the glass.  To make matters better, the zoo staff have set up several rocking chairs so you can sit back and enjoy the show, and there’s a clear slide that goes through the exhibit so kids feel otter-like.  On more than a few occasions, I’ve seen the otters trying to play with the kids.  You can see one perched on the slide below.

When I was at Baylor, I was told that the otters’ names were Jack and Doris.  I’m not sure these are the same pair – I thought I remembered Jack being a lighter color than most.  Whoever they are, they posed for a photo.

The trail takes you back past the other side of the bear exhibit.  This ursine has a white v-shaped mark on its chest.  This is a trait I tend to associate with Asian black bears (often called moon bears because of it), but apparently some of the American variety have them too.

Another aquarium features fish and turtles from the Brazos River, along with several glass cases with snakes in them.  I’ve included a broad shot below, but aquariums don’t photograph all that well, so I haven’t included any more.  Worth noting are the paddlefish, but pictures didn’t turn out.  If you’re curious you might look them up on Google.

So next up is a predator complex.  The ocelot, the jaguar, and the coyote all have exhibits pretty close to each other.  On this particular trip to the zoo, the ocelot did not come out, so it’s on to the jaguar. Like several other animals on our tour, the jaguar (panthera onca) once had a pretty impressive range.  Best known for prowling the Amazon and the Cloud Forests down in South America, it lived throughout Central America and even up here in the southwestern part of the U.S., including Texas.  Though they were hunted out here in the early part of the twentieth century, I read in Texas Parks and Wildlife a few years ago that the occasional specimen still wonders up from the Mexican desert into Arizona.  I remember the zoo director saying (in the same lecture I mentioned above) that he had seen signs of them in South Texas back when he was doing research on cougars.  This could be quite interesting, but I’ve never learned any more about it.  If any of you know anything about jaguars in Texas, please leave a comment.

The jaguar is the third largest cat out there – following a little ways behind the tiger and the lion.  With that in mind, I really do think that this exhibit might be too small. This red building has a great little exhibit on nocturnal animals, but that means it was too dark to take decent photos in there.

Here we come to the bison exhibit.  It’s a pretty good sized paddock, and there are two tepees just next to it for decoration.  Though the tepees don’t relate directly to the animal, I like their inclusion.  Zoos being the educational facilities that they are, and this segment of this zoo being geared towards Texas critters, it seems good to remind us that the bison – now pretty much gone in these parts – were once a crucial part of a way of life that’s also pretty much gone in these parts.  You get reminders of history along with your natural history lesson.  Good idea.

And here are the great shaggy beasts themselves.  American bison (bison bison) once roamed North American in the millions.  You don’t really need a long lesson on the fact that they don’t anymore, but they’re a reminder of just how easy it is to forget just how different Texas looked just a little over a century ago.  I’d really like to have seen one of the huge herds from back in the old days.  I’ve heard that there are ranchers now who stock them – apparently there’s a growing demand for bison meat – so maybe I’ll have an opportunity at some point.

The Texan wildlife portion of the zoo actually ends with a whitetail deer exhibit, but none of my pictures of the deer were very good.  I am sorry: really none of my pictures were as good at this zoo as they have been on other trips.  I’m familiar with Cameron Park Zoo, and the feeling that I’ll probably be back at some point tends to get in the way of the photographing.  Truth is, I probably won’t be back anytime soon, so the feeling was unwarranted. The next extensive section of the zoo – I think maybe the largest – is the Africa section.  When you first arrive into Little Africa, you step onto an observation deck where you can look out and see the giraffe, rhino, and elephant exhibits.  This photo won’t do that view justice at all.

From there you make your way down ramp and downhill to the exhibits you saw above.  The giraffes share their exhibit with kudu, crowned cranes, and gerenuks.  There’s plenty of room for all of them to wander around, and there are tall feeding stations for the giraffes.  There’s also an indoor giraffe exhibit where you can watch the vets giving checkups to the great gangly grazers. Unless you count the Okapi as a giraffe (and maybe you could, I don’t know), then there’s only one species of giraffe.  I’m not clear on the number of subspecies, but Google has suggested up to nine.  If memory serves, most of the zoos I’ve visited have claimed to host reticulated giraffes, recognizable by the big broad spots.  I’ve recently heard, though, that the reticulated giraffes you find in American zoos are generally mixed bred – not unlike the purported Bengal tigers I mentioned in the Memphis zoo post.  Also like the Bengal tigers, I really don’t have a good enough eye to tell whether the giraffe you see below is or isn’t reticulated.  But maybe you found the information interesting anyway. Also of note, for a long time Cameron Park Zoo had a giraffe that was missing part of its front hoof.  It got around just fine and didn’t seem to be too badly hindered by the injury.  It wasn’t there the last two times I’ve visited.  I missed seeing him – very distinctive creature.  I hope he rests in peace.  The animal you see below was the only giraffe I saw.  I heard, though, that the zoo is planning to get several new Masai giraffes, so it won’t be alone for long.

And here’s a rhino.  It’s a white rhino, distinguishable from a black rhino not, as the names would suggest, but its color, but by the shape of its lip.  The white rhino has a rectangular upper lip, the black rhino a triangular.  Both of these are distinguishable from Indian and Javan rhinos by the fact that the form have two horns each and the latter have one.  Also, the Indian and Javan rhinos have an almost armadillo-like armored appearance.  Those two are distinguishable form each other by their size.  The Sumatran rhino, smallest of the bunch, is, well, the smallest of the bunch, making it difficult to confuse with its cousins.  None of this is really new to you are all that closely related to the CPZ, but I felt like I needed to type something.

Here is an elephant exhibit, in which you can see an African elephant in the background.  It’s not a great picture of the pachyderm, but I wanted to include a shot of the swimming hole.  It seems like a good idea to me to include these big swimming holes in elephant exhibits.  The next step in the development of elephant exhibits should be a glass viewing panel that allows viewers to get an underwater view of elephants swimming.  That would be fun.  If any of you know of such an exhibit that’s already out there, leave a comment to let me know.

Here’s a better shot of the elephant.

Next we come to the zoo’s Asian Trail.  This is where I’ve seen the most change in the time I’ve been going to the zoo.  On my first visit to the CPZ, the only Asian animals in residence were the Sumatran tigers and the gibbons up near the entrance.  At some point in college, though, they added a first-rate orangutan exhibit and a Komodo dragon exhibit, complete with a great little walking path and lots of thematic decorations.  Here’s the entrance.

The first critters you’ll encounter here are the Sumatran tigers (panthera tigris sumatrae).  I’m sorry to tell you, though, that I didn’t have any pictures of them that were good enough to post here.  The exhibit is surround by harp-wire which, as its name suggests, is really thin and looks not unlike harp strings.  Because it’s so thin, this is really pretty good for viewing (and easier for cleaning than plexi-glass would be), but it’s not good for taking pictures.  My camera likes to focus on the wires and turn the tigers into orangie blurs.  Oh well.

Shortly after I left Waco, the CPZ’s tigers had a litter of cubs, followed shortly by another.  The exhibit was renovated to include a little platform in the corner where the keeper – safely surrounded by wires – could work on training and enrichment activities with the cubs.  I think all of those youngsters have grown up, though, and been sent to other AZA facilities.  At least, I didn’t see them the last time I was there.

Here’s a koi pond.

I also didn’t photograph the dragons.  The lighting was such that I couldn’t get a shot without a glare coming off of the glass.  So on to the orangutans.

The orangoutang exhibit is shaped like a doughnut.  I guess this allows the orangutans to have a sort of natural-feeling course for walking in circles, but I can’t really claim to know.  But whatever its merits actually are, this orangoutang enclosure must have some; the zoo was chosen to host an international orangoutang conference back in 2012.  Pretty cool for any zoo, if you ask me, but especially impressive for a little zoo from a medium-sized town in central Texas.

The zoo is now home to four adult orangoutangs: three Bornean (pongo pygmaeus) and one hybrid.  The Borneans are a couple named Mei and Kerajaan, and they recently had a baby girl.  The happy family has not been on display the last few times I’ve been.  Instead, I’ve had the privilege of seeing Muka, the hybrid orangoutang.  Muka is something of a celebrity in Waco due to his abundant personality.  He likes to thumb through magazine, watch football games, and occasionally imitate the gestures of small children he sees outside his exhibit.  He’s been known to correctly predict Super Bowl winners from time to time (I think he tries every year, but I have no idea how exactly he lets the keepers know his pick).  So here he is.

And here’s a shot of the exhibit’s primary viewing area.  I think they did a good job of giving it a bit of a thematic Asian (or Hollywood-Asian, I guess), without going over-the-top.  Feel free to disagree, though.  The exhibit also includes a little viewing area where you can see the orangoutangs in their indoor enclosure.  That’s where you can see Muka looking through magazines if you go at the right time.

So there you have it.  As you can tell, my verdict is positive.  I’m sorry that my language doesn’t show it better – fact is, being a more frequent visitor to an institution makes it harder for me to think of things to say about it.  I’m already convinced I like it, so it’s hard for me to think of ways to convince you other than saying, “look”.  I really like this zoo.  Now of course it’s much smaller than some of the others I’ve reviewed, and unlike some of those (the San Diego Zoo especially) you’re unlikely to want to schedule a trip to Waco just for the sake of the zoo.  But if you’re in Waco for a little while and need something to do, I’d say this is definitely worth your while.  In point of fact, Waco has more to offer than most people think – the Texas Ranger Museum, the Mayborn Museum, and Cameron Park, to name the obvious – but no need to advertise the whole city just now.

Cameron Park Zoo does an excellent job with what it has.  It’s really nicely laid out, most of the exhibits are really good, it’s really pretty clean, and very well planted.  More importantly, it has a great species collection, it takes part in a slew of the AZA’s Species Survival Programs, and it’s the go-to-zoo for a pretty sizable chunk of Central Texas.  This is good news – in a part of the country where most towns are pretty small, you might expect for there to be no zoo available or, what’s worse, for there to be a roadside zoo that doesn’t take proper care of the animals.  Instead, you find Cameron Park Zoo, a top-notch little institution that does a really good job teaching its guests to appreciate wildlife and conservation.  So by all means, visit this zoo.  It’s not all that far off of I-35, so if you’re just passing through Waco, have the time to spare, and like animals, it really is worth your while.

B.