Kids start their Animal Adventure
Monday 30 March 2009
The kids that helped create Animal Adventure, ZSL London Zoo's new £2.3m children’s zoo, were given one final task - to road test some of the very features they dreamt up.
© ZSL
Pupils from Gower School in Islington, north London, got to be the first young people to experience the new exhibit and see just how their ideas, such as secret child-only viewing areas, have been included.
Through a series of brainstorms, storytelling and activity sessions last summer, the schoolchildren helped ZSL tailor plans for Animal Adventure
and make it completely child-focused.
All about children
Keeper Jim Mackie said: "Animal Adventure is all about children, predominantly, having fun.
"It's about them enjoying themselves, coming into this area and see really amazing animals and while they are going around the different zones they can learn a little bit as well."
The new exhibit, which opens on 3rd April, is a radical re-development of the old children’s zoo. It features a pair of endangered red pandas, the return of aardvarks after a 20-year absence from the Zoo, and four porcupines including spiky punk princesses Blondie and Nancy.
Grown-up-free areas
Animal Adventure captures the excitement and magic of the animal kingdom for children. Its fantastic grown-up-free areas include a living igloo, tree house and tunnels leading to secret viewing windows that bring kids nose-to-nose with aardvarks and meerkats.
The development is part of ZSL’s commitment to inspiring children about nature so they want to help protect animals and their habitats in the future.
ZSL London Zoo opened the world’s first children’s zoo in 1938 on the same spot that Animal Adventure will now open, paving the way for zoos around the world to inspire young children to engage with animals.
