Opole – Opole Zoo

I like zoos, so since the weather was acceptable and I thought it might be quiet being a Friday during term time, I decided to pay Opole Zoo a little visit. Entrance was around £5, which is cheap by international standards, but it makes it one of the more expensive tourist attractions in the region.

The whole zoo seemed quite modern, although this is because the previous one got flooded in storms in the late 1990s, so nearly everything here was reconstructed after that. The collections got larger, the zoo was modernised and it also took over more land in the city’s park.

The zoo wasn’t particularly busy today (a Friday in late September), around ten other visitors, plus a school party which I never actually saw again other than at the entrance. I’m assuming they went to some form of educational classroom as part of their visit, but all told, I wasn’t exactly fighting for viewing room to see the animals.

There were a lot of owls at the zoo, rather beautiful birds.

A playful primate.

This frightened me. It’s a cheetah and the thing came careering over towards me and looked like he was going to jump. The enclosure here doesn’t have high fences, more just a big dip in the ground so that the cheetah can’t physically jump out. However, it didn’t look like a very big dip, so I was concerned the bloody thing was going to jump over. Being naturally cautious, I rushed off and Googled “can cheetahs kill humans?”, which was actually reassuring. It seems if the cheetah had of jumped out, it was unlikely to have tried to attack me.

I’m assuming this is a normal cat, not one of the animals belonging to the zoo. Zoos don’t seem like safe places for cats like this, I’m not sure what the cheetahs would make of it.

A very philosophical look I thought.

And his friend looked relaxed.

Hippos.

Zebras.

A horse thing.

All of the enclosures at the zoo seemed spacious, so the animal welfare seemed at the top of their agenda. This serval seemed a bit manic though, he wasn’t only pacing, but was doing so almost by walking around in mini circles.

Californian sea lions.

Not deliberately, but I think I woke the cat up.

Cute.

Mischievous.

Tall.

The zoo has three lowland gorillas, although they decided to sit at one of the furthest points possible from where visitors could see them.

A goat on a rock.

This is one of the bird areas where visitors can walk through ferns and plants to see different types of bird. Although I only saw two little birds who soon hopped off.

And a meerkat, who I named Leon.