In 1948, on a small island off the coast of Miami, Florida, the Crandon Park Zoo had its start when three monkeys, a goat, and two black bears were purchased for the price of $270 from a road show. Nearly 20 years later, in 1967, the collection of animals swelled to 1,200 animals, and the zoo was named among the top 25 zoos in the United States, receiving international recognition that same year for the first captive birth and rearing of an aardvark.
That same year, the zoo obtained two Asian elephants, Dalip and Seetna, who produced three offspring, also an uncommon achievement in the middle of the 20th Century. The following year, 1968, the zoo received an animal that was only the second of its kind brought to the U.S. — a white tiger — all this, despite severe damage from a hurricane three years earlier in 1965.
In the five years that followed, the Zoological Society Board decided to find a new home for the zoo, and applied for 600 acres of the recently available Richmond Naval Air Station land, beginning the first steps of what would become the Miami Metrozoo .
Travelers today, passing through the city or staying at a boutique Miami hotel , may see over a hundred exhibits at the zoo, which now contains over two thousand animals that represent more than 400 species, a long way from the original monkeys, goat, and bears. Over forty species represented are endangered; there’s seventy species of birds alone in the Wings of Asia Aviary. In an exhibit known as Dr. Wilde’s World, there are ten thousand to fifteen thousand Italian honey bees. The zoo serves as a kind of botanical garden as well, with over a thousand species of trees, palms, and other types of plants. The Eastern Airlines Orchid Society also cares for hundreds of orchids in the trees.
Animals first purchased for the zoo include a two-year-old black rhino named Cora, in 1973. Since that time, the zoo continued to grow, with the establishment in 1984 of the Wings of Asia exhibit, which allows birds a 1.6 acre free-flight aviary. The following few years saw the addition of African hoofed stock in the African savanna section. Toward the end of the 80s, the zoo saw the addition of a section on Australian animals, such as koalas, kangaroos and wallabies. The zoo, in 1989, had the distinction of having the first koala born on the East Coast.
With all the animals visitors may see here — animals such as Asian otters, a blood python, clouded leopards, muntjac deer, fly-river turtles, Cuban Crocodiles and Squirrel Monkeys — children might best like the camel rides available for the last two years in the Children’s Zoo. Guests may sit atop a dromedary camel — one humped, seven feet tall, and about a thousand to thirteen hundred pounds in weight — and experience this ancient African and Asian form of transportation.
