Living Desert Zoo And Gardens

My son gasped in delight as the mama giraffe’s black tongue curled around his offered lettuce at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens. The twin baby giraffes ambled over next, 10-foot-high heads silhouetted against Palm Springs’ iconic rocky peaks and bright blue sky.

“Isn’t that the best thing since sliced bread?” said Lenny Slatko, a volunteer overseeing the giraffe feeding. “This isn’t your normal zoo. It’s a marvelous place and everybody has a smile.”

Slatko spouted off facts about the Masai giraffes as the kids fed the gentle giants and their grandparents snapped photos.

• The tongues engulfing our lettuce grow to a foot and a half long.
• Giraffes eat for 16 to 20 hours per day, gulping down up to 75 pounds of leaves.
• These mammals sleep a scant 5 to 30 minutes every 24 hours, usually in a series of minute-long naps.

After bidding adieu to our new long-legged friends, we circled through the rest of the African Safari section of the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens. The kids marveled at black rhinos, pet the sprightly Nigerian dwarf goats and watched with mouths agape as a zookeeper fed a pair of cheetahs.

By the time we entered the Australian Adventures enclosure, it was unanimous: The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens was everyone’s favorite event during our recent visit to Palm Springs.

Living Desert Zoo And Gardens Offers Fun For Everyone

Tourists who appreciate up-close adventures with exotic animals should definitely add the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens to their Southern California bucket list. From springbok to jaguars, wolves to pythons, more than 600 animals roam in large, natural exclosures broken into three continents: Africa, Australia and the Americas.

Free-range wallabies hopped right up to us as we strolled through the Australia enclosure. My son fell in love with a pack of African painted dogs, and my daughter was obsessed with a mountain lion who pranced back and forth in front of her. My mother-in-law, an avid walker, was impressed with the extensive botanical gardens, which boast 1,200 different plant species. We walked a shady loop between different types of palm trees while the kids and their grandfather took photos of cute mongoose.

The zoo’s many friendly volunteers are always on hand to answer questions, give side tours or help visitors interact with animals. Beyond wildlife, the zoo offers a variety of special events on its lovely 1,200-acre landscape, like Family Camps, Wildlights, Hoppy Hours and Walking Clubs on its many miles of hiking trails.

Conservation First: Helping Animals In Need

After enjoying a lunch of pizza and pasta on an outdoor patio (complete with flocks of passing parakeets to entertain us), we met up with Slatko again at the zoo’s veterinary hospital. All of the zoo’s 600 animals get regular checkups. “Even wallabies need their teeth cleaned,” Slatko told my kids.

He showed us the 20-foot-tall padded room designed specifically for caring for giraffes, explaining that the hospital is equipped “to care for the smallest and the largest animals” at the zoo.

Slatko took us to see some of the smallest animals next. Dozens of tiny, just-hatched baby tortoises were crawling around under warming lamps. The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens is working with partners to restore wild populations of the desert tortoise, which is critically endangered.

After six months of eating nutritious food in the safety of the zoo’s hospital, the babies will be moved to an outdoor facility where they’ll acclimatize to the desert and learn how to avoid predators. Then biologists will release them into the wild, monitoring their survival with radio trackers attached to their shells.

Slatko explained that the zoo has teams involved in 80 conservation projects in 12 countries on three different continents. They are also helping to reintroduce wolves and pronghorn into the deserts around Palm Springs and restoring habitat throughout southern California.

“This zoo is about conservation first, education second,” Slatko said. “It’s a special place because we really, truly make a difference.”

For our family, the trip to Palm Spring’s Living Desert Zoo and Gardens made the difference between a good vacation and a great one.