San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Whether it’s a bounding kangaroo, a feisty Tasmanian devil, or a stuffed-animal-cute koala bear, the fascinating animals of Australia are an entertaining assortment. This expansive Conrad Prebys Australian Outback exhibit at the San Diego Zoo aims to let you see and learn about these intriguing creatures—some of them extremely rare—in attractive enclosures that mimic their natural habitats Down Under, and provide clever viewing areas.

For example, wide decks wrapping around Queenslander House (a replica of an 1800s house from Queensland, Australia) overlook the koala colony, putting you at eye level with the bear-like creatures. Here you can watch the fuzzy marsupials groom, nap (which they do a lot), lord over their designated areas (male koalas are territorial), and eat from their high perches in the enclosure’s trees. See if you can spy little koalas, called joeys, clinging to their mother’s backs.

Inside Queenslander House, find out more about these animals with a peek inside the koala-food prep-kitchen, where the keepers prepare the tree-dwellers’ meals of the tender shoots, leaves, and twigs of the eucalyptus tree. Walk to nearby enclosures to hear cockatoos squawk, kookaburras (a bird known as the bushman’s alarm clock) trill, chortle, and hoot, and see wallabies hop.

If you’d like a more in-depth experience, book the one-hour Discovery Cart Tour to learn more about koalas, kangaroos, and other animals from knowledgeable guides, who will answer your questions and relate how the zoo’s conservation efforts are having an impact worldwide. These tours go to area of the zoo not visited by the bus tours, and groups are small, so the guides can answer more of your questions.

When you visit the world-famous San Diego Zoo, of course you’ll want to see lions, tigers, and elephants, but take time to visit some of the zoo’s less familiar species too. In the tropical African rainforest exhibits of Lost Forest, you’ll expect to find gorillas and hippos, but bonobos? Believed to be one of the world’s most rare and intelligent animals, these primates have a fascinating and complex social structures ruled by females. An elevated walkway called Monkey Trails winds you straight through the canopy so you can spot them, along with troops of capuchin monkeys, black-crested mangabeys, and even red-tailed swamp monkeys, all sharing the same habitat.

Perhaps the animal in the Lost Forest that is responsible for the most double-takes is the baribusa. Native to the wetlands and swamps of tiny Indonesian islands—and only those tiny islands—they are sometimes called “pig deer” because of their elongated snouts and the tusks that grow right through them, which can resemble antlers.

In the Northern Frontier area (fittingly situated at the north side of the park), you’ll find enormous polar bears, but also the beautiful arctic fox, which has special adaptions for living in a wintry world, like hair on the bottoms of its paws to help grip on ice. And if the only reindeer you’ve ever seen are the animated kind, prepare for a treat as you spy them right across from the Marsh Aviary, where white-collared kingfishers and storks stand watch over the water. There’s also an exhibit on the rare, nocturnal fishing cat (that’s right, a cat that fishes), native to South and Southeast Asia.

Useful info: On the San Diego Zoo’s website, you can view a map of the zoo, download apps to help you plan tour visit, and find out what the zoo’s hours of operation are.