Museum of Living Art and more

In a previous post, I told you about one of my happy places, the Dallas Zoo. That, however, is not the only zoological park in the DFW area, and on Monday, with my brother’s wife, my nephew and my mom, I went on adventure to the Fort Worth Zoo. It was a fun day. We saw many exhibits that I’m very familiar with but also saw their new exhibit that opened last year, the Museum of Living Art or MOLA. Its spectacular!

When you enter the zoo, you have the option of going left to see flamingos, right to see African animals and the primate enclosures or straight to get to the rest of the zoo. As I think I’ve always done when visiting this zoo, we started to the right and looked at the primates and cheetahs and rhinos. The path took us into the primate house where there is a gorilla exhibit and a few other exhibits. After the primate building, as I’ve always done in the past, we went to the right to see the African savannah animals including the giraffes, hippos and another rhino. There was also an elephant exhibit in this area but with Asian not African elephants. It was very exciting for Jackson, my nephew, to see these giant beasts eating and snapping bamboo in half.

From this area we went up the path to Asian Falls. This exhibit area has tigers and sun bears with a few other hoofed animals and birds and two more rhinos. Jackson was very excited to see the tigers, mostly because one of them was walking around. He even tried to entice a roar from the big cats by giving his 14-month-old roar. The path from the tigers took us past some more small animals to the lions and African hoof stock.

The zoo has one male and one female lion, which were sharing an enclosure. The male however was not feeling too well when we saw him. He had eaten some grass earlier and was heaving it up. This scared Jackson because it was making little growls as it threw up the grass and dry heaved afterwards.

We continued down the path because I really wanted to see the MOLA. This exhibit opened last year to rave reviews. It is basically the zoo’s new reptile house but much grander. It displays the habitats in a gallery format as if you’re looking at art. Some of them are enclosures the size of rooms with glass going ceiling to floor giving visitors a great immersion experience.

Besides the indoor exhibits, there are a few that are outdoor enclosures with picture windows looking in like the gharial pond, saltwater crocodile and Komodo dragon. There are also a couple of outdoor exhibits like some macaws, tortoises and a lemur enclosure. We didn’t see the lemur but its habitat was extremely small. Not only were the exhibits beautiful and well thought out, but the building itself is a beautiful piece of architecture.

Unfortunately, we didn’t spend much time in the MOLA since Jackson was getting tired and his mom is not a huge fan of reptiles and amphibians. Before we left, we made our way to the Australian Outback exhibit, formerly called Koala Outback. This was a bit disappointing because there are no more koalas just big fish tanks representing the Great Barrier Reef and some kangaroos and wallabies. Next door to the kangaroos were penguins and what looks like it will be an amphitheater for bird or animal shows.

Overall our adventure was fun. We enjoyed the zoo and seeing the fascinating animals. The MOLA is amazing and I really want to go back and experience it again. I would also like to go back and visit Texas Wild. I haven’t really had a chance to experience this exhibit because its is all the way at the back of the zoo and usually the last thing on the list.

I’d love to hear about your most recent adventure to a zoo. Please share in the comments below or as a guest blogger. Also, stay tuned for more adventures this week including the Dallas Arboretum, the Dallas Children’s Aquarium and more.

Now go have an adventure!