Belfast Zoo

Perhaps one of my favourite zoos that I’ve visited, I first learned about Belfast zoo when I was 11, and I have been coming up at least once every year. It might feel like your feet are killing you while you walk up the hill, but I enjoy looking at all the animals, especially species we have not seen before that are absent from Dublin Zoo. Formerly a pleasure garden called ‘Bellevue’, the zoo first opened in 1934 and is situated on Cave Hill, a promontory providing spectacular views of Belfast city.

Some of the animals Belfast Zoo keep that cannot be seen anywhere else in Ireland are arguably the main highlight for me. They include the giant anteater, Goodfellow’s tree kangaroo, and not one but two different species of bear: the spectacled bear from South America, and the sun bear of Southeast Asia. The sun bears can be found at the very top of the zoo, and on most visits, I’ve enjoyed having lunch and seeing the bears at the same time. Aside from these gems, the zoo also has many of the more popular zoo animals including giraffes, gorillas, Asian elephants, Barbary lions (a subspecies which is extinct in the wild), and gentoo penguins.

I did their week-long summer camp when I was 12, and I got to feed the sun bears as well as a red river hog. I even went into the old zoo (which at the time was used as a quarantine area for arriving and departing animals), along with the other camp members. My 2016 visit may well be one of my favourite visits, as I was privileged with seeing Lola, a then six-month old spectacled bear cub, and I also got up close to a giant anteater! Since that visit, I have been drawing Lola and the other Belfast Zoo animals as cartoon characters, and I hope to one day create my own television series based around them.

Once, we visited the zoo for my 17th birthday, and I had a ZOOPER time, as I got to feed the sun bears again, and also saw my first ever red squirrels at the zoo’s Red Squirrel Nook. Unfortunately, a few days earlier the zoo’s longest resident, Tina the Asian elephant, passed away, so I made sure to give my condolences to the keepers I was with. Earlier in the year, I bought a poster of Lola from the zoovenir shop, being my favourite animal from the zoo. I would continue to see Lola on my annual visits before she left for a zoo in Germany at the end of 2020.

In 2022, I had completed a short simple animation film based on my experiences of visiting Belfast Zoo, titled ‘Lost and Found in Belfast Zoo’, with most of the characters being based on real life animals from the zoo. It can be viewed here.

Link to Belfast Zoo’s website.