Tierpark Hellabrunn

We visited this zoo in Munich in August 2010 on our first and so far only visit to Germany. It is the first zoo, as far as I can remember, where I saw my first bears. They were polar bears, which were in a rather bad enclosure, but I think its been improved now, and there was also a brown bear that I only got a brief glimpse of. I waited for a long time for the bear to come out of hiding so I could get a record of it, but in the end, I was left disappointed and frustrated. I saw polar bears two years later in the Highland wildlife park and brown bears the following two years in Welsh mountain zoo. Hopefully, I will get to see both species again someday, but probably in another zoo.

Anyway, another highlight from Munich was me getting close to a male mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx) who looked like he had a broken pizza box in his house. Mandrills are the largest species of monkey and are well-known for their colourful blue and red faces. Hellabrunn was also the first place where we saw Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelli) and Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) and also the first time we saw a male Asian elephant. Opened in 1911, Tierpark Hellabrunn was the first zoo in the world to feature exhibits based on geographical zones (e.g. the bison sharing their habitat with prairie dogs). I’d say we missed many animals when we had finished our trip, some of which we had not seen before, like the giant anteater, takin and Malayan tapir. It doesn’t matter cause I have seen those three years after Munich.

Watch the video above of our trip to Tierpark Hellabrunn, aka Munich zoo. Note that the American wood bison are wrongly referred to as ‘European bison’ and there is also a Chinese water dragon that is misidentified as an ‘iguana’ in the video. Also, if you don’t know the black-backed bird at 1:08, its a marabou stork (Leptoptilus crumeniferus)