Hi @yoav_r , Belgium might be a good option for you. We have 3 amazing zoos here and as it is a small country, they are not very far from each other. You could easily visit all of them in a few days and see a lot of animals on your list !Seeing that I'm unlikely to see new animals any time soon, here's my updated status:
View attachment 354380
Now a question to all european users. If I were to go to one european zoo to see as many animals from my 2 bottom categories, which zoo would you recomend?
First of all, you have Antwerp Zoo and Planckendael, which are 2 different zoos but they both belong to the same "company" (the Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp). A little bit like San Diego Zoo has the San Diego Zoo and the Safari Park. Anyway, I've been a member for many years and go to both often. They are both very worth it. Antwerp Zoo is the most beautiful historic zoo I've seen. They have the king penguin (mixed with macaroni and gentoo). They also have the mountain bongo (a rare and more endangered subspecies than the "normal" bongo we have in PZ). They also have a very good reptile house but the species there are sometimes changing so I'm not sure about all the species on your list. I'm sure they have golden poison frogs at the moment though because I went 2 weeks ago and saw them.
In Planckendael, they have the "normal" bongo, the Pzrewalski's horse and the spotted hyena. They also had a European badger but I'm not 100% sure it's still there.
Then you have Pairi Daiza, which I've been to several times and is known as one of the most beautiful zoos in the world. Which is totally true. It's huge though. Hard to see everything in one day. I would recommend staying 2 days and 1 night if you can afford it. It's very expensive but I've done it once in the room with view on the tiger exhibit and it was a fantastic experience !
To come back to your list, Pairi Daiza has asian water buffalo (that's how they describe it so I guess it's the domesticated version), clouded leopard, red-crowned crane, japanese macaque, warthog (mixed with white rhinos), spotted hyena, wombat, king penguin and reindeer. They also have moose, beaver and brown bears in their NA area. I think the brown bears are European brown bears and not grizzly though even if they are presented in the American area. Not sure if the moose and beaver are really American or the European version. I've never seen the beaver by the way.
Finally, they have a huge reptile house and I'm not sure about everything they have there but I know they have had gharials at some point. Not sure if they are still there. They also have axolotls but they are located in the aquarium if I remember correctly.
There you go. And if you have even more time, we also have an animal park at "Domaine des Grottes de Han". It's a beautiful place in a nice valley. There is a very beautiful cave that you can visit and also the animal park. It's a park that focuses only on European fauna so they only have European animals. They have all your big European ticket animals like brown bear, wolf, wisent... They also have przewalski's horse (mixed with red deer, fallow deer and mouflon in a huge walkthrough exhibit!) and the recreated version of the auroch. And they have artic wolf and arctic fox to complete your list. Oh and they are the only zoo in Belgium to have wolverines.
There you go. Sorry for the long post but honestly, as much as Belgium is not a perfect country, we are really blessed with our zoos.
If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask me
