Zoológico de Vallarta A.C — Attraction in Jalisco

When I visited the zoo during my last visit to Puerto Vallarta, although there were many issues with the size and cleanliness of enclosures, my biggest complaint regards “playtime” with the lion and tiger cubs. Essentially, tourists can pay an extra fee to pet and hold lion and tiger cubs. While many people are unaware, this practice is actually very problematic. Since big cat cubs grow very fast, they soon become too big and rough for visitors to handle. This means that female cats at the zoo are constantly being bred and having litters of cubs (who are immediately taken away from them) in order for the zoo to have small cubs available to be introduced into the program every few weeks. As a consequence of this greatly neglectful breeding program, many of the cubs are born sickly and inbred. Another unfortunate issue is this means that the zoo also has numerous teenager lions and tigers on their hands at any given time that they are unable to care for. Many of these older cubs are sold in the unregulated exotic animal trade in Mexico. Many to private collectors who do not have the space or ability to care for big cats and generally make unsuitable owners. Worse, if the unwanted cubs cannot be sold, that they are often euthanized by the zoo. Evidently, the practice of handling tiger and lion cubs, or any wild animal for that matter, is extremely problematic and is best to be avoided by visitors. I hope this post has been informative and has enlightened others who were previously unaware of the consequences of paying for cub handling programs. Importantly, if visitors stop paying to pet the cubs, then the zoo will stop the irresponsible and commercial breeding of lions and tigers as it becomes no longer financially viable for them to do so. So please, avoid paying for ‘interactive experiences’ with big cat cubs at the zoo, no matter how enticing such an experience sounds!

p.s Breeding tigers and lions in zoos is NOT conservation. Big cats born in zoos (after many generations of captive breeding) cannot be released into the wild. They are generally unhealthy and unfit in an ecological sense. They also have such poor genetic material (high homozygosity, low heterozygosity) due to inbreeding that they are essentially useless to the endangered wild population. This may fall on deaf ears, but no, having a kitten mill at a zoo is not bringing the species back from the brink of extinction. It is only exacerbating the issue of creating an unhealthy captive breeding population and producing more sick cats that will be improperly cared for and unhappy in some miserable tiny cage for the rest of...

My feeling is it's worth going. Be prepared for two different experiences:

One zoo has all the best things that a zoo can have (if you agree with zoos at all): large cages, lots of stimulation, endangered species breeding for release, and extremely natural environments with local trees etc -- in fact, it looks almost like they poured concrete to create large enclosures over the jungle. Surrounding the zoo is literal jungle with the same trees and plants. There are signs warning you that you are literally walking through a jungle where there may be snakes or other hazards, so please do watch your kids

Tiger cub interactive - what a huge disappointment! I took my 2 kids to the zoo for this experience, which in hindsight, was a terrible idea.

Firstly, since there were two of them (kids, I mean), the zookeeper decided to put them in together, which I thought would be fine. I asked him how much time they’d get to spend with the animals, he said 15 minutes. I said “15 minutes per person, right?” He IGNORED me and began the interactive.

Um, I paid for TWO bracelets, at $90 each, which I assumed would allow for each child to spend 15 minutes with the cubs. That was not the case. In total, they got 20 minutes, most of which time was spent sanitizing hands between animals, and waiting around for the zookeeper to retrieve the next cub. So in total, they probably had about ten minutes, which is 5 per kid. TOTAL. RIP.

Next, I had wrongly assumed that this would be somewhat educational, wherein the zookeeper would at least explain what each animal was and a little bit about their species. Nope, nada. He didn’t speak English and barely spoke to my kids at all. I brought all of this to the attention of the employee at the front desk, who basically shrugged it off and told me “that’s not really how it works”. Ok, dude. Well if it works this way, you’re overcharging. The vibes were bad, folks. Very bad, and shady. Needless to say, I feel very disappointed.

Also, those baby cats? They’re SO young. SO tiny. Why aren’t they with their mothers? This whole thing is very “Tiger King” and again, makes me say “what the hell was I thinking?!”

Aside from this, the other animals in the zoo made me sad. Most of the animals are in cramped spaces and look depressed. The giraffe, zebra, hippo, to name a few, are in TINY enclosures with no room to run around at all. It hurt my heart, y’all. I feel disappointed in myself for contributing to this racket. I tried to tell myself I was doing some sort of good by supporting them, so that they might provide better conditions for the animals, but that’s a crock. I feel I’ve made a terrible mistake in giving them my money. My kids did enjoy the day and seeing them smile so much made me happy, but wow. I would definitely not recommend this zoo or the interactive...