Tenerife Zoo Monkey Park — Attraction in Arona

Reluctantly, today I visited the famous monkey park, a place that at first glance seems curious and suitable for spending a quiet morning in close contact with little animals. Unfortunately, it is not like that. The videos and pictures circulating online, showing animals in good condition, with enough space and treated with respect, are only the first façade of a much more disappointing reality. Every species of animal present in this horror is undoubtedly living in conditions that in no way meet even the minimum comfort a LIVING BEING should have.

Starting with the crocodiles, which you encounter as soon as you enter, kept in tiny pools with just a thread of water, then moving on to the guinea pigs placed all along the path, seemingly as “decoration,” without any logic, crammed on top of each other, some at first glance in poor health, surrounded by a crowd of disrespectful people stuffing them with food until they burst.

And then the monkeys. I can’t even decide whether those in cages are worse off—pitiful, poorly maintained cages, clearly overcrowded with too many monkeys for their size, visibly distressed, lost, irritable, and upset by their conditions—or the poor little monkeys in enclosures open to human access, constantly disturbed by noises, voices, and countless hands reaching out to touch them at all costs, forced to be hand-fed just for the sake of a video.

What’s more, despite signs prohibiting touching the animals or crossing the barriers, since there isn’t even one staff member monitoring, nobody respects the rules. I saw a monkey clearly irritated by the crowd of people, and yet people still kept trying to grab and touch it, to the point that the monkey got agitated and tried to bite. This made children start yelling at it, showing extreme rudeness and disrespect, while their parents just laughed at their tantrums instead of saying anything.

Even smaller monkeys, bored and trapped in a glass cage smaller than themselves, were forced to live in alienating conditions, repeating the same movements over and over again in the few centimeters they had.

Then there were the turtles, crowded in a pit of a cage without even a patch of grass, only straw—straw everywhere. Worst of all, the large tortoise, sharing its enclosure with monkeys and guinea pigs, stared blankly into space while people constantly threw food toward its mouth, with no reaction.

And finally, though no less heartbreaking, the reptiles and birds. There is little else to say here, only disgust. Numerous parrots crammed together in a tiny cage, also harassed by people trying to touch and feed them.

I have no words for this place other than a profound sense of repulsion. A place clearly neglected, with no ethics or morality regarding the animals kept there, no safeguards whatsoever for their well-being. A place devoid of respect and love. This is not how animals should be seen—their habitat is nature. But if this has to be their life, it should at least be one worth living, at least peaceful and dignified.

This is a chilling place that left me only with a deep sadness, and there can be no justification for it. I am bitterly disappointed by the lack of consideration, devotion, and regard for the animals’ health and happiness.

I was happy at the thought of seeing species up close that you don’t get to see every day, but I had hoped to find them in conditions pleasant for both us and them. Instead, I conclude by saying that these were the worst 23 euros I have ever spent in my life. This place is priceless only in the sense that the only fate it deserves is to...

We visited this place because we thought that its mission statement sounded encouraging: The reproduction and care of endangered species, rescued and sheltered animals. What we saw was the extreme opposite. Not sure what the owners consider care but it clearly is different from mine.

As with so many zoos, bringing your own feed for the animals is not allowed. Perfectly understandable. Instead, you can buy their prepacked mix for 3 Euro. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. However, the mix looks like something you pull out of a can: beans, peas, corn, carrots, a few slices of fruit. It for sure doesn't look fresh. Next thing you notice: Many of the contents are very sugary (corn, carrots, fruit), which in itself seems fine. However, the first places you visit are the guinea pigs. You don't want to feed small animals sugary stuff every day, it's simply not healthy. And judging by the uneaten piles of food that are in front of those rodents you can assume that they get more than what is good for them every day. And instead of moving on, of course hordes of little kids literally try to shove the food in.

Next thing you might notice: It is never clear which animals can be fed and which can't. So people run from monkey cage to monkey cage, trying to get rid of the feed they bought, completely ignoring the warning signs ("animals bite"). In some cases we saw groups literally throwing food at monkeys, clearly taking joy in the process and not caring whether the animals actually eat or not. On top of that, some idiot started to throw an empty plastic box at the cage, hoping that it would get stuck between the bars. When it did, he tried to encourage the animal to pull it out, hoping for a perverted version of a Tug o' War.

You might tell yourself: Surely one of the zookeepers must have come to stop those dumbasses? Well, during our whole visit (~40 min), we saw only 3 employees (2 at the entrance, 1 collecting empty boxes. That was it. Nobody seemed to look after the animals, or check on the visitors.

Outreach and education efforts were also non-existent. Each cage had a small infographic placed in front of it but that was it. I couldn't see any information about what the place was actually doing, the life of the animals...simply any kind of information you would expect in a zoo.

In the end we just tried to get out of that place as fast as possible. It is badly managed and I strongly encourage people to stay...

Quite small and mainly guinea pig feeding. Still had fun feeding them as they are sooo cute and theres so many of them. I was a bit concerned over the well being of some of them as I noticed overgrown nails and teeth and I saw one with an eye infection.

Most of the monkeys and birds are in cages but we were still able to feed some through the gaps which was quite cute too. You are able to take free photos with parrots but the queue grew quite long.

There are only a handful of animals (other than the guinea pigs) that are free roaming. There are also bird enclosures you can walk through which is nice to see them flying about.

I was able to feed the guinea pigs, monkey and tortoises. Some lemurs were having a feed from the keepers and it was nice to see them up close (they roam with the guinea pigs).

They all enjoyed a snack and it was quite cute to see the animals have their own preferences. Some guinea pigs only likes peas whereas some only liked sweetcorn, they all have their own personalities and appearances and we saw some babies which were so adorable. One even came to sit on my boyfriend's shoe. The monkeys would also go through the selection of the food and pick out their favourites.

Definitely worth a visit but we only spent over an hour here and that was mainly due to feeding the guinea pigs. It is also better to go earlier on in the morning as it got quite busy towards mid day. Its also recommended to pre purchase tickets as we were able to go straight in.

You can buy a small tub of food for €3 each. It does say not to bring your own food but i brought some apple slices which the animals seem to prefer.

Overall it was nice to experience but I definitely think the maintenance of the animals needs to be much more frequent. I understand there are loads of them but the guinea pigs would be much more comfortable with frequent nail and teeth trims...