Wildlife Learning Center — Local services in Los Angeles

We did the reserve private tour for families during Covid-19 for my daughter's 8th birthday. Her wish was to meet a live sloth and -low and behold - the zoofari experience lets you interact with a sloth, armadillo, porcupines, giraffe and reptile of your choice PLUS have a tour of all the animals there. Larissa was our biologist guide and she was extraordinarily good!! It made my daughters birthday something very special during the worst time of social isolating. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience - there were 8 of us from 5 years old to 47 years old, we all loved it. It is also well shaded so the heat was not an issue for most of the tour.

The only two things I will point out that could be improved - the party ahead of us was 20 minutes late for their reservation and the center let them go on their tour ahead of us as planned and it was a little concerning bc we REALLY wanted there to be as much space between us and other parties as possible bc we have been diligently social isolating and do not want ANY risk of getting corona virus. This was really the accountability of the booking party with the reservation who should have been on time because of the way the tours are structured 30 to 60 minutes apart and we were now only about 12 minutes apart. But the center may have also considered booking them for a different time of day to avoid the overlap. The other thing was there was a large party who were ending their tour when we were starting ours and one of the women had just totally done away with her mask and was walking around taking up space with her party without a mask and no one from the center called her out and made her put it back on. Again, accountability is on the woman to be a grown up and do the right thing (esp since she was with a large group including young kids) but since she chose to be a selfish jerk, I do wish the center would have made her put it back on while she was within their grounds. These were two small blips in an otherwise really fun and informative day that felt very safe. (If you do book a tour, for the sake of other parties there, please BE ON TIME and WEAR A MASK bc it was other guests who caused those inconveninences, not...

Hubby and I did a wine & paint thing hosted by an outside vendor that gives most of the proceeds to the WLC. I am a sloth fanatic, so when they offered a sloth painting experience with the opportunity to meet one of their resident sloths (Lola), we were there in a hot second! We thought it was very cool to have only a small group of "seats" offered for this activity because: 1. The outside pavilion where it was held is pretty smalls AND 2. there is less chance of stressing out Lola because her handler was able to keep a close eye on her and make sure participants were following the rules. So, on the day of the event, it was cold as heck and we had rainshowers intermittently. No one seemed bothered because, well, WINE! Lola was brought out the last 15ish minutes of the event so that we could take individual pictures with her and our paintings. Because it was cold, Lola's handler came out to set up a little portable heater for her (they really really care about the residents in their care ❣️!) When he brought Lola out, he asked that we keeps our squeals of joy (we couldn't help it, she was too damn cute!) to a minimum so as not to startle or stress her right out the gate. He was very polite in explaining to us that we were not going to be allowed to touch her because there were too many of us (which I TOTALLY appreciated because I would never want Lola to be stressed out for the amusement of others). She was beautiful to see up close even if we went allowed to touch her. The keeper was very attentive to her and I observed him keeping a close eye on her (probably looking for any sign of distress.) Lola was the consummate professional and a true Ambassador for her species

Had a wonderful time here with the family! Such a unique way to see the animals, and for such a small space and super low admission (we got a great deal on Groupon) , I feel like we definitely got a huge bang for our buck. If you're trying to picture what this place looks like, think large farm in the middle of a residential area. Loved that basically all the animals are rescues, and that they actually have some more exotic animals here. Actually didn't expect that for such a small place ! Highlights for us were the giraffe /zebra bff's, sloths, and those awesome American eagles !!! Wow!!! I would absolutely recommend this place to anyone in the area. The wealth of knowledge that these volunteers/workers have truly shows their passion and dedication to these animals .

Only reason criticism is that we were a little lost on what to do as we may have missed the info on where tours start and stop, so we sort of jumped into other random tours being given. We had thought we were part of a tour but the lady literally showed one or two animals and that was it, whereas the other tour groups appeared to cover a larger area of the property. Again, not really sure if that is something that needed to be arranged privately, or we were dealing with a special circumstance, or just completely brain hicupping on our end, but thought I should share that in case others have experienced similar. Also really not a fan of the port -o-potties and parking situation but it's completely understandable considering budget restrictions.

If you're an animal lover on a budget and don't mind looking for street parking and using port o potties, you will LOVE it here. We...