National Visit The Zoo Day: Visit The Maryland Zoo In Baltimore

BALTIMORE, MD — If you’re looking for something to do while the kids are out of school, a visit to the Maryland Zoo might be just the ticket. Thursday, Dec. 27, is National Visit the Zoo Day.

Admission prices have dropped at the zoo for the winter; it's $12 per person from Dec. 1 to Feb. 28, 2019, with children younger than 2 years old and zoo members free. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Penguins, polar bears, African penguins and other animals are out and about for the winter.

See a list of the animals at the zoo.

The African Journey part of the zoo is being renovated, so the lions will not be on display. Here is more information about the construction project.

What’s your favorite part of the Maryland Zoo? Tell us in the comments.

Zoo exhibits have changed significantly over the years. Before the 20th century, animals were often kept in cages with bars that left them very little room to move around, let alone explore their surroundings. In today’s zoos, enrichment activities — things the animals enjoy doing and that demonstrate their species-specific behavior — are viewed as essential to animals’ welfare as proper nutrition and veterinary care.

Zoo animals’ habitats have expanded, too. The movement to house animals in a more “natural” space began in the early 1900s when Carl Hagenbeck, whose family was involved in the wild animal trade, created “Tierpark” in Stellingen, Germany.

Gone were the bars and cages and in their place were moats to separate some of the animal groups, according to Smithsonian Library blog written by Polly Lasker. Hagenbeck encouraged trainers to treat the animals kindly and use gentle coaxing rather than some of the harsher methods that were typical at the time.

“What is now taken for granted by almost every visitor to a zoo — moated exhibits in a landscape simulating nature; gregarious animals of mixed species kept in herds in large enclosures; and animal performances based on conditioning and sensitivity, not on brute force and intimidation — all started at Hagenbeck’s Tierpark,” Herman Reichenbach wrote in “New worlds, new animals: from menagerie to zoological park in the nineteenth century.”

The Maryland Zoo is at 1 Safari Place, Baltimore, MD 21217.

SEE ALSO: Maryland Zoo Drops Prices For Winter

— By Patch editors Beth Dalbey and Elizabeth Janney

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Photo courtesy of the Maryland Zoo.