Qualla: Osnabrück Zoo

Osnabrück Zoo: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Corradox, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk far enough into Osnabrück Zoo and the ground itself becomes the exhibit. Down a flight of stairs and through a low corridor, naked mole-rats tunnel past glass at eye level. Black-tailed prairie dogs scurry overhead in cross-section, their burrows rendered in cutaway. Tarantulas pace behind acrylic. This is the Unterirdische Zoo - the Underground Zoo - opened in 2009 on the slope of the Schölerberg hill, and it is the kind of idea you only get when your zoo is built on a steep wooded ridge and you decide to dig.

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Image: Corradox | CC BY-SA 3.0

Osnabrück Zoo: From Heimattiergarten to Hillside Park

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ramsch, CC BY-SA 4.0. The zoo opened on July 26, 1936, founded by a group of local enthusiasts who called themselves the Community of Friends of the Home Zoo. The original collection was modest: a badger, a fox, and a bear, paid for by donations. War nearly ended it. By April 1945 the menagerie was sm...

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Image: Ramsch | CC BY-SA 4.0

Osnabrück Zoo: Tips and Taps

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the Kajanaland section, modeled on the northern European taiga, two unusual cubs were born in January 2004: hybrids of polar bear and brown bear, the first such animals bred at the zoo. They were named Tips and Taps and became the climate-change mascots of an interactive exhib...

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Image: A.Savin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Osnabrück Zoo: Continents Stacked on a Hill

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sail over, CC BY-SA 3.0. The zoo's 23.5 hectares are organized as a tour of biomes. Samburu, opened in 2004, recreates a Kenyan reserve where giraffes, ostriches, and meerkats share two hectares - you can dine in a safari camp and watch them work. Takamanda, named for a national park in Cameroon, holds e...

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Image: Sail over | CC BY-SA 3.0

Osnabrück Zoo: The View from the Treetops

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Basotxerri, CC BY-SA 4.0. Kajanaland comes with a feature unique among German zoos: a tree-height boardwalk that lets visitors look down into the enclosures from up to six meters above. Lynx, wolverines, reindeer, raccoons and Gute sheep wander below the path - you watch from a perspective normally reserv...

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Image: Basotxerri | CC BY-SA 4.0

Osnabrück Zoo: Why Visitors Keep Coming

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Museum am Schölerberg, CC BY-SA 4.0. British zoo expert Anthony Sheridan's European rankings repeatedly put Osnabrück near the top of zoos in its visitor class - second place in 2011 and 2013, tied for third in 2015 with the Münster Allwetterzoo. A 2012 customer survey of twenty German zoos ranked Osnabrück first fo...

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Image: Museum am Schölerberg | CC BY-SA 4.0