Student groups on Georgia safari must make the trek to Zoo Atlanta – a wild menagerie situated on 44 acres in Atlanta’s Grant Park, home to more than 1,500 animals representing over 220 species. The Zoo opened in 1889 with the benevolent donation of an eclectic collection of traveling circus animals, including a black bear, a jaguar, a hyena, a gazelle, a Mexican hog, lionesses, monkeys and camels; today, it boasts the nation’s largest population of western lowland gorillas and orangutans, and is one of only four zoos in the entire U.S. hosting giant pandas. The African Plains exhibit houses African lions and elephants, Southern Ground Hornbills, blue cranes, meerkats and warthogs, yellow-backed duikers and eastern bongos – all wildlife native to the expansive grasslands, deep, dark forests and arid deserts of continental Africa. A multi-species savanna habitat is home to giraffes, ostrich and zebra; visitors may hand-feed the residents from habitat feature Twiga Terrace. Zoo Atlanta is the only zoo to successfully breed critically endangered Arakan forest turtles, a species harvested nearly to extinction; 2012 saw the arrival of a very rare – and venomous – Guatemalan beaded lizard which, at the time of its hatching, was one of just seven known to have been born in captivity; an extremely rare Iranian eyelid gecko emerged from its egg to join the Zoo family in October, 2013. Meet these exclusive creatures and hundreds of their cohabitants – black mambas and king cobras among them – in the captivating World of Reptiles exhibit. Conservation–minded Zoo Atlanta is an active participant in the AZA Species Survival Plan, committed to helping ensure the health, genetic diversity and demographic sustainability of endangered species like the red panda, the Sumatran tiger, the black rhino, the clouded leopard and giant panda.