These photos are from one of my family’s recent visits to the National Zoo. During the winter, the Zoo’s Amazonia building is a warm, humid, and enchanting refuge from the cold outside.
A good summary from the National Zoo’s website:
Amazonia, the largest and most complex exhibit ever built at the National Zoo, opened to the public in 1992. The 15,000-square-foot rainforest habitat of the exhibit includes a cascading tropical river and a 55,000-gallon aquarium for the display of Amazon River fish.
Within Amazonia’s dome, visitors find a living tropical forest with more than 350 species of plants, including 50-foot-tall trees, tropical vines, and epiphytes. This habitat is also home to dozens of species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects typical of the Amazon Basin, all moving throughout the exhibit. Smooth-sided toads and silver-beaked tanagers breed freely, titi monkeys jump from branch to branch, a two-toed sloth hides behind large leaves, white-bellied hummingbirds zip about.
It really is as good as the description makes it out to be. But without further ado, more photographs.
If you like what you have seen, you can view the complete set of photos on my Facebook page.
All photos © Levi T. Novey
Levi Novey 