Brookfield Zoo

Brookfield Zoo Chicago, known until 2024 as simply Brookfield Zoo, and also known as the Chicago Zoological Park, is a zoo located in Brookfield, Illinois. Brookfield Zoo is owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County and is managed by the Chicago Zoological Society. It is the largest zoo in the Chicago metropolitan area and houses approximately 511 species of animals in an area of 216 acres (87 ha).
Brookfield Zoo opened on July 1, 1934, and quickly gained international recognition for using moats and ditches instead of cages.
The zoo was also the first in the United States to exhibit giant pandas, one of which (Su Lin) has been taxidermied and put on display in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. In 1960 the zoo opened the first fully indoor bottlenose dolphin exhibit in the United States, and in the 1980s the zoo introduced the first fully indoor tropical rainforest simulation exhibit, which was the largest indoor zoo exhibit in the world at that time. It is often listed as one of the best zoos in the United States.