If you decided to visit Odessa with children, Odessa’s zoo will be the first place where you can go.
There were 3 attempts to creat zoo, the first was before celebrating the city’s 100th anniversary and the second was made in 1914. But only the third one in 1922 the zoo building on Primoskiy boulevard in the Vorontsovskiy palace’s lower garden begun.

The main merit of Odessa first zoo organizing belongs to one of the energetic “Southclimate” society’s heads Heinrich Vladimirovich Beizert. Despite a great amount of work carried out (construction of the grottos for lions, bears and tigers, pools for birds, small mountain for the mountain goats), the zoo garden had a lot of problems. These were both the lack of finances and the zoo territory’s being absolutely unsuitable for the animals’ placing. The city administration decided to close the zoo. In 1992, according to Ukraine’s law, the zoo received the status of all-state importance nature reserve and replenished the composition of Ukraine’s natural reserve fund.

Odessa zoo’s collection features 243 types of animals and has 1590 exemplars featuring 93 types of fish, 7 types of amphibians, 37 types of reptiles, 73 types of birds, 33 types of mammals.

Odessa zoo has rare animals accepted into the International Nature Protection Union Red Book, European Red list and Ukraine’s Red book - over 60 types. Many of them are reproducing successfully. These are the famous Indian elephants, Far-East leopards, Przewalskiy horses, brown bears, eagle-owls, etc. Odessa zoo is the only one in Ukraine where the Indian elephants who became the parents of already three cubs are reproducing successfully.

In 1992, the happy couple got their first cub. It received the name of Sim Elephant he known as Funtick and become the actor of the European circus. It was artificially reared by its stepmother - the predatory and trunk animals section manager Popova L.N. In 1998, a female elephant, which weighed over 90 kilos, was born. It received the name of Tendy, and lives in Kharkov zoo now.

On October, 2004, Taroon and Wendy got their third cub, which received the name of Duke The zoo has a system of privileged season-ticket visits (for families, children and grown-ups). Here it is possible to ride a pony, a lama, a camel a phaeton. The visitors can have a rest, sit on the benches, have a snack in the café, the smallest ones can play on the children playground, ride the swings, visit the laughter room, etc.