Southwick's Zoo EARTH's animal ambassadors which include macaws, a bush baby, porcupine, turtles, snakes, bearded dragons, and other reptiles. These animals are used in EARTH's education programs including live presentations at the zoo, ZooMobiles, and Wild Adventure Programs for younger students. Southwick's Zoo has four big cat exhibits; lions, bengal tigers african leopard, and the recently added cheetahs. Southwick's Zoo opened their larger, updated giraffe exhibit in 2011. In 2010, the zoo also began offering giraffe encounters on weekends. The zoo has the largest primate collection in New England. Species of primates found at Southwick's Zoo include chimpanzees, white-handed gibbons, siamangs, mandrills,
Phoenix Zoo animal husbandry and research projects for selected species that are in need of conservation efforts. In its first years, the zoo hosted a captive breeding program ("Operation Oryx") with the specific goal of reintroducing the almost extinct Arabian oryx to the wild. By the early 1990s this program was still one of only two programs (the other being the golden lion tamarin) to have gone through the full wilderness-zoo-wilderness sequence. Nine oryx had been caught or donated for the breeding program. However, two pairs were delayed, so the "World Herd" was started in Phoenix in 1963 with only five animals