My kids are my travel partners. Their inquisitiveness during our travels is mindblowing. Their continuous chatter and novel perspective amazes me. They learn so much from outdoors. During this difficult time of social distancing, we have now started traveling virtually and sightseeing places are the Virtual Zoos and Aquariums.
Due to lockdown, they are bound inside the house. We quickly ran out of interesting things to do at home and books to read. The kids started feeling bored again. However, I knew they were avid animal lovers. So, I googled few ideas. To my surprise I stumbled on these websites giving virtual tours. The kids went crazy when they saw sharks, whales, crocodiles, cheetas and eagles in the virtual zoos and aquariums.
I decided to curate a list of all such zoos and aquariums are offering virtual tours. Read through and let me know if I have missed out on anything:
1. San Diego Zoo,USA
If you want to see what the Koala bears, penguins, polar bears, panda, giraffee are doing in the zoo, then click on the live cams on this link – kids.sandiegozoo.org/videos
San Diego Zoo is one of the best site for kids as apart from the livestreaming, there are multiple other activities for kids as well. There are activities related to craft, colouring, science and even cooking. Isn’t it just an added bonus. Visit the link below for the same – kids.sandiegozoo.org/activities
For detailed information on the animals, you can visit the link below. You can see where they live, what they eat, etc. You can even hear their sounds like a roaring lion. My kids loved it – kids.sandiegozoo.org/animals
The website also has interesting games for kids.
Do not miss this list of interesting virtual tours of iconic places!
2. National Aquarium of Baltimore,USA:
I had visited this aquarium on my trip to USA and I loved it. So when we decided to start our virtual tour of the aquariums, this had to be the first. You can walk through the floors of the museum at the link below. A range of options of scenes are available like shark alley, Amazon river, Dolphins, Jellies etc. You can choose which scene you would like to explore – Aqua.org/Virtual Tours
An added bonus is that you have activities for the kids – Aqua.Org/Kids activities
3. Atlanta Zoo,USA:
If your kids are animal lovers, then do take a virtual tour of Atlanta Zoo. For the panda lovers, you have the live Panda streaming – Zooatlanta.org/panda-cam
Another interesting part is the keeper stories giving you behind the scene access to the people caring about the animals in spite of shutdown. You can read those stories to your kids. There are fun facts about animals as well. The website has a range of activities for kids too. For example – animal origami, animal printables, animal tails and much more. See the link below for more details – Zooatlanta.org/learn/at-home/
4. Georgia aquarium:
Another interesting aquarium is the Georgia aquarium which offers live footages of the animals at the zoo. And if you want some in-depth knowledge of the sea creatures then they have many exhibit galleries. See the link below. You can click on each of the animals and get detailed information about them – Georgiaaquarium.org/cold-water-quest/
5. Facebook :
There are some zoos and aquariums which do Facebook live.The Cincinnati zoo has Facebook live at 3pm EDT when they do home safari.They explore one animal at a time which they publish a day before on their Facebook page – https://m.facebook.com/cincinnatizoo/
Are you interested in knowing what goes in the zoos and how the animals are trained? Shedd aquarium offers some interesting behind the scene footages on their Facebook page – https://m.facebook.com/sheddaquarium/
This feels like a treat for all of us, especially kids! They can explore the whole new world of animals and sea creatures just sitting at home and learn so many new things in this lockdown! What do you say?
Write to us if you visit any of our recommendations and let us know how you liked them.
Also read: America’s finest City: San Diego