Hamilton Zoo

Hamilton Zoo is home to over 600 native and exotic animals, the only fishing cats and the largest free-flight aviary in New Zealand dedicated to native birds and plants.  See exotic species like giraffes, zebras, chimpanzees, red pandas, lemurs and Sumatran tigers as well as farm animals like kune kune pigs.

Get to know our animals during free daily Meet the Keeper talks. For a special experience, go behind the scenes on a Face2Face encounter and meet our southern white rhinos, giraffe, macaws and agouti  Every visit is different, with breeding and baby animals at any time of the year.

Hamilton Zoo is committed to inspiring conservation action through participation in various projects and contributing to breeding programmes for endangered species like southern white rhino, once there were only 100 left in the world, now there are more than 20,000.

Animal encounters on hold

With the impact of Covid 19 felt worldwide we are taking, like many businesses, the opportunity to re-assess some of our practices and processes, including those for our animal encounters. We appreciate our visitors' patience, as we know how much they love connecting with our animals in this way. Encounters will be reintroduced very soon - definite timing and the schedule of encounters on offer will be announced on our website and social media pages.