DOOR ONTO THE FOREST
The zoo opened in 1993, realising a long-held dream of its founder Faruk Yalçin. Today it houses over three thousand animals and over five hundred plant specimens. Amongst the cypress trees, cedars, oaks, and maples you come across orchids, mimosa and ginkgo, ara macaws, their plumage as garish as any football team, toucans with huge beaks, demoiselle cranes with their punk-like crests, giraffes bending to nuzzle you, and emus on familiar terms with their keepers waiting impatiently for feeding time.
Shoals of fish swimming in their aquariums, crocodiles that make you shiver slightly when you come eye to eye, yellow boa constrictors curled up asleep, and a host of other water creatures and reptiles can be seen here. The roaring of lions can now be heard over the clacking of storks. Other wild cats, including Siberian tigers, leopards, cheetahs, serval wild cats and lynxes, have one by one joined the large family of creatures at Bogaziçi Zoo.