The Phoenix Zoo, in Papago Park, is the largest privately owned non-profit zoo in the United States. It holds around 3,000 animals across 125 acres, organised into four habitat trails: Africa, Tropics, Arizona, and Children's. It is built around lakes and shaded by cottonwoods, which makes summer visits more manageable than the surrounding desert would suggest.
The zoo's Arizona Trail is its most distinctive — it showcases native species including ringtails, mountain lions, and the once-extinct-in-the-wild Arabian oryx, which the Phoenix Zoo helped save through a captive breeding programme in the 1960s. The zoo opens early in the hot months. Go at opening time.