The St. Louis Zoo is celebrating the arrival of their iconic animals that will anchor their new safari, white rhinos and giraffes.
WildCcare Park director Sabarras George could hardly contain his excitement while discussing the five rhinos and two giraffes.
"And I tell you, when you get close to these animals, you really see how massive they are. The giraffes, 12 feet tall already."
General curator Martha Fischer says they have a long list of other animals that will be joining them.
"At the end of the year, we'll receive four more giraffes, and we will receive probably about 40 other animals, other species coming in, 40 other individual animals coming in."
Fisher says a surprising fact about the African safari animals coming to Wildcare Park, they're naturally accustomed to handling Saint Louis's winter weather.
"Everybody is surprised that African animals will be comfortable in Saint Louis weather, because they think of Africa as only being hot all the time, 365 days a year... In fact, some of the animals that we're going to have here from Africa are actually cold-hardy... They actually do really well during our winters, and they actually do really well during our hot, awful summers as well."
What work still needs to be done ahead of opening day? First, there's the remaining construction.
Outside of the safari's veterinary center, most of the animal-facing infrastructure is complete. George says this leaves the human facing work.
"An 11-story observation tower. As it rotates on a clear day, you'll be able to see back to the city of Saint Louis and also the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. We will have an event center... one of the highlights that we are really going to be proud of is gonna be our zoo museum."
However, after the animals are released into their open-range safaris, they need to be trained to expect, and not be spooked by, visiting humans.
"You get them [in the safari in] 2026, drive the vehicles through the habitats and make them have noises and all the things that you could possibly hear when people are basically in your house to make sure they are comfortable and so we get a lot of opportunity to practice."
George believes the safari could be a major Midwest tourist attraction.
"It's gonna be a destination because we're connected to eight different states and people will make that conscious decision to come here and visit not only [Wildcare Park], but they'll also visit our Forest Park campus too."
George says they are on budget and on time to open in 2027.