Izu Animal Kingdom - Kamo District

At first it was nice, then everything went downhill when I saw the conditions of some animals. First of all, a zoo is always a little depressing if you think is like a prison, but the zafari advertising of this one catch my attention. It looked ok until you reach the petting zoo. The parrots are plucking their feathers because stress and anxiety, one of them lost all of them at the back, the other goes for the wings and screams like crazy (not in a good way). There's 3 ginea pig so traumatized by people grabbing them they keep the nose against a trunk and doesn't move at all, when people place them back there, they go for the trunk again and again. Then there's a sort of armadillo that will flinch as soon as you get close, because he knows people will take him belly upwards and it's noticeable he hates it, but there's a board saying it's ok to do it. The raccoons also looked kind of sad, one seems blind and I think I saw a signal saying not to give them chocolate, I don't know much about them but too much sugar can cause diabetes and blindness in animals, I got suspicious because what I saw up to that point was no good. Then the chimpanzee... I stayed there a while deeply sad looking at him. He's hard to spot, his cage looks like an abandoned building and there's a signal of private place too close, people don't reach there, they tend to ignore the path. The cage is like 3x3, with nothing, except a hanging hard ball that's broken. The walls of that sort of panic room were covered in dirt like he painted with his hands as if scratching, and he was alone. It was utterly depressing exchanging looks with this animal. Next was the bear, with so much anxiety he never stopped going in circles over and over and over again. This was like a display of mental diseases because imprisonment and abuse. I'll post some pictures along with this review. I really hope they fix the problems with all these animals, I also went to the Izu shaboten park and it's an entirely different experience. Some small cages, yes, as in all zoos, but I didn't see distressed animals like in here. (edited to correct format)

Such a fun zoo! Very reasonably priced, 100 yen to feed the animals and a petting zoo for no extra charge.

It's fun to get to feed and pet the animals, but overall this place is pretty depressing. The conditions aren't *terrible* but you can tell the well-being of the animals is not the top priority :(

Very enjoyable visit. Many of the animals are in retirement age, so enjoy being fed and pet. Nice place to bring the kids. You will need coins at every animal area to subsidize the food, but good entertainment for the kids.

You can buy food to give some species (100yens per cup) which I think is the fun part of the park ! (A lot of them might refuse the food toward the end of the day though). Because of corona, people are not supposed to touch animals (but everyone did it anyway...). There are some places in the park where it’s easier to touch the animals and I appreciate that they try to rotate which animals are in closer contact with the visitors so that it’s not always the same ones that get stressed. The main points I would like to see improved is more staff to remind people to not chase after the animals / try to force feed them / hold them and some « safe places » for the animals to run away from troublesome visitors. (Currently they basically have no way to hide in the touch zone) Also some events need reservation tickets so only people who came at the opening can get them. (They all disappear in few minutes) If you only have time for one park, I would recommend the Shaboten Park instead as animals have more space, are less forced to be close to visitors and actually have safe places to run away from troublesome visitors.

Utterly depressing and sad place. We went here because our 6yo daughter really wanted to come. African animals standing around all day with nothing to do in freezing temperatures. All animals looked sad and depressed in their concrete enclosure. Many animals were suffering from skin rashes and had lost their hair/fur. There was a sign saying a pony was dieting so it couldn't be fed. Presumably it had been overfed by all the tourists feeding it bags of food sold by the zoo. I was shocked to see animals in this condition. The place should really be shut down. I also noticed that the iron footbridge was rusting so much you could see holes in every step caused by rust. I would recommend you don't go here.

It is a great small zoo and is Free!! Also has a children's park with spectacular views , zebra , flamingo, penguins and lots more ...

Lovely zoo! It’s an open safari walk type, do it is super fun and interactive (you can feed most of the animals). The zoo restaurant gets super busy at lunch time so it might be a bit inconvenient because there are very little to no options at all nearby .