PRIVATE TOUR of CUBA’S SECRET ZOO!

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:17]What's up guys? I'm Jacob Feder and today we're in Havana, Cuba at Hardin Zulahiko de Havana and we're here today with Dr. Adrian Carrero, director of conservation and veterinarian of Mundo Safari Zoo. So, what Adon said is we're going to be knocking down and moving chimpanzees. We're going to be doing a surgery on a lion, surgery on some monkeys. But first, we're going to be getting a private tour of this entire zoo. So, right now, we're walking around the zoo and we're with my little friend, Baby Cota. Baby Kota is a 6-week old spotted hyena. This little guy is super vocal and extremely sweet. Now, in the wild, this little baby at this age would be with mom. However, the mom here at the Havana Zoo was not taking care of this little guy. So, if he were to actually be left with mom, this little dude would probably not be here right now. We're going to be checking out all of the exhibits, getting acquainted with all of the animals, and we're going to be having a three to five part series here at the Havana Zoo. This first part is going to be just a private tour of the facility. So, folks, let's get walking and let's check out some of these animals. So, funding here at the Havana Zoo is very limited, but all of the animals here are very well taken care of. A lot of these exhibits are from the 1960s. I'm not sure what's in here. I think this is empty right now, but the lion exhibit behind us is absolutely incredible. Better than most exhibits you see here in the US. It's about probably almost about an acre, acre and a half exhibit, and they're in this giant pit. I'm not sure where they are right now. They might be hiding or mama's giving birth right now. We're going to go find out. Wa! This little guy is a little bit crazy. We don't know if this is a boy or a girl yet. We actually have to either one send out a DNA test to see if it's a boy or a girl.

[00:01:50]But here in Cuba, resources are limited.

[00:01:52]So more than likely, we're just going to wait till this little guy is 6 months old to see if you know the little balls come in. I want him to open his mouth.

[00:01:58]He's just starting to get his teeth. Now hyenas are very dangerous in the wild, but when you're hand raising these little babies, they're actually very sweet and affectionate. This little guy was actually with his mom, but unfortunately the mom was being a little too rough with him and nippy and with the whole pack there, they thought it was best to actually hand raise this little baby to give him the best possible chance at making it to adulthood and surviving. The lions though here take care of their little babies. Hopefully, we'll have some lions give birth. But look at this little guy.

[00:02:25]He's all gray right now, but as he gets older, he's going to lighten up and his little hyena spots will start coming in.

[00:02:31]And we got a little flower for him. As if this morning could not get any crazier, we got a baby hyena here. And this lady just found this turtle.

[00:02:40]A big fire.

[00:02:43]>> No idea.

[00:02:49]Native Cuban SL. I have no idea what kind of turtle it is.

[00:03:03]Oh, it's hers. Okay, it's her pet turtle. Thought this was some wild turtle.

[00:03:09]>> Maybe open it up. So, we think this is an abscess. I thought it was some kind of like a thyroid problem, but maybe it got a little piece of debris in there which caused this swelling and caused all this pus to form around it. Not only does it have that, but it actually looks like a shell has been drilled. So, we're not sure if this turtle is actually chained up so it doesn't run away. So, in many places, it's very common that people will actually drill the holes into the turtles so they can actually either chain them to the tree so they don't run away. So, unfortunately, this guy definitely had his shell drilled out. Does appear to be an old wound because you could see it's healed. These reptiles are incredibly resilient and can withstand even having their shells drilled, being run over by cars. You can see right here, it looks like they tried to drill it in the same place, but we're unsuccessful. Or maybe this was another hole. You can see it kind of comes through on both sides, but it looks like over time it got kind of peeled over.

[00:04:01]But here we're actually going to sterilize it, drain this abscess out right here. You can feel it's full of fluid. Looks like the main injury might have been like right here. You can see right there. That's looks like where started out. Oh my gosh. There we go.

[00:04:18]Look at all that fluid in there. It's all green. Looks like it could be infected.

[00:04:23]Oh my gosh.

[00:04:26]>> Oh my gosh. Look at that. Okay, here we go. It might explode on us. Oh.

[00:04:34]Oh. Oh my gosh.

[00:04:41]>> Oh my gosh. Yep.

[00:04:45]>> More than likely, this is an old injury.

[00:04:48]Little piece of debris got in there and it the pus formed around it. Smells good.

[00:04:55]>> So now we're doing a little Clorhex rinse. We want to clean all that necrotic tissue out. Kill any bacteria that's in there cuz if we don't do that, that abscess will start forming again.

[00:05:05]Oh, we got some more. Look at that. M.

[00:05:07]Delicious. So, we got little Nacho here right now. He's been fully drained out.

[00:05:12]We actually filled the wound with Betadine so it can dry in there, kill any more bacteria. This has got to be one of the worst smelling abscesses I've ever seen and smelt in my entire life.

[00:05:21]Not sure again how he got that little hole right there, but he's going to be going back to his owner right now. We're trying to locate some chlorhex so she can take it home and continue to rinse his wound cuz if it closes up and there's still a little bit of bacteria in there, that wound could possibly fill back up. And Adiana is just here volunteering to help out the zoo here.

[00:05:39]None of us are being paid to be here.

[00:05:40]We're only here because we love the animals and we want to help them out.

[00:05:43]There's Nacho.

[00:05:45]Yeah. How did he get this?

[00:05:49]>> Yeah. Someone drilled it. HE HAD A CHAIN.

[00:05:52]>> YEAH. OH, we got a female lion right there. Look at her.

[00:05:56]>> Unbelievable.

[00:05:58]>> Looks like we got a little young female over there. Could be also be a young male.

[00:06:03]>> Are these the ones we're going to be working on tomorrow?

[00:06:08]>> See over there?

[00:06:10]One of them is we got a pregnant lioness. So >> gonna give birth this week.

[00:06:16]>> Oh hopefully it gives birth tomorrow.

[00:06:18]That'd be amazing. Like see some little baby lions.

[00:06:22]>> She said it's a possibility.

[00:06:24]>> A possibility. Unbelievable exhibit. You know, honestly, you see a lot online. I thought conditions were going to be pretty bad here from the old videos we've seen online, but from what we see, the animals are being very well taken care of. Like the animals have great weights. This is like probably at least an acre, acre and a half exhibit.

[00:06:42]Unbelievable actually. Like this is better than a lot of the exhibits that you see in the US. Like a lot of people keep these lines in like basically like little prison cells. But this >> this is incredible.

[00:06:58]>> Oh. Oh, she they making it back. Oh >> look, we got mama and little baby hanging out. Look at the little guy. We got little male and female lion. Is that mama?

[00:07:12]>> Mama.

[00:07:13]>> Yeah, we got little mama taking care of her little baby in this lion.

[00:07:17]Unbelievable.

[00:07:19]>> All right, we decided we're going to climb on the roof right now. Okay, up top. Go this way. Come on over. You got it. Nice.

[00:07:30]Okay, so these look like the little lockout areas for the animals. What do we got here? Oh, we got a big male lion.

[00:07:38]Hi, buddy. Oh my gosh. What's up, dude?

[00:07:44]>> I think that's big daddy lion right there. I think big I think big daddy lion is actually away from little babies just cuz he would probably try and eat his babies possibly. We also have the pregnant female. So, if the pregnant female gives birth, if she gets protective over those babies, the male could maul her or he could eat the babies.

[00:08:02]>> The chim. So, >> we got chimpanzees.

[00:08:05]Laenna.

[00:08:06]>> Oh my hyena.

[00:08:08]>> Gosh.

[00:08:09]>> Thought it was a chimp. It's a hyena.

[00:08:11]>> Look what we got here.

[00:08:12]>> She's a little bit of an angry leopard.

[00:08:14]She's just laying down right now. What she's doing is she's actually spread out on the logs because these leopards, not only are they terrestrial, they're also semi-aboreal. So, they do like to hang out way up high on the branches. And it also helps cool them down, spreading their legs and body out. This has got to be one of the most beautiful leopards I've ever seen in my entire life. Oh my gosh. We got some jaguars. We got the two most dangerous big cats in the world next to each other. Jaguars and a leopard. Two of the most unpredictable of all the big cats. This looks like a young male. It's a young male right there. What's up, buddy? Oh my god, guys. We are being stalked by another jaguar behind the rock right there. Look at him.

[00:08:59]Do you guys hear that? We got some lions sounding off in the distance. It's unbelievable. It's getting night time here at the zoo. Oh my gosh. It's night time.

[00:09:12]Oh my gosh. All the lines are sounding off. This is the typical sounds of the jungle and the African savannah in the early evening.

[00:09:21]Oh my gosh.

[00:09:23]We're going to get eaten. Wish us luck.

[00:09:26]Doing a little walk around. Sun's coming down. We got some big old ostriches. Oh my gosh.

[00:09:33]Unbelievable. I love them. Oh my gosh, we got some crazy hyenas. Spotted hyenas. Come over here, buddy. Oh my gosh. Look, we got some friendly little hyenas. Hi, buddy. Hi, buddy. Sniff me.

[00:09:46]Oh my goodness. Little Wendy the hyena.

[00:09:48]Wendy the hyena named after Wendy here.

[00:09:53]>> Oh, hi buddy. Look at your little This is nice. Nice. Look, this is probably one of the friendliest hyenas I've ever met. Look at them. They're all coming to say hi. I've been around hyenas that'll just snap at you the second they come up. But these guys are definitely very friendly and used to people. Guys, come come over, guys. Get over here. Come here, little babies. I think they're coming. Look. Oh my goodness. The nicest, kindest, skittish hyena I've ever met in my life.

[00:10:21]>> I've never seen one of these guys up close. We actually got a striped hyena right now. Very elderly female. You can see she's actually got a cataract in one of her eyes. Super cool species. Come here. Come say nice. Come be nice. Oh my gosh. Look, these guys are just insanely friendly. Like some of these are like little puppies. So folks, we're kind of running out of light here. We're actually walking over to the chimpanzees and check out those guys. Those are the chimps we're actually going to be sedating tomorrow doing an exam on. But like I said, we're running out of light.

[00:10:49]So not sure how much more filming we're going to be doing here today. But if anything, I'll see you guys in the morning. We might see some chimps right now. We have no idea. So right behind us is the ginormous hippo habitat. We're actually going to be jumping down.

[00:11:01]Everyone's already in there with the hippos and the flamingos. We're coming.

[00:11:04]We're going down. All right. So, how do we get into hippo habitat? Well, all we do is just jump the railing.

[00:11:11]>> What?

[00:11:13]>> Means you're agile.

[00:11:14]>> Yes. And then jump right down. There we go. Into the hippo.

[00:11:20]>> Flamingo.

[00:11:21]>> Hopefully, this is a friendly hippo.

[00:11:22]Look, they got flamingos behind us.

[00:11:24]These guys look familiar. These are like the little muscoi ducks that we have back in Florida. I'm surprised that the hippo doesn't try and eat them. What's up, little buddies?

[00:11:33]Not often that you get told, "Hey, why don't you just jump into a hippo habitat?" But guess what?

[00:11:38]>> We're here for it. All right, so this hippo's coming over here right now, Julia. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. We got a friendly hippo right behind us.

[00:11:48]>> Unbelievable. Absolutely incredible.

[00:11:51]>> Look at this beautiful girl.

[00:11:53]>> Hi, mama. Oh, >> super friendly. Hi there, baby. Oh my gosh.

[00:12:04]>> Oh, wow. Here we go.

[00:12:25]There we go.

[00:12:27]Oh, wow.

[00:12:30]>> Wow.

[00:12:33]>> Seems to be the hippo expert here today.

[00:12:36]>> Unbelievable.

[00:12:46]>> So, Julia has had enough of us today.

[00:12:48]She is back in her ginormous pond. Bye Julia. We'll see you tomorrow. So right now we're going to be checking out some of the primates that call the Havana Zoo home. So we've got some green vervet monkeys. Very common monkey we see in the US. We know a lot of facilities that keep them. Now unfortunately these exhibits are a little bit outdated.

[00:13:04]Everything here in Cuba is basically stuck in time. This is very 1960s USA and 1960s Cuba. It doesn't look like there's been any upgrades to this zoo for probably the past 50 years. So, a lot of these exhibits have been here for a very, very long time. So, got this little green boy in here. It's a little green vervet. Absolutely adorable. Come here, buddy. Come be my friend. He's a little standoffish of me. Also, I'm a male and he's a male. So, a lot of times in the wild, the two males want to have a standoff between each other. Buddy, I'm your friend. Come. All right. He looks a little bit scared of us. We've also got another one. I think this is another little male, but he is down here and he's waiting for us. Hi, buddy. Hi, Bubba. Can we be friends? Can we be f Oh, look. He wants to be pet. Come here.

[00:13:50]What is it? Come here, Bubba.

[00:13:52]>> You want to play?

[00:13:53]>> Hi. You want to play? You want to You want a friend? Do you want to come back home to be with Theo and Alfie? I think they'd love to be your friend. You can come and live in the house and sleep in the AC and play and hang out in the monkey tunnels and maybe you'll make a jaguar friend. Who knows? Look at this little guy. Looks a little bit scared of me right now. What's up, buddy? Oh, look at this one. Looks like we got a little younger female right here. Hi, mama. Hi.

[00:14:17]Definitely a female. Come here. Look, she's swinging. She wants to have some fun. Come here, mama. But we got this very interesting African primate right here on the end. Monkey we've actually never even seen before. I don't think Oh, look. We got another one. What's up?

[00:14:32]He's eating some papaya. Looks like on today's menu, we had papaya and pineapple. It's a little fat girl there.

[00:14:39]She's definitely a little bit chunky.

[00:14:41]Come over here, mama. She's just chowing down like look at her. Mama, that's some delicious stuff. Do you like that? Look at her. She's loving it. Come, come, come. Look. Oh my goodness. She almost looks pregnant, but she's very chunky.

[00:14:55]Come. But right on the end is this crazy monkey that I have never seen. I seeing him now for the very first time. And honestly, I want to take him home. I want to stuff him in my suitcase and bring him back to Miami. Come look at this little guy. This is like the friendliest monkey here. He just wants to be pet. Maybe he wants his ear groomed. So, primates love to be groomed. They're very affectionate. The other primates are a little bit skittish, but this little guy right here looks like he wants to be groomed. Now, ideally, all these primates would be living with other monkeys. It's very important for their social structure.

[00:15:26]So, coming here right now and grooming this guy is natural for him. What you want to groom me? You can do it, buddy.

[00:15:32]Oh, he's sniffing me. Here, you can groom me. Look, there's some nice hair.

[00:15:36]Look at his little hands. So, right now we're here with Vanelli, the golden spider monkey. We just fed these guys and we brought her out because she's really friendly. This is the first time I've been near an adult spider monkey.

[00:15:46]She's absolutely gorgeous. Hi there, mama. Maybe one day in the future we'll get a spider monkey. You want to come on my shoulder?

[00:15:53]>> Shoulder vein. Where are we going? What the heck is going on, baby? Where are we going? What are we doing? We're going on an adventure.

[00:16:02]>> So, right now we're here in the chimpanzeee area. The zoo got a lot of limited funding, so there's really not much in here. There is some chimpanzees.

[00:16:11]We got a female out here right now. She actually just flick some poop at us.

[00:16:16]>> Hi there, mama.

[00:16:18]>> Hi, mama.

[00:16:20]Older female chimp right there. Not sure her age, looks at least 10, 12 years old. She's going to fling some poop at me. There's another male in here, buddy.

[00:16:32]Hi, buddy. Poor little guy. Come on, man. Don't throw that at me. Chimps love to throw poop and try to get a reaction out of you. So, I thought we had seen all of the chimpanzees, but we came up these stairs and we found three more chimps. Now, unfortunately, the conditions they're living in are not ideal. However, the staff here has to deal with the limited resources that they're given. They're not paid very much. Maybe about $10 for the entire month. So the staff here is very dedicated to these chimps and all of the animals here trying to give them the best possible life with the resources and tools that they have. Not only are the caretakers here, but the veterinarians and biologists which are here every single day, day in and day out, even if they don't have food on the tables for themselves, they're here and willing to help these animals out. So we're going to come over here, look at these chimps. So we're going to be here first thing in the morning. We're going to be knocking these chimps out, doing a full health exam on them, setting up enrichment in their exhibits to give them a better life here at the zoo here in Havana. Hi, buddy. We got another chimpy here. What's up, dude? How are you doing? Looks like he's eating some sweet potato. He's eating something. So, this is another chimpanzeee here at the zoo and his name is Lei. What's up, Lei?

[00:17:37]How you doing, buddy? So, right now, we have made it to the black bear exhibit and we got the bear down there. What's his name?

[00:17:44]>> Junior.

[00:17:45]>> Junior. So, Junior's down there in the pit. He's laying down. Looks like he's panting. It's the end of the day. It is extremely hot day here in Havana, Cuba.

[00:17:52]Now, unfortunately, when the public comes here, they do like to harass the animals. So, if we look down in the exhibit, you can see there's actually several beer cans that have been tossed over this bear. Now, thankfully, if he doesn't mess with it, if he were to ingest it, it could possibly impact him, cut the lining of his guts and his intestines and organs. But this guy thankfully does not like to eat these beer cans. You can kind of see them in here right there. You can see we got one, two, three beer cans. And now we're here at the aviaries of the zoo. We've been here for the past 2 days and have not been able to see all of it. This place is absolutely massive. This is a super nice aviator that you can walk in where the birds are free. Super cool. We got some parakeetses in here. Amazon parrots like what we have back at the house. What else do we have here? Oh, I've never seen these before. We gota de sila. Wow. Unbelievable. There's a couple of them in there all the way to the back. And this right here is all of the supplies that we brought to the animals here at the Cuba Zoo. from antibiotics to dewormers, syringe and gloves, and even flee and tick collars for the dogs. Ivormect paste and even diapers. I don't know how we're going to use this for the animals, but we brought them anyways. Stethoscopes, gauze, we even got more dewormers. We brought like four different kinds of dewormers. And all of this is going to be for the animals. So, all the supplies that we brought is going to help the zoo out in a much needed way. That's what we're here for, to make an impact for the animals.

[00:19:47]Mat.

[00:20:17]Come on.

[00:20:21]Mhm.