Founded in 1934 in the basement of the local elementary school, the Junior Museum has since grown into a beloved small gem in Palo Alto. The indoor museum area features rotating exhibits and lots of mechanical activities of the hands-on variety, showing how gears work or letting kids play with air bellows. If you can pry kids away from the activities, out the back door is a small but highly appealing zoo with a bevy of critters that range from the tame (turtles, snakes and ducks) to the exotic (peacocks) to the wild (bobcats and a leopard shark). Many of the zoo's residents were carefully chosen as representatives of the local wildlife - an effort to foster understanding about the creatures that share the Bay Area with humans. It seems to be working: The kids cluster around the owl and ooh and ahh as it swivels its head 180 degrees. At a larger cage, visitors crane their necks to look at a red-tailed hawk while others brush past to see the fruit bats.
Read more on the SF Chronicle website.
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