Editing Bronx Zoo (section)

====Butterfly Garden====
[[File:Bronx Zoo - NY - USA - panoramio (30).jpg|thumb|Butterfly Garden]]
This permanent structure is an indoor [[butterfly conservatory]] which lets visitors walk through gardens and meadows and watch the butterflies up close.
<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bronxzoo.com/animals-and-exhibits/exhibits/butterfly-garden.aspx |title=Butterfly Garden |publisher=Bronx Zoo |access-date=May 31, 2010 |archive-date=January 16, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150116032346/http://www.bronxzoo.com/animals-and-exhibits/exhibits/butterfly-garden.aspx |url-status=live}}</ref> Built and inaugurated in mid-1996, the attraction is a 170-foot-long maze, where "visitors can walk through the stages of a [[Monarch butterfly|monarch]]'s [[metamorphosis]]" with a [[greenhouse]] in the middle hosting 44 species and over 1,000 butterflies; the greenhouse is really "a plastic tent on an aluminum frame".

The structure, costing $500,000, is the precursor for a future permanent House of Invertebrates in the Monkey House near the Fordham Road entrance. Many species come from the [[New York metropolitan area]], and all species of [[butterfly|butterflies]] and [[moth]]s are from around the continent.
If not successful, the [[Oklahoma City Zoo]] would have purchased it in September 1997.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/23/nyregion/exhibits-aflutter-bronx-zoo-butterfly-tent-will-allow-visitors-mingle-with.html Exhibits Aflutter At the Bronx Zoo;Butterfly Tent Will Allow Visitors To Mingle With Winged Residents] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160901031215/http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/23/nyregion/exhibits-aflutter-bronx-zoo-butterfly-tent-will-allow-visitors-mingle-with.html |date=September 1, 2016}}, ''The New York Times''. By Douglas Martin. Published: May 23, 1996</ref>

Before the Butterfly Garden opened, this was where the Great [[Ape]] House was located, and it was once home to [[gorilla]]s, [[chimpanzee]]s, [[orangutan]]s, and [[gibbon]]s through the exhibit’s history.