Truly, it would be hard to get more up close and personal with a giraffe than having it wrap its long, purple tongue around your wrist. But that experience is available to anyone who visits the Metro Richmond Zoo, an easy drive south of Richmond in Chesterfield.

Today, 15* years since the zoo opened, most of the region’s population still has no idea that it exists, or they imagine it as a tiny, parched moonscape with maybe a tiger and some goats. Hardly. Not only is the 14-acre Metro Richmond Zoo an honest-to-goodness, legitimate zoo, home to over 1,500* animals, but it’s also got the largest collection of primates in the U.S., 200-plus and counting, including 27 species from orangutans to lemurs to pygmy marmosets.

It’s a busy place, and a feast for the senses. In the aviary, added last year, visitors can walk among spoonbills, ibis and exotic ducks galore. Just beyond, bright flamingos strut or fuss or tuck their heads under wings to sleep standing, incongruously, on one stalk-like leg. Further ahead, a young siamang gibbon tumbles about as his elders kick up their twice-daily singing, part bass clarinet, part diva, part car alarm. Just across the walkway, white-handed gibbons Lavette and Ringo tussle and flirt, swirling around their fence to the delight of onlookers. “They’re trying to kill each other!” some small child inevitably shouts, but worry quickly turns to peals of laughter. Around almost every turn, one of the 14 resident peacocks roaming the facility shouts or shows off its plumage.

The zoo unfolded from owner Jim Andelin’s desire to have his seven children experience animals, beginning with an exotic menagerie of family pets (in addition to the usual fare, a monkey, a kangaroo and more). This led to educational programs in local schools, which led to school groups coming out to the Andelins’ family home. In 1995, the Metro Richmond Zoo opened its gates on their property. All raised in captivity, the animals come from other zoos, although some are exotic pets that have been confiscated—a gator from Virginia’s Department of Game and Fisheries is a recent addition. From the beginning, the zoo has gotten by on proceeds from admission, concessions and gift shop, even with Sundays closed.