Plus, they are all in their more or less natural environment, making the educational facility that much more green. And, of course, easier on the plant- and wildlife.

They also had good information about desert ecology and convservation, including docents at some key exhibits, who were available to talk about recovery efforts (ie. the Mexican Wolf’s introduction into the US to replace the largely-extinct native wolf, which IIRC is a different subspecies from the Mexican Wolf)

The Living Desert does have a large African desert section – we just didn’t make it there this time, so there may well have been elephants & giraffes for all I know. Actually I just checked — they have an animal list here, and it does appear they have a giraffe, but no elephants.