Jacksonville Zoo brings back yoga with giraffes for June weekends

Jacksonville Zoo and Botanical Gardens brought back Yoga with Giraffes for every Saturday in June, marking the program’s third straight year as a members-only draw after the strong response to its 2022 public debut. The 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. sessions turned a quiet stretch of the zoo into a very specific kind of practice space, one built around giraffes, early light and the kind of pre-opening stillness most studio classes never get.

The format has already shifted from one-off novelty to repeat programming. The zoo first introduced the class as a public experience in 2022, then returned it in 2024 with a tighter members-only setup after interest held up. That move tells the story clearly enough: this was not a gimmick that burned out after one photo-friendly weekend, but a seasonal event with enough pull to bring people back and justify another June run.

Emily Long, the zoo’s marketing manager, said the zoo uses opportunities like this to create memorable connections with wildlife and the zoo itself. That is the real hook here. The class works because it gives yoga a setting it cannot manufacture in a studio, with giraffes grazing nearby and lions audible in the distance before the park opened to the public.

The animal side of the event is part of the appeal too. Jacksonville Zoo says it has seven giraffes, six females and one male, all reticulated giraffes. That is a tight enough herd to make the experience feel intimate, and large enough to give the class real visual energy while people moved through their poses.

The zoo’s broader pitch fits that same public-space logic. Jacksonville Zoo and Botanical Gardens says it is home to more than 2,000 animals and 1,000 varieties of plants, and it has also been running a separate $10 Tuesdays admission promotion on select dates from June 9 through Aug. 4. Premium member events and lower-cost family access are working in tandem, not against each other, to keep more people moving through the grounds.

The conservation message sits underneath all of it. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums says its AZA SAFE programs leverage member institutions’ audiences to help save species, and its Species Survival Plan programs are designed to manage healthy, genetically diverse zoo populations. In that frame, a dawn yoga class with giraffes is doing more than filling a summer calendar. It keeps the animals visible, the crowd engaged and the zoo’s conservation story in regular circulation, which is why the class keeps coming back every June.