On April 17, 1961, the first Indian elephant cow Toni, bought by the William Althoff circus, moved in.

The sea lion enclosure was built in 1973 and the South America area was opened in 1975, funded by the Wilhelm Karmann Foundation.

A multi-purpose warm house, which opened in May 1975, burned down on the night of January 3 to 4, 1978 due to chewed electrical lines, killing dozen animals and causing property damage of around two million Deutsche Marks.

From 1980 onwards, there were a number of new buildings, renovations and extensions with the focus on animal welfare and the aim of developing the zoo into a nature adventure park with individual themed landscapes.

In September 2006, Suma, a female orangutan, who over time had become a favorite of the zoo's public, died.

In June 2010, the 5.5 hectare Takamanda African area opened, for which the zoo grounds were expanded to the south (Autobahn 30).

In September 2017, the inauguration of the third section of the Angkor Wat area took place with the renovation and expansion of the ape house and the enclosure of the popular orangutan "Buschi".

The “Wir für Buschi” fundraising campaign alone contributed a third of the costs, amounting to 1.5 million euros.

The rhinoceros and lion enclosures will probably be rebuilt by the end of 2020 and combined to form a common themed area, Mapungubwe.

The construction of the facility was secured by additional funding from the State of Lower Saxony in the amount of around 800,000 euros after the zoo had to struggle with financial losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 11, 2017, around 2:15 p.m., the hybrid bear Tips broke out of the enclosure in the Kajanaland area, opened in 2011, where she had lived with her brother Taps.

Visitors made the zoo staff aware of the runaway she-bear, who was moving towards the entrance to the park.

The investigation of the outbreak traces revealed that the she-bear, which had recently ended its hibernation, first overcame an electric fence when it broke out.

The African area "Takamanda" is home to bongos, Chapman's zebras, donkeys, goats, drills, red river hogs, African forest buffalos, chimpanzees, servals, spotted hyenas, warthogs, turacos, hamerkops, white-headed buffalo weavers, glossy starlings, the endangered Diana monkey and banded mongooses.

A total of 80 animals live on the 5.5 hectare area, which is modeled on a savannah landscape and named after a national park in Cameroon.

In addition to the outdoor enclosures for tapirs, maned wolves as well as vicuñas and rheas, there is a South American house with South American coatis, capybaras, sloths, boa constrictors, tamarins, squirrel monkeys, capuchin monkeys and the so-called “Mendoza hall” (formerly “tropical hall”), in the flora and fauna of a northern Argentinean plateau are modeled on the province of Mendoza.

The Asian temple landscape, based on the model of Angkor Wat, consists of a walk-in "monkey temple" with southern pig-tailed macaques, tiger, tufted deer and red panda enclosures and an hominid house with siamangs, Northern white-cheeked gibbons and orangutans.

The income from the sold works goes into the tapir protection project "Tajya-Saruta", which the Osnabrück Zoo has been supporting since 2003.

As a special feature, you can watch leaf cutter ants transporting cut plant leaves from their feeding place through transparent tubes into their burrow.

hybrid bears, lynx, wolverines, raccoons, reindeer, silver foxes and Gute sheep live here.

However, since 2011, when the area was redesigned to today's Kajanaland and the route was changed, the grave has no longer been directly accessible to visitors.