Al Ain Zoo

This guide to Al Ain Zoo in Abu Dhabi opens in 1972, when the last wild Arabian oryx was shot and the species vanished from a desert whose poets had mistaken it for a unicorn for centuries. It traces how the zoo, founded in 1968, became a refuge holding the species' entire future, and how keepers spent decades pairing and hand-raising oryx born to parents that had never touched open desert. You'll hear about the release program that began in 2007 and the reversal it set in motion. Best heard while watching one turn its head at the enclosure, to see for yourself why poets thought it was something else.