The Health Benefits of Visiting a Zoo, Park, and Aquarium for Older Japanese

In Japan, older people are expected to comprise 30% of the population as early as 2025. We hypothesized that visiting a zoo or aquarium might be good for their health, compared with visiting a nearby park. We conducted two studies with older Japanese participants to compare the psychological and physical effects of visiting a zoo or aquarium with those of visiting a park. In these studies, we administered the Profile of Mood States-Brief questionnaire and measured blood pressure, pulse, and salivary hormones before and after visits. In the first study, 30 participants visited a zoo, a park, and an aquarium on separate days. They also participated in a video-watching experiment as a control. The visitors’ cortisol and/or blood pressure fell significantly (p < 0.05) after visiting the zoo and park. Also, mood improved on a few scales during the zoo visit. Visiting the park had almost the same health benefits as visiting the zoo. To clarify the difference between the two, in the second study, we recruited new older volunteers and assessed changes in salivary oxytocin and cortisol during zoo and park visits. Oxytocin increased significantly (p < 0.05) and cortisol decreased during visits to the zoo, and post-visit oxytocin levels were lower for park visits than zoo visits.