The menagerie doubles your friendship stars, creating a weird sort of economic imbalance between haves and have-nots in MFZ. We're gonna end up with people refusing to be friends with folks who don't have one.
And here's the other thing, now that I have a friendship zoo no one is ever going to visit my main zoo, like, ever again. So. Meh. But here we are, and you can earn gold boosters if you have one (you can if you don't too but it's WAY easier if you do).