Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications This is a conservation story about butterflies and beer. An Oregon silverspot butterfly lands on a beer bottle. It’ll all make sense by the end of the story, I promise.  Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. Where to start? How about we take it back to biology class. Remember learning about generalists and specialists? Humans are the ultimate generalist—we’ll live in just about any habitat and eat just about any food. Then there are the specialists, like koalas and their eucalyptus-only diet. For specialists, survival depends on that one thing they specialize in. That one thing goes away, and they’re in big trouble. Oregon silverspot butterfly at Cascade Head in Oregon. Photo by Rachel Gray/Woodland Park Zoo. That’s what’s happening to the Oregon silverspot butterfly, a native of the Pacific Northwest and a specialist dependent on the early blue violet plant for survival. This threatened species once li

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Our Chilean flamingos may be pretty in pink, but three recently hatched chicks are wonderful in white as their downy feathers haven’t yet taken on that classic blushed shade. Flamingo chicks hatch with a whitish, gray down and start to acquire their pink feathering at about 1 year of age, though it can still be mixed with gray-brown contour feathers until they are 2 to 3 years old. The chicks hatched on exhibit between August 31 and September 5 following a 29-day incubation period. To ensure a higher chance of survival, the chicks and parents have been relocated behind the scenes to a quieter off-exhibit nursery for rearing. As they get bigger and hardier, we will reintroduce them back out on exhibit and back into the flock. Photos by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo.

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications Photo by Kirsten Pisto/Woodland Park Zoo. “We have some pretty cute violaceous turaco chicks in the Savanna Aviary ”, says excited zookeeper, Norah Farnham. “We have not hatched this species in quite a while!”   Photo by Kirsten Pisto/Woodland Park Zoo. The chicks, both boys, hatched a day apart on July 31 and August 1. Even though they have fledged the nest, these two stick together and follow each other from branch to branch. Photo by Kirsten Pisto/Woodland Park Zoo. As this little chick stretches out, you can see his soft down. They are just starting to get their primary feathers and coloring. Zookeeper Katie Ahl told us she can see their beaks beginning to change color already! Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. Here is a photo of an adult violaceous turaco. They have a really beautiful dark violet plumage with striking crimson primary flight feathers. Their orange beaks, as you can see, are also

Posted by: Monica Lake, Capital Projects Our sloth bears Randy and Tasha were out in full regalia Tuesday, sniffing, scratching, balancing on logs and slurping their favorite foods—all to greet 200+ zoo lovers and advocates who gathered to help us celebrate a major milestone:  breaking ground on the new Asian Tropical Forest exhibit complex! Assisted by sloth bear Randy, President and CEO Deborah Jensen spoke about design and animal care innovations at the Asian Tropical Forest groundbreaking ceremony Sept. 18, 2012. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. Nearly 100 additional zoo fans of the smaller variety “dug in” to make way for new homes for Asian small-clawed otters, sloth bears and Malayan tigers. Kids from Orca Children’s Center, North Seattle Fives Cooperative and West Woodland Elementary School joined the ceremony. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. The kids also did a great job of overseeing the work of several leaders of the Asian Tropical Fo

Posted by: Laura Lockard, Communications/Public Affairs Asian elephant Bamboo shows us how bath time is done. Video by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. From Borneo to Seattle, elephants embrace their bath time. We all know the feeling when you first step into the shower after working in the yard all day. Elephants at Woodland Park Zoo not only get an extended, luxurious shower, they also enjoy a quatro-pedi and a good exfoliation with a special elephant brush. Watoto gets a massage with a special brush. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. I recently had the pleasure of joining the elephant keepers as they brought Watoto into the shower barn. There she greeted them with a long, trunky sniff and then was ready for her bath with the   garden hose. Her giantess turned attentively as she followed her keeper’s soft commands, “Watoto right, Watoto turn, Watoto back.” All the washing while, she was inquisitively seeking that next snack. Carrots seem to be her treat of c

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Emu feathers are designed to hang loosely, which helps keep them cool but also gives them an appearance of having hair rather than the tightly barbed feathers we’re used to seeing on most birds . Photo by Mat Hayward/Woodland Park Zoo.

Posted by: Caileigh Robertson, Communications Exciting news! This week, Woodland Park Zoo took home two national conservation awards from the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA), the accrediting organization for more than 200 zoos and aquariums in North America. An Oregon spotted frog is released into Northwest habitat. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. We won top honors in the North American Conservation Award category for our collaborative Oregon Spotted Frog Reintroduction Project , along with our partners Oregon Zoo and Northwest Trek. Woodland Park Zoo and Oregon Zoo also earned the Significant Achievement Award for the Oregon Silverspot Captive Rearing Program . These awards represent the 14 th national and international honors in conservation for us from AZA. The Oregon Spotted Frog Reintroduction Project is a six-year collaborative effort among Woodland Park Zoo, Oregon Zoo, Northwest Trek and other conservation leaders in the Pacific Northw

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications A porcupine’s front teeth continue to grow throughout its life. Porcupine nibbling. Photo by Lauren LaPlante/Woodland Park Zoo That’s helpful since it spends its days constantly gnawing on hard substances, wearing down its teeth. Mmmm, tree bark.

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications We’re about to break ground on phase one of our all new tiger, sloth bear and otter exhibit complex , and that means we’re coming up on the final weekend—Sept. 15 – 16—to view sloth bears Randy and Tasha at the zoo before construction begins. Sloth bear at Woodland Park Zoo. Construction for a new exhibit complex begins Sept. 17, 2012. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. Once construction begins the week of Sept. 17, we’ll be closing off the area where the sloth bears live now and they will remain off public view until both phases of the construction project are complete, which we anticipate will be in 2014. The new exhibit complex will transform a 60-year-old portion of the zoo into a state-of-the-art, 2-acre complex with dynamic new homes for several species of the Asian tropical forest—Asian small-clawed otters, sloth bears, tropical birds and Malayan tigers. Asian small-clawed otters. Photo courtesy of Santa Bar

Posted by: Gretchen Albrecht, Raptor Keeper It’s me, Squeaky. Photo by Gretchen Albrecht/Woodland Park Zoo. Hi, I’m Squeaky the squirrel. I work at Woodland Park Zoo’s Raptor Center as a hawk lure. It’s been a busy summer for me. I thought you might enjoy hearing about my job. 8:00 a.m. - Time to get up. I rest with two other lures, the “dummy bunny” used for the ferruginous hawk and golden eagle, and a swing lure used for the Aplomado falcon (it is supposed to look like a bird).  Obviously I am the cutest! Chillin’ with the dummy bunny and swing lure. Photo by Gretchen Albrecht/Woodland Park Zoo. Lures are an important part of training a raptor to safely free fly. The lure usually represents the raptor’s natural prey. After getting a meal or two on the lure a raptor is generally pretty keen to fly to it since the lure means food. Flying to a lure is a lot more fun than flying to a trainer’s glove so a lure is often used when a raptor has gone off cours