Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications …Or face-lift, you know, a makeover, remodel, renovation. Last spring, what started with some peeling paint and worn out walls in the kookaburra exhibit in Woodland Park Zoo's Australasia biome turned into a larger project. The exhibits crew spent the summer rebuilding the entire space. Now, the exhibit's resident kookaburras, honeyeaters and masked plovers have settled back into their newly revamped digs, complete with a fresh coat of paint and luscious foliage. Top: Honeyeater, bottom: Masked plover and right: Laughing kookaburra. Photos: Dennis Dow/WPZ.  The crew did an awesome job designing a shallow wading pool for these birds that live near streams and marshes in their native Australia. They also installed proper lighting (with energy efficient light bulbs) for the collection of plants in the exhibit. Then the horticulture team added some beautiful vegetation that mimics an Australian forest, including grasses, unde

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications This summer, we invited kids, ages 6 – 12, to submit their short stories about a Northwest animal encounter, fiction or non-fiction, to our MyZoo magazine Amazing Animal Encounters writing contest! Here are the winners! Our Grand Prize winner, Alice Yang, 11 years old: One morning, I was eating breakfast before leaving for my friend’s house to go to a birthday party. I was looking out our glass sliding door, next to the dinner table. It was a gloomy day; I wouldn't have been surprised if it rained.  There was a small patch of forest next to our house, but it was fenced off. I looked at the fence and saw something strange. There was a brown cat on it! It had been very still and I hadn't noticed it. The cat was in the neighbor's side of the fence, and I stared at it.   Suddenly it turned around and I saw its rather short tail. It suddenly dawned on me that it was much too large to be a regular house cat, and the short t

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications Photos by: Kirsten Pisto/Woodland Park Zoo It's back to school these days, and even our baby eyelash palm pit viper is ready with school supplies. Here are seven tips for a successful school day, according to our pencil-loving snakeling. 1. Always bring your favorite pencil. This baby eyelash palm pit viper, born August 23, weighs about 0.1 ounces (2.9 grams). We brought a pencil to the photo shoot to help show scale, and that pencil quickly became the property of this little snake. 2. Protect your pencil at all costs. Eyelash palm pit vipers are ovoviviparous, which means they give birth to live young, instead of laying eggs. This snakeling is certainly a live wire! 3. Pay attention or you’ll get tangled in knots. Handling a baby eyelash palm pit viper is dangerous. They are venomous; do not play with snakes and pencils. Our keeper, Alyssa, was holding the pencil with a special tool for handling venomous snakes. 4

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications Kristin Folger shows off her color study skills in front of her very colorful muses. Welcome to one of the best locations to practice sketching and drawing animals. Whether you are a novice or a practiced artist, Woodland Park Zoo offers hundreds of opportunities to polish your skills. Ready to get started? Download our free Woodland Park Zoo mobile app (for iOS and Android), visit the Maps tab, then tap on Tours to find the Sketching Animals GPS-guided zoo tour. On the tour, you’ll be prompted to work on a few different facets of sketching throughout the zoo. You may choose to spend a couple minutes on each prompt or spread the tour out over a few days if you like. With so many muses, you are bound to leave with some beautiful artwork as well as a deeper connection with your subjects. The tour explores 5 different phases of sketching including: gestural drawing, details, landscape elements, mark-making and color. Follow the pr

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications When we say the Partula snail is tiny, we really mean it. Photo by Emily Schumacher/WPZ. If you’ve been to Bug World lately, you may have noticed a very cool addition across the path! Our tiny Tahitian Partula snails have a teensy, new lab! Look for the conservation lab in the Temperate Forest zone of the zoo. Photo by Kirsten Pisto/WPZ. The rout of tiny endangered tree snails has moved out of Bug World and across the path to their brand new lab. The snail lab was completed this summer, and all of the residents seem quite at home in their new digs. You can see animal care and conservation at work when you visit the lab. Photo by Kirsten Pisto/WPZ. Erin Sullivan, collection manager, tells us a little more about the new lab. Why do the snails need their own space? The Partula snails living at Woodland Park Zoo’s lab are very special—they are extinct in the wild. Our zoo is one of the zoo’s participating in the captive bree

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications A sun bathing dragon is not something you see every day, unless you work at Woodland Park Zoo! When most people think of Komodo dragons, they think of a dangerous creature with venomous bacteria filled saliva, sharp claws and tough scales. But, Komodos have a sensitive side, especially when it comes to their sunbathing needs! Video: Go behind the scenes at the Komodo dragon exhibit. Produced by Kirsten Pisto/WPZ In this new video , exhibit attendant Jordan Veasley and zoo experiences team member Sam Retic find out how a Komodo dragon soaks up the rays at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. They meet up with zookeeper Peter Miller who takes them behind the scenes to get up close with a sunbathing dragon. Photo by Mat Hayward/Woodland Park Zoo. Part of our job here at the zoo is to study the health of these reptiles, especially when it comes to sun exposure and vitamin D absorption. Working with these dragons is very rewarding. When

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications Photos by Kirsten Pisto/Woodland Park Zoo. Kids love bugs. There is just something irresistible about the creepy crawlies that slither, march and fly around us. Maybe it is their intriguing size or perhaps their alien form. Either way, I've seen a group of kids snub a jaguar for a trail of ants, seriously. We have plenty of bugs at the zoo, inside and out. Our Bug World exhibit is brimming with roaches, gigantic spiders and the coolest looking leaf insects you’ll ever see. We also happen to live in a region that is teeming with insects that can be found in our own backyards. Connecting kids to the insects in their backyard is a big part of connecting them to the idea of living landscapes . Every organism is a player, and if you start with the little guys, it is easy to get kids on board with that concept. We hung with Zoomazium interns Brianna Morley and Saritha Beauchamp as they led a group of youngsters and their parents to Zo

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications If you give a black-breasted leaf turtle a hibiscus...she might ask for another petal! Part of Alyssa Borek’s job as Day Exhibit keeper is to ensure all of her residents get a variety of food and enrichment items. Sometimes this means giving an animal a new palatable experience; such was the case with this sweet, little black-breasted leaf turtle and her hibiscus dinner. Video: Black-breasted leaf turtle snacks on hibiscus. Video by Alyssa Borek/Woodland Park Zoo. The adorable clip above shows a tiny taste-test starring our black-breasted leaf turtle, Geoemyda spengleri, and her appetite for a hibiscus petal. Four stars to the chef! Day Exhibit keeper, Alyssa, answers a few questions about this daring culinary adventure… What does this turtle usually eat in the wild? In the wild, these turtles eat various invertebrates, such as insects, worms, and grubs. They also eat decaying fruit found on the forest floor and venture in