Woodland Park Zoo Blog

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: 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

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Giraffes have the largest eyes of any land mammal.  Photo by Brittney Bollay/Woodland Park Zoo.   Other animals on the savanna use giraffes as watchtowers — with their height and keen vision, giraffes are often the first to spot predators.

Posted by: Caileigh Robertson, Communications The arctic fox , of course! Not only can this small, furry fox survive Old Man Winter’s North Pole stomping grounds, it travels across the treeless lands of the Arctic relying solely on its fur coat and snow-burrowed den to stay warm. Female arctic fox Somer on a snowy day. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo.. Although our two newly arrived arctic foxes never traveled the North Pole, they did trek nearly 1,500 miles from the northwest corner of Minnesota to join Woodland Park Zoo this summer. August and Lily—1-year-old half-siblings—are now making themselves at home in their spacious Northern Trail exhibit, which they share with the zoo’s mountain goats. Though, they’ve learned to keep their distance from mountain goat Wilson after a playful run-in during their first week on exhibit.  When the foxes were introduced to their new enclosure, they had to learn their boundaries with the goats and the respectful distance t

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Why is a blue-tongued skink’s tongue blue?  Blue-tongued skink. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. Because we feed it blue ice pops. Nah, just kidding. That blue tongue is a natural adaptation. A blue tongue darting out dramatically from a skink’s mouth can warn off or startle away predators.

Posted by: Mark Myers, Curator of Birds It’s baby bird season at Woodland Park Zoo! Over the past few weeks, we’ve had several successful hatchings from birds across the zoo—from temperate waterfowl to tropical tanagers. Here’s a round-up of some of the significant hatchings: Cinnamon teal and falcated ducklings. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. The quiet, tucked away Temperate Wetlands exhibit is home to a number of newly hatched ducks and geese. Since July, we have successfully hatched falcated ducks, red-breasted geese, redhead, cinnamon teal, and lesser scaups (North American diving ducks). Candling a red-breasted goose egg. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. To help prepare for all of these hatchings, our zookeepers use a process called candling in which they hold an egg up to a high powered, focused light source for a few seconds to see if an egg is fertile or to check the health of a developing embryo.  We were thrilled to candle and

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Before they make their official debut to the public this Sat., August 25, we gave our snow leopard cubs the chance to take their very first steps out onto exhibit this week to get comfortable with their new surroundings. Shanti (left) with mother Helen and sister Asha (far right). Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. On the first day that we gave 16-week-old cubs Asha and Shanti access to the exhibit this week, they never stepped foot outside of their holding area! This was likely due to a combination of their own shyness and their mother Helen’s cautiousness. On day two, they didn’t do too much better. Keepers eventually got them to go out into the exhibit but it lasted for just a few short minutes and they ran back inside to their mother not to be seen again that day. Helen grooms her cub Asha. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. Finally, on day three of these soft introductions, we had success! Helen led t

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications A penguin’s tuxedo feathering is not for fancy occasions—it’s actually a type of camouflage known as countershading.   Humboldt penguin at Woodland Park Zoo. Photo by Ryan Hawk/WPZ. When a penguin is in the water, its black back blends into the darker water below when viewing it from above, and its white belly blends into the lighter surface of the water when looking up from underneath it.