Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Gigi Allianic, Communications Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. Now 10-weeks-old, the zoo’s female snow leopard cubs , Shanti and Asha, continue to receive special medical care behind the scenes. Last week the two received cardiac ultrasounds as a precautionary measure. The ultrasounds were performed by the zoo’s volunteer veterinary cardiologist Dr. Jerry Woodfield of Northwest Cardiology Consultants in Seattle. Findings revealed mild functional deficiencies in several valves in the female cubs.   The zoo’s Director of Animal Health, Dr. Darin Collins, tells us that the function of their hearts does not appear to be compromised and there are no health concerns at this time related to their hearts. This is good news, as you’ll remember back in June we shared the heartbreaking news that their male littermate had to be euthanized because he had been born with multiple severe heart defects that were causing early heart failure. Photo by Dennis Do

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo (modified) Our 8-month-old wallaby joey , Dargo, now fully leaves his mother’s pouch to explore around his Australasia exhibit , which he shares with other wallabies, wallaroos and emu. That’s right on cue, as this is around the age that wallaby joeys start to be weaned and gain complete independence. Photo set by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo As you can see from this great set of photos of Dargo ducking in and out of his mom’s pouch (taken last month), that independence means a significant break for mom Kiley, who has pulled triple duty as shelter, blanket and cafeteria for all these months!

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham and Gigi Allianic, Communications We’re deeply saddened to share this news with you: One of our precious snow leopard triplets did not survive his turbulent first weeks. The now six-week-old cubs have been well cared for by their mother Helen in their behind the scenes maternal den, but each of the cubs has displayed health concerns that have caused our keepers and vet staff to go into overdrive trying to help the cubs pull through these challenges. Unfortunately, we had to make the difficult but humane decision to euthanize the male cub yesterday after we determined that the little guy had multiple, severe heart defects that were causing early heart failure. Dr. Darin Collins, the zoo’s Director of Animal Health, tells us that it’s very rare to encounter disease concerns in the zoo’s newborn animals that are too severe for modern medicine to overcome, but in this case, there were no surgical or drug treatment options available. As you can im

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Remember our little penguin hero , the boy who spotted an abandoned Humboldt penguin egg in our exhibit and alerted a keeper to its need for rescue? Despite our all-points bulletin to locate him and thank him for his effort, we never found him after two months of searching. But we won’t let his act go unrecognized even if his identity remains a mystery! So we decided to honor our little hero by naming the penguin chick Ramón, a Spanish name that means “protector.” Ramón is now two months old and is thriving behind the scenes. His rocky start as an abandoned egg put his survival at peril, but thanks to the little boy’s call for help, penguin keeper Celine Pardo was able to rescue the egg before a crow or gull could snatch it. The egg was given to a pair of foster parents who took it in and successfully hatched it days after the rescue. The chick is old enough to start some training so he now works with his zookeepers behind the sce

Posted by: Mark Myers, Curator of Birds It's that great time of the year when many of the birds at Woodland Park Zoo begin to nest and raise chicks. By far the most unique species we breed is the tawny frogmouth. They look like owls, but they're actually relatives of nightjars (nighthawks, whip-poor-wills, etc.). This primarily nocturnal species is native to Australia, and the zoo has two pairs in an off-exhibit area for breeding purposes. Tawny frogmouth chick at four days old. The ball of fluff in this photo is the fourth chick produced by a pair we received from the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia in 2009. It hatched on May 17, and the parents are raising it on a diet of insects and small mice. When hatched, it weighed 0.6 ounces (17.5 grams). The small, white dot towards the upper tip of the bill is the egg tooth. This is what the chick uses to break the shell as it is hatching. The egg tooth will eventually fall off as the chick ages. The frogmouth

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications A snow leopard’s spots are a thing of beauty, and in this case, that beauty is skin-deep. That's because the pigmented spots go beyond the furry surface and are actually part of the snow leopard's skin itself. You can see it here in this shaved patch on one of our snow leopard cubs . The cubs each had a tiny patch shaved during their first health exam to help zookeepers tell them apart on the internal web cam we use to monitor mom and cubs. Notice how the rosette on the shaved patch continues from fur to skin. Snow leopard spots aren’t just for looking pretty. They provide critical camouflage for these hunters, allowing them to blend into their rocky environment as they stalk prey. However, that camouflage and slinky elusiveness also make them difficult to study in the wild! That’s why our conservation partners at the Snow Leopard Trust use hidden cameras that are motion-activated to snap photos of

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications We have three little secrets to share: Triplet snow leopards were born on May 2! The precious cubs, born to 7-year-old mother Helen and 6-year-old father Tom, have been tucked away under mom’s close care in a behind-the-scenes den. Today marked the first day our keepers and vets were able to access the cubs for a quick health exam—which means it was also the very first opportunity we had to take photos. At 2-weeks-old, the cubs are a healthy weight, ranging between 2.1 and 2.4 pounds.   We were able to determine that we’ve got two females and one male on our hands. Snow leopard cubs are born with their eyes closed, and our little trio is just starting to open their eyes. After the brief exam, the cubs were quickly returned to mom who is taking excellent care of them. This is her second litter of cubs, and that maternal experience is paying off. She’s nurturing the three cubs very wel

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Can you spot the joey? Our red-necked wallaby baby is spending more time poking out of its mother's pouch, even when mom is hopping all around the exhibit like in the photo above. The infant wallaby, known as a joey in the marsupial world, still spends much of its time curled up in 3-year-old mom Kiley's pouch. As the summer progresses, it'll begin venturing out more and more, returning to mom for feedings. This is the first wallaby joey at Woodland Park Zoo, part of our Species Survival Plan (SSP) efforts in conjunction with the Association of Zoos & Aquariums. Led by experts in husbandry, nutrition, veterinary care, behavior, conservation and genetics, AZA-accredited institutions manage each species as one population in North America to maximize genetic diversity, with the goal of ensuring the long-term survival of the population and the health of individual animals. SSPs also involve a variety of ot

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Stretch with us! Archive image of Hadiah, the last Sumatran tiger cub born at Woodland Park Zoo, seen here in 2006 at 16 days old. We'll have a breeding pair of Malayan tigers in our new exhibit, which means we may have more cubs in the near future! Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. It’s GiveBIG day in King County, which means your $10 gift to our Give Ten for Tigers campaign will get stretched by the partial matching funds from the Seattle Foundation today only when you make your gift at this link .   Even if you can’t make a gift, click the share buttons to spread this to your friends and help us get the word out across the community. Together, we’ll create an awesome new exhibit for tigers and sloth bears at the zoo.  Remember, GiveBIG is today only. Any gift you make through GiveBIG will go directly to our Give Ten for Tigers campaign. Tomorrow we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming of Give

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications A fuzzy Humboldt penguin chick stretches out during a check-up with keepers. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. What is more adorable than a penguin chick check-up? It’s tough to think of anything more wonderful to celebrate springtime than a couple of fuzzy, gray additions to our Humboldt penguin colony, especially the story behind one of these very lucky chicks! Up close with a penguin chick. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. Two little penguin chicks received their first weigh-in and visual health assessment yesterday behind the scenes at our award-winning Humboldt penguin exhibit. Keepers John and Celine carefully weighed and checked each penguin chick, the first two of this year’s penguin breeding season. These desert penguin chicks weighed in yesterday at 9 oz. and 11 oz. Penguin chick on the scale! Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. Here you can see a penguin egg being candled. Keepers

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications What’s better than one joey? Two joeys! No, not those Joeys. We’re talking baby marsupials! We’re excited to have had two little joeys born at our Australasia exhibit . Our 5-month-old, red-necked wallaby joey is just starting to peek out of its mother’s pouch, and our newborn wallaroo joey has not been seen yet but will start to emerge in June or July. Wallaby joey in its mother’s pouch. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. This is especially exciting news for us as it marks the first wallaby joey born at Woodland Park Zoo, part of our work with the Association of Zoos & Aquariums’ collaborative Species Survival Plan breeding program. If you come by to look for the wallaby joey, you’ll want to have a bit of patience and a little luck on your side. You’ll be looking for the joey in the pouch of 3-year-old, first time mom Kiley. You can tell her apart by the orange tag on the front of her right ear. You can ide

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications How do you celebrate an ocelot’s 1st birthday? With a turkey cake and mouse candle, of course! Our little Evita is not quite so little anymore. To celebrate her turning 1 year old last week, Evita’s keepers prepared a lovely birthday surprise including some wrapped presents (boomer balls generously bought for Evita from our animal enrichment wishlist ), a papier mache ball with a mouse inside, and a heart-shaped frozen cake made from ground turkey, turkey breast and prepared feline diet with a “candle” that I hope to never see on any cake I eat—a mouse with its tail sticking up like a wick! Evita was slow to investigate her treats until keepers added an unexpected twist—a fresh pile of snow picked from just outside the Tropical Rain Forest exhibit. Evita’s exhibit is near 80 degrees year round, so the snow brought out her curiosity. She rubbed her head in the snow and batted at it with her paws before moving on to the other treat

Posted by: Diane Yoshimi, Zookeeper, with Linda Uyeda, Zookeeper Recently born Chinese crocodile lizard. Photo by Ryan Hawk /Woodland Park Zoo. Woodland Park Zoo recently had two female Chinese crocodile lizards ( Shinisaurus crocodilurus ) give birth to two litters of 11 babies in total. The crocodile lizard is an unusual reptile that gives birth to young after 9 to12 months of gestation. The newborn babies, weighing approximately 4 to 6 grams, are independent at birth and litter size ranges from 1 to 9. Since WPZ acquired a pair in 1993, there have been 70 crocodile lizard offspring born at the zoo. In December 2010 there were 115 individuals living in 22 North American institutions held in a managed program, meaning a studbook keeper recommends which individuals should be bred in order to maintain genetic diversity in the captive population. Adult Chinese crocodile lizard (left) in a tank next to a baby Shinisaurus (right). Photo by Ryan Hawk /Woodland Park Zoo.