Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications While we all get ready to mash the potatoes and whip the pie toppings, Woodland Park Zoo's carnivores are lining up for a Thanksgiving meal with considerably fewer trimmings. What happens next isn't pretty. Photo: Stan Milkowski/Woodland Park Zoo. Turkey Toss returns November 23 with a feast for the beasts. The turkey treats, while perhaps less elegantly prepared than our home-cooked Thanksgiving meals, certainly get us in the spirit of the season! Watch the jaguars, snow leopards and other meat eaters tackle their turkeys and see those carnivorous instincts in the raw. Then the spirit of the season continues with our annual Apple Cup discount , welcoming Cougs and Dawgs to the zoo with a special offer for football fanatics.  Asian elephant Chai enjoys Dawg- and Coug-themed treats to celebrate Apple Cup. That's right, you can celebrate the state football rivalry game by heading to the zoo! From November 25-Dec

Posted by: Jenny Mears, Education Interested in pursuing your degree through the Advanced Inquiry Program? Join us for an informational forum on November 13! Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ) has teamed up with Project Dragonfly from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio to offer the Advanced Inquiry Program (AIP), an exciting Master’s program for a broad range of environmental and education professionals, including classroom teachers, zoo and aquarium professionals, and informal educators. The AIP offers a ground-breaking graduate degree focused on inquiry-driven learning as a powerful agent for social change, public engagement, and ecological stewardship. Woodland Park Zoo is one of eight institutions across the country that offers the AIP Master’s. The first AIP cohort at WPZ started in 2011 (many of whom are graduating this December!) and students have already reported positive changes in their personal and professional lives. We asked Carole Parks, AIP graduate student and an instructo

Posted by: Deborah Jensen, President and CEO The Elephant Task Force —the citizens committee that has been evaluating our zoo’s elephant exhibit and program, including a health assessment of our elephants Chai, Watoto and Bamboo—has just released their final report. I wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to review the report for yourself. Full report available online. In the report, you’ll find that the Task Force has unanimously adopted the medical assessment by the Expert Review Panel that recognizes the good health and well-being of our elephants, as well as providing multiple options for even better accommodations for our elephants. The report recognizes that the elephant program plays a vital role in the zoo’s conservation mission and concludes that the program efforts should continue and consider further expansion to provide even more value to conservation education. Chai, an Asian elephant at Woodland Park Zoo. Photo: Ryan Hawk/WPZ. What’s nex

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Halloween comes to Woodland Park Zoo with Pumpkin Bash presented by Delta Dental of Washington just around the corner — coming up Oct. 26 & 27. Please, oh, please let there be fishes in this pumpkin. Photo: Kirsten Pisto/Woodland Park Zoo. Pumpkins for the animals, trick-or-treating, and more are in store for little goblins and ghosts at Woodland Park Zoo’s family-friendly Pumpkin Bash. See how pumpkins bring out the animals’ wild instincts as hippos chomp, elephants smash, meerkats dig, and bears crunch their way through the festive treats. Activities free with zoo admission or membership. Photo: Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo Exclusive Discount: During Pumpkin Bash, one child 12 years and under in costume is admitted FREE with a paid adult (cannot be combined with any other discount or promotion). Need a jumpstart on a Halloween costume? Download one of our free masks and get crafting on a DIY animal costume. You&#

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Did you know that whenever you buy a 12 oz. bag of Caffe Vita's Zoo Special Reserve coffee, Caffe Vita donates $1 of every purchase to Woodland Park Zoo? We love their commitment to helping the environment, which is why we serve this shade-grown, organic and Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee here at the zoo, too! Coffee : Grizzlies :: Catnip : Cats. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo Now through the month of October, when you buy a 12 oz. bag of Zoo Special Reserve at any Caffe Vita location, you will automatically be entered to win a Woodland Park Zoo Family Fun Pack good for two adult and two child zoo admission tickets to keep or to share! We recommend drinking the coffee, but the grizzlies have other ideas about the best way to use those grounds.

Posted by: Caileigh Robertson, Communications Photos by Kirsten Pisto/Woodland Park Zoo Clear the cob webs from your costumes, lace up your running shoes and run wild at Woodland Park Zoo’s 2nd annual Pumpkin Dash 5K Fun Run/Walk presented by Chevron, coming up Sunday, October 27. All racers are encouraged to dress in costume! We're kicking off the Halloween season with two spooktacular races, the 5K Run/Walk and a 1K Kids Dash. 5K race registration is $30 on or before October 27, $40 day-of-race registration. 1K Kids Dash is $10. All participants will receive a Pumpkin Dash Fun Run t-shirt and a zoo pass valid for one admission through December 31, 2013 included with their race fee. Participants in the 5K Fun Run/Walk can anticipate a scenic course beginning and ending at the Green Lake Small Crafts Center. The top three overall male and female finishers will receive awards in the ceremony at the conclusion of the race. Stick around after the race to join Woodlan

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications You can still call him “cutie,” but our nearly 8-foot-tall, 7-week-old baby giraffe  now has an official name: Misawa (me-SAW-wah). Misawa at one month old. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. The name was selected by the current class of Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine students. The zoo works with the WSU program to mentor the next generation of wildlife veterinarians. What better way to honor that connection than by letting them name one of the most beloved ambassadors of the next generation of zoo animals? Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. The students chose the name Misawa, a common greeting in an indigenous Luo language from Tanzania and southwest Kenya, to honor the giraffe’s native range. It’s an especially fitting connection, given the school’s dedication to human and wildlife health through their Global Animal Health programs in east Africa, a region native to giraffes like Misawa.

Posted by: Caileigh Robertson, Communications Photos by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo With a combined diet of nearly 300 lb. of food per day, it’s a little surprising that our three female elephants produce about 900 lb. of waste daily! And what better is there to do with 900 lb. of poo than make paper? In the Banda Hut of the zoo’s African Village, visitors are transforming elephant dung into one-of-a-kind stationery. Beginning with the raw product of elephant poo, zoo staff steam-clean the fibrous poo balls at 160 degrees to eliminate all bacteria. Once cleaned, the poo greatly resembles hay. You see, although each elephant intakes 100 lb. of food daily, only about 40 percent of it is digested for energy. As for the rest, well, it comes back out the other end… The steamed poo is mixed with a gray, paper pulp, an important ingredient in poo paper-making created by mixing old, shredded zoo maps with water. The old maps are shredded, stripped and soaked in water to break down.

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: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Congratulations to our ZooParent photo contest winners, Paul and Hannah DaRosa, whose Ottie the Otter took a big trip to their wedding for a series of photos worthy of the grand prize! Thanks to all who entered and had some fun with their ZooParent plushes! Become a ZooParent  today. You can pick your favorite animal or select the seasonal special — jaguars ! The special is also now available at ZooStores and makes the perfect gift. Your adoption helps support the daily care of the animals at the zoo, and $5 of the adoption goes directly to wildlife conservation in the Pacific Northwest and around the world.

Posted by: Dr. Deborah B. Jensen, President and CEO African elephant Watoto watches Asian elephant Chai at play. Photo by Ryan Hawk/WPZ. As our dear friends and supporters of the zoo, I wanted to share with you the latest news from the Elephant Task Force . This group of community leaders was recently charged with providing an objective evaluation of the health and social well-being of Woodland Park Zoo’s elephants, and an assessment of the zoo’s elephant breeding program. Read the full report. Last night, the task force released a report from its Expert Review Panel comprised of six internationally recognized scientific experts in elephant care and behavioral health. The panel included respected scientific leaders from academic veterinary research and medicine, as well as animal science sectors. The Expert Review Panel reaffirmed that Woodland Park Zoo’s elephants Watoto, Chai and Bamboo are in good medical health and the behavioral and social well-being of all three e

Posted by: Jessie Maxwell, Education There are more than 5 million people worldwide who go geocaching as a hobby, and this summer Woodland Park Zoo’s Zoo University “Animal Quest” camp added a few more! Photo by Mackenzie Quinn “I’ve never actually done geocaching, but once I’ve gotten to go geocaching I ended up absolutely loving it and want to do it more.” - Alexis L., age 13. It all started with an effort to get Animal Quest campers (ages 12-14) to step into the shoes of a wildlife field researcher: a scientist who does a lot of animal and habitat experiments in the field. The campers explored different tools each day that different wildlife field researchers use—everything from water testing tablets to binoculars to different types of nets to GPS units. As hydrologists the kids tested Green Lake’s chemical and biological health. As ornithologists (bird scientists) they helped the staff monitor and count the barn swallows living here at the zoo. One day the cam

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Show your love as a ZooParent through Instagram or Twitter and be entered to win a grand prize featuring a behind-the-scenes Real Close Tour and a Jaguar ZooParent adoption . Contest runs through August 31, 2013. How to Enter: Follow @woodlandparkzoo on Instagram or Twitter    Take a photo of you and your ZooParent plush animal doing something fun to share with us on Instagram or Twitter. You can be at the zoo, around town or even at a tea party in your backyard. Get creative! Tag @woodlandparkzoo in your Instagram or Twitter photo entry and include #ZooParent to be automatically entered into the contest. See complete rules and prizes . Good luck!

Posted by: Dr. Deborah B. Jensen, President and CEO Did you know that, on average, residents of King County spend as much as 90 percent of our time within 25 miles of home? Given our Northwest love of all things outdoors, thank goodness we have King County’s 200 parks and 175 miles of regional trails to provide us access to nature’s wonders. Whether it’s an expansive network of open spaces and trails or Woodland Park Zoo’s beloved 92-acre urban oasis—we all win when we protect our big backyard. That’s why I encourage you on August 6 to vote YES on King County Proposition One and renew essential support for King County Parks, suburban city parks and Woodland Park Zoo through 2019. A young girl connects with nature at the zoo's award-winning Humboldt penguin exhibit. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Svane. General fund support to King County parks was eliminated as of 2011, so keeping parks open and safe depends on you, me and other county residents renewing two 2007 voter-