Woodland Park Zoo Blog

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 Although their name literally means "thousand-legged," most millipedes have no more than 300 legs. Millipedes have two pairs of legs per body segment, and a mature millipede averages about 40-60 segments. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo.

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications Visayan warty pig at Oregon Zoo. This species of wild pig is coming to Woodland Park Zoo in May. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. This summer, two species of wild pig are arriving at the zoo—African warthogs and critically endangered Visayan warty pigs —so we’re gearing up for some majorly pig-worthy new exhibit spaces. The warthogs will move into the African Savanna biome in the former wild dogs exhibit, and the Visayan warty pigs will have a new home in the Elephant Forest exhibit near the elephant pool. Fencing surrounds the new Visayan warty pig space as the exhibit crew installs gates, watering holes and a mud pit for wallowing. That means a lot of grinding, buffing and roughing is needed to get these new spaces in order. You might not know it, but many of our exhibits are designed and built with our own in-house expertise right here at the zoo. The process starts with animal management and projects staff teaming up to d

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Those burlap bags you often see our orangutans with might seem out of place, but our orangutans use them as they might use leaves in the wild—as blankets, bedding, umbrellas, sun shields and even privacy curtains. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo.

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 Komodo dragons have an excellent sense of smell enhanced by a long, forked tongue that helps them detect carrion up to 6 miles away.   They also use their tongue to investigate other Komodo defecation sites. That might sound gross to us, but it provides valuable information to them about another's sex, size and age. Photo by Mat Hayward/Woodland Park Zoo.

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Malayan tiger. Photo courtesy Fresno Chaffee Zoo. Serving on the exhibit design team for new Malayan tiger and sloth bear exhibits has been the highlight of my years at Woodland Park Zoo. Apologies in advance--you might see an extraordinary amount of exclamation points in this blog post because I am  so excited after all this time to unveil the cool features we’ve dreamed up for this new space! And with your support, we can make it a reality! An overview of the all new, 2-acre tiger and sloth bear exhibit complex. (Click to enlarge.) Artist rendering by Studio Hanson/Roberts. Our tigers and sloth bears currently live in 60-year-old exhibits, some of the last remaining old-school exhibits at the zoo. It’s time to transform this space into a state-of-the-art, naturalistic exhibit complex for these endangered species. We’re making it better for the animals, better for visitors, better for zoo staff and better for the environment