Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications 4/27 UPDATE: If you are having trouble getting www.zoo.org to load, you can buy your tickets directly at this link .  BECU ZooTunes presented by Carter Subaru returns for its 29th season and another exciting line-up! The popular concerts are held outdoors on the vast, picturesque North Meadow of Woodland Park Zoo. The new season kicks off June 27:  June 27 - Leo Kottke / Jake Shimabukuro ($24)  July 3 - k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang ($38)  July 18 - Grace Potter & The Nocturnals ($22)  July 19 - Ziggy Marley ($28)  Aug 1 - Los Lobos / Steve Earle and the Dukes ($28) Aug 5 - The Johnny Clegg Band / Ladysmith Black Mambazo ($28) Aug 12 - An Evening With Melissa Etheridge ($39.50) Aug 15 & 16 - An Evening With Pink Martini ($34)   Aug 22 - Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue / Robert Randolph & the Family Band ($26)  Aug 29 - Rosanne Cash / Madeleine Peyroux ($26) BECU ZooTunes presented by Carter Subaru

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications While many visitors think this animal is a goose that has taken up residence in the flamingo exhibit, this is in fact the Coscoroba swan , native to South America and known to fly with flamingos during migration in the wild. Photo by flickr user Sean Enright

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