Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications Fall is here! Crispy leaves, football, presidential debates, pumpkin spice lattes and… spidies! This orb weaver is decorating for fall! Photo by Kirsten Pisto/Woodland Park Zoo. Spider webs appear everywhere; draped across your porch, athwart your front door, and if you happen to be tall, most likely dangling in your hair. Despite the unpleasantness of being greeted each morning with a silky web stuck to your face, orb weaver spiders are pretty incredible. Dancing in the morning fog, an orb weaver constructs her web. Woodland Park Zoo archive photo. There are more than 3,000 different species of orb weavers around the world, but the most common species in Western Washington is the cross spider ( Araneus diadematus ) . These tiny architects are unbelievable weavers. A female spider suns herself in the middle of her web. Photo by Kirsten Pisto/Woodland Park Zoo. Orb weavers construct their webs by first flinging

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down... Upside down sloth. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. OK, maybe the Fresh Prince wasn’t rapping about sloths, but considering they spend the vast majority of their day turned upside down, he sure could have been. Snacking while upside down. Don’t try this at home. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. Sloths eat, sleep, mate and even give birth upside down. If you were to hang upside down from your seat right now (use your imagination and spare yourself the pain of actually doing it, trust me), you’ll feel your head start to pound, gravity tugging at your hair, and honestly, I’m getting dizzy just writing about it. But none of that happens for the upside-down kings of the rain forest, because sloths are specially adapted to live life from their unique point of view. So how do sloths function upside down? Looking good: Sloth

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Meerkat pileup! Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. Meerkats are the most social of all the mongooses and spend much of their time playing and grooming to maintain their tight bonds.

Posted by: Caileigh Robertson, Communications If you’re on the hunt for Prince Charming, I’m giving a fair warning to stay clear of Woodland Park Zoo’s frog friends on exhibit. These frogs may seem like prince potential, but don’t be so quick to give them a kiss! The frog collection in the Day Exhibit is rather unique and houses more than eight amphibian species. Of these amphibians, many are native to rain forest regions of the world. The hourglass tree frog, red-eyed tree frog and green-and-black poison dart frog are among many amphibians living in the wet forests of Central America. Yellow hourglass tree frog. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. A little, colorful frog that leaps along the Costa Rican and Colombian wetlands is the yellow hourglass tree frog. Throughout the dry season, this little frog lives among the trees of the towering forest canopy. The cool, wet rain forests provide constant moisture for its skin to absorb until the dry season ends. With the

Posted by: Laura Lockard, Communications/Public Affairs Come on. We know you do it. Cheat a little in the morning. Sneak in a little around lunch time. Get one more dose before you go home from work. It is worse than any addiction known to mankind… the cuteness craving. So strong it can take up an entire day if you aren’t careful. You nervously close your browser hiding the baby ocelot the minute someone walks by. Constantly dreading the inevitable question from your boss, “What have you been doing all day?” Ocelot kitten born at Woodland Park Zoo in 2008. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. Now you can answer, “Strengthening my concentration.” All that time sneaking quick peeks at baby zoo animals, bear cams and those awesome miniature Egyptian tortoises is now justified! We need those daily doses of cuteness and it might even be making us more focused, enabling our concentration. Egyptian tortoises hatched at Woodland Park Zoo in 2011. Photo by Ryan Hawk/Woodland P

Posted by: Kirsten Pisto, Communications Stepping into the greenhouse at Woodland Park Zoo, I am hit with a hot, humid air that smells of fertilizer, earth and some wildly primal perfumes. In the farthest corner is a table smothered in a muddle of vines, twisting tendrils and mysterious red and pink flanked vessels. Welcome to the land of the endangered old world pitcher plants, Nepenthes .   A dangerous view for a curious insect, the vibrant red lip on this pitcher plant is both tempting and deadly. I tracked down Woodland Park Zoo gardener and pitcher plant enthusiast, Justin Schroeder, who had a lot to say about these endangered carnivores. Old world pitcher plants live in very remote areas, deep in the hillsides of tropical Asia. They prefer sunny ridges and slopes to thick jungles. Rain and high humidity are important elements of their environment as they like a permanently wet soil. Old world pitcher plants can grow epiphytically, atop other plants, trees or logs

Posted by: Laura Lockard, Communications/Public Affairs I overheard a visitor at the Humboldt penguin exhibit express concern over a “sick” penguin. I looked at the penguin, “Oh my, he is having a bad hair day for certain.” I immediately allayed her concerns by stating, “He is just blowing his coat.” I then quickly realized that only a large-breed dog lover would know what that is. I couldn’t think of the bird version word for “blowing his coat.” Wracking my brain it finally came to me. Molting! He is molting. Penguin molting is a perfectly normal, annual event during which they replace all of their feathers. Penguins have more feathers than most other birds, with about 70 per square inch. Their feathers are stiff and overlap to waterproof and insulate their body. Molting can appear patchy as they lose a large number of feathers in a short period of time throughout the body, with old feathers falling out before replacement feathers grow in, a process known as catastrophic