Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Photos by: Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo Hispanic Seafair Queen Tania Santiago gets up close with penguin Cortez thanks to zookeeper Celine Pardo. Curator Mark Myers shows off a wand to this year's Seafair Princesses, but this wand isn't normally meant to go with tiaras. “This is a metal detector,” Mark explains. “Any idea why we might need a metal detector in the penguin exhibit?” “To see if they ate any coins?” a Princess correctly guesses. “That’s right, penguins like shiny objects,” Mark explains, as the ladies all self-consciously look at each other’s sparkling tiaras. Better not drop those in the penguin pool! 63rd Annual Miss Seafair Veronica Asence holds a penguin egg (don't worry, it's empty!). But our crowned cadre is too composed to have to worry about that. This year's Seafair Princesses, participants in the Seafair Scholarship Program for Women, got to go behind the scenes at the zo

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Photos by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo If you haven’t visited the sloth bear cubs yet, make plans soon! Now seven months old, the twins are still small, but act double their size in their bold adventures. Every log must be scaled, every grub must be snuffled out of its hiding spot, every tub of water must be splashed into, and every sibling battle must be fought for these two. Brother and sister go about their lives nose-first, their sense of smell leading them on journeys big and small. Sloth bears are the vacuum cleaners of the Asian forest—take a closer look at that snout and you’ll notice it’s designed for slurping up termites. The large gap in their front teeth (due to the absence of front upper incisors) means nothing gets in the way of vacuuming up a meal. They can even close their nostrils on their flexible noses to prevent any bugs from crawling up the wrong way whenever they are snout-deep in a termi

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Photos by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo. More than 1,000 animals call Woodland Park Zoo’s exhibits home, but let’s not forget about all the native and migratory wildlife that use the zoo for nesting, feeding and breeding grounds. One of those wild animals—the barn swallow—is featured on our newest web cam . A glimpse at the camera pointing at the nest in the Raptor Barn. A clutch of wild barn swallows hatched the week of June 17 in a nest tucked into the rafters of the zoo’s Raptor Barn—one of four active swallow nests in the building. The migratory birds return each spring to occupy the nests, as well as others around zoo grounds including the Family Farm, to hatch and raise their chicks before the fledglings are ready to head south in the fall. Close up of the newly hatched, hungry chicks in the nest. The web cam streams 24/7 so you can get a glimpse of this young, wild family as the chicks hit their major milestones—gr

Posted by: Terry Blumer, ZooStore This entry is part one in a three part series from ZooStore and retail manager Terry Blumer following his travels to Mongolia to help lead a conservation commerce workshop for local artisans, creating an eco-friendly income alternative to poaching in snow leopard habitat. How can you make a difference in the world of conservation? By doing what we all do every day—consume! Now you might be saying to yourself, “Did I just read that correctly? I thought that one of the problems with conservation is that consumers were buying too much stuff?” Well…it depends on what we buy. Knowing what we buy, where it comes from and how it is being made is to know a product’s supply chain and when we know that, we can make informed decisions on how we spend our money on the things we buy. Shopping for Conservation Commerce in the ZooStore. Here, a customer discovers PNG YUS coffee, grown by farmers participating in tree kangaroo conservation in Papua New Guin

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications It's official! The jaguar cubs now have daily access to their exhibit from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Jaguar cub up close. Photo by Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren Look for the cubs cozying up in the cave or exploring the higher reaches of the exhibit. The cubs may begin retreating to their behind-the-scenes bedroom between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. Photo by Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren Don't miss our Zoo Babies webpage to learn more about the jaguar cubs and the other tiny tykes that now call the zoo home. Love jaguars and want to support our conservation efforts to protect them and other wildlife ? Become a jaguar ZooParent today! Your ZooParent adoption helps us care for the animals at the zoo and sends $5 directly to field conservation projects in the wild.

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Photos by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo, Video by Caileigh Robertson/Woodland Park Zoo [ UPDATE: The jaguar cubs have now made their official debut and have daily access to their exhibit, 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.] It’s a good thing these jaguar cubs are creatures of the rain forest, as their very first steps outdoors were soggy ones. Three-month-old jaguar triplets—brother Kuwan and sisters Inka and Arizona—had their first practice session outside today. The trio is getting ready for their official public debut, which should be coming up any day as the cubs get used to their new digs. Before the zoo opened to the public this morning, a lucky few of us zoo staff gathered around the exhibit at Jaguar Cove and watched to see what would happen when the jaguars’ den door opened. Out came the cubs for the first time, bouncing out with less of a predatory slinking and more of an enthusiastic tromping. The keepers pred

Posted by: Dr. Deborah B. Jensen, President and CEO Dr. Deborah B. Jensen. Photo by Matt Hagen. We have less than 20 years to save the tiger, or say goodbye to it forever.  For millennia, the tiger has occupied a vibrant place in our collective consciousness—an icon revered in our mythology and folklore, enjoyed in our films and literature. Sadly, over the last century this magnificent animal has become one of the fastest-vanishing species on our planet. The decline owes to a lethal blend of high-class sport hunting; loss of forest habitat to logging, agriculture and growing urban areas; and a rampant increase in illegal poaching to supply tiger body parts for traditional medicine, ornamentation, and financing the black market drug trade. Numbering as many as 100,000 in the early 1900s, as few as 3,200 tigers are left on the planet. In fact, today more tigers live in captivity than in the wild. Isolation, habitat loss and poaching threaten all tiger subspecies in the w