If you haven’t made it up to the Wild Animal Park to see our new baby elephant, you’d better hurry: he is growing up fast! (See post, Baby Elephant.) At only 3 months of age, Ingadze is almost 400 pounds (180 kilograms) and is quickly learning the tricks to being an African elephant.
(more…)

This week the Indian rhinos at the San Diego Zoo are going to have a lot of excitement. And for that matter, so am I! If you have been to the Zoo in the past month you may have noticed that the elephants have moved to their new home in Elephant Odyssey. Many guests are asking, “What is going into the old elephant exhibit?” The answer: Soman and Surat, the Indian rhino brothers, of course! (See post, Rhinos: One on One).
(more…)

The San Diego Zoo is very excited to announce that Asali, a red river hog, gave birth on May 2 of this year. She had two piglets (average litters are 1 to 4 youngsters), a boy and a girl. Unfortunately, the girl didn’t make it past her first day of life, but the little boy, Jabari (which means “courageous” in Swahili) is doing well and can be seen running around his exhibit with mom and dad.
(more…)

I had planned to write a simple, uneventful post—how the panda kids have settled into their exhibits, how Bai Yun continues to quietly thrive behind the scenes, how ultrasound procedures have begun (more to re-acclimate Bai Yun to the routine rather than to find anything at this early date)—but shame on me. It really is bad to underestimate the antics of Su Lin, as I was reminded the other morning.
(more…)

It has been a while since I updated you on the progress of Palu and Pagi, our sweet sun bear cubs (see post, Sun Bears: Adieu to the Den). Now nearly eight months old, the cubs can be seen taking the exhibit by storm each afternoon, climbing high, getting dirty in the mulch, and splashing about in their water features. They are very active at this age, and it is hard to believe they were so recently blind, immobile creatures in the birthing den.
(more…)

Hi, everyone.
We are starting to see how fabulous Elephant Odyssey at the San Diego Zoo really is. The elephants are doing pretty well (see previous post, Elephants: A New Beginning). Tembo hasn’t lain down at night yet, but Devi and Sumithi are doing so, and I am guessing they are getting some sleep. We know this because when we go out to clean the yard in the mornings, we find elephant body prints in the dirt. We are even able to tell the prints apart: which one was made by Sumithi and which one by Devi. I am sure it won’t be too much longer before a Tembo print appears.
(more…)

My favorite time to be with the African elephant herd at the Wild Animal Park is in the early morning. A few days each week, I sit at the Elephant Overlook between 6:30 and 8:30 in the morning and record the social interactions in the herd. This is a great time to look for social behavior because it is before the elephant keepers and the guests arrive, so the elephants are busy interacting with each other rather than with humans. The herd also tends to be very active in the early morning and oftentimes I find they are wandering the yard, trunk wrestling or even swimming in the pool!
(more…)

I just wanted to update everyone on the San Diego Zoo’s Gabrielle’s crested (or red-cheeked) gibbon, Gaby, and her new roommate, Chui (see post, Gibbon: New Home for Gaby). He arrived on May 8, is seven years old, and is Gaby’s baby brother! Gaby and Chui lived with their parents and other siblings at the Wild Animal Park. When Gaby was four, she left her younger brother to come to the Zoo; now, almost five years later, they are back together again.
(more…)

Whether it is in the koala barn at the San Diego Zoo or in the field in Australia, the fine details of the lives of koalas provide a steady stream of questions for keepers and researchers alike.

I have just returned from Brampton Island, which is a small island near our main research site, St. Bees Island (see post, Koalas: Floating Research Station). Both islands lie several miles off the coast of Queensland, and both are home to healthy populations of koalas. However, that’s where the similarities seem to end.
(more…)

In reading over some of the blog posts here on the Zoo’s Web site, I could not help but notice that there are few, if any, about the laboratory work done at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. Lab work is a little tough to write about because there are no cute animals, no stories of climbing mountains or hiking through deserts. The work, however, is vital to our conservation efforts, and so I’ve decided to make an entry now and then to describe some of the things happening here in the Reproductive Physiology lab, including a new challenge we’re working on!
(more…)