I created this concept map for a project in 2015 and thought it would be a useful addition here, so I updated it with recent data. It overviews primates and shows a view of the relationship between apes and monkeys. One of the most interesting aspects of this is the list of names of all of Woodland Park Zoo’s primates.
I also created a little cheat sheet to carry around in my notebook so that I have the names of WPZ’s primates handy:
Over the last month I’ve tried to get pictures of Claudia 3 times. However, she has not been cooperating. After talking with one of the keepers I found out that she is working on becoming a mom and has laid an egg. Presumably she is spending a good amount of time in one of the dens caring for that egg.
All of the penguins can be identified by different colored tags on their wings. Males usually have tags on the right and females usually have them on the left. Claudia has a pale pink band with a small red tab on her left wing.
Can you find Claudia? If so, please considering commenting below and uploading an image. I’d love to see it.
I was working on a project this afternoon and decided to put Woodland Park Zoo’s Bear Cam up on my second computer screen as I worked. I could see the bears go by every few minutes as the walked around the enclosure.
At one point I saw a few bunches of what looked like romaine lettuce get tossed to one of the bears.
He sat there for 15-20 minutes munching on the romaine and a few other treats the keepers had thrown to him. They refer to this as “scatter-feeding” on the webcam page. They’re snacks through-out the day to encourage wandering the enclosure and searching for food.
I don’t know how to tell the bears apart, but there are only two. So it’s narrowed down to either Denali or Keema. 🙂
WPZ’ Web Cam page also has a Tiger Cam and a Bat Cam.
We had an amazing experience where we got to go behind these scenes and meet a few of the penguins.
Claudia is an artist. You can see it in her eyes before getting to work:
This is the aftermath of her artistry:
Below is the final art hanging on the wall at my house:
One of my favorite pieces of art that we own. I have her on our local artists wall. 🙂
Melati is in the east enclosure with Chinta and Heran. She often prefers to be indoors and can often be found in her favorite spot on a platform at the far right of the enclosure, see below:
I wanted to include a picture of Melati here, but most of the images I have were taken with a pretty bad phone. I’ve tried to get one a few times since creating this post, but they’ve either been bad photos or she was in another area when I was there. Hopefully, I will have better luck in the near future. Or maybe if anyone else has a good pic that they want to share?
Currently at WPZ we have 6 baby penguins. Q13 did a story on them a few days ago, the article has a video and it’s definitely worth watching. As one of the penguin keepers told us during a presentation; since the new penguin exhibit opened 56 of the 58 chicks were successfully raised and he didn’t know of anyone that did that with chickens let alone penguins.
The Woodland Park Zoo opened it’s state of the art Penguin exhibit in 2009 with just 20 Humboldt Penguins. They’ve been incredibly successful and last summer they hatched their 50th chick and sent many of them to other zoos around the country. This was all done under guidance of the Species Survival Plan (SSP). There are only about 12,000 Humboldt Penguins left in the wild and are classified as threatened, which is just shy of being considered endangered.
Penguins at Woodland Park Zoo
Notice the splotch of missing feathers on the penguin on the right? That penguin is shedding old feathers and growing in new ones, a process called molting.
Last week we lost an amazing friend at the zoo, Towan the orangutan. If you’re a regular at the Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ) or just an occasional visitor, you probably interacted with or saw him. I loved his interactions with kids. Adults? Meh, sometimes. But kids often seemed to get his attention. As much as he was a part of the WPZ and the Seattle area, his personality became world-wide famous with the reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise. Actress Karin Konoval used Towan as her inspiration for Maurice in the films.
At 48 years old Towan was the oldest make orangutan in North America. Towan is survived by his twin sister Chinta, daughter Belawan, son Heran, and the mother of Belawan and Heran, Melati.
Does anyone have any thoughts or pictures of Towan to share? I can’t find any good pictures that I’ve taken of him. There is a button to upload a photo in the comments section.