Bringing the Zoo to You

This week, we hosted a Facebook Live for World Anteater Day with ABC Home and Commercial Services, who is the proud supporter of our two giant anteaters, Olive and Pablo.

🦦 We had the most ott-dorable morning with our giant river otter Marley! Giant river otters are the largest otter species in the world and can get to be to 5 feet long. Visit Marley inside of our South America’s Pantanal exhibit. Tune in to learn more!

Debut alert! Our 14-year-old Amur leopard, Lisa, made her debut on Facebook Live this week! Our newest big cat has a big, sassy personality and is already participating in a variety of training sessions with her keepers that help with her medical care.

We had a wickedly good time today with our mongoose mob who devoured their pumpkin enrichment and treats. 🎃 Make a plan to go to Zoo Boo presented by King & Spalding now through October 31 for a chance to see some of our animals enjoy fall treats and enrichment! 

Happy, #HispanicHeritageMonth! Tune in to see a behind-the-scenes wellness exam of our smoky jungle frog, in English and Spanish. This frog species is one of the largest amphibians and is native to northern South America and Costa Rica.

Spot our mob during your next Zoo visit! Meerkats weigh on average about 1.5-2 pounds and are very active during the day—foraging, looking for bugs, on sentry duty, and digging new burrows. Visit Mae, Dottie, Kit, CJ, and Bugsy during your next visit at Carruth Natural Encounters.

Cool off with our flipper-ific friends, our Humboldt penguins! Our penguins are fed twice a day by their keepers, with most of their diet being capelin and herring. Since they don’t have teeth, they don’t chew their food but swallow it whole. Learn more about our colony on this week’s livestream.

You may hear our African painted dog days before you spot them during your next Zoo visit. Painted dogs have 20 different vocalizations and are known for their big round ears, which have different blood vessels to help them stay cool.

Don’t miss out on our #WorldPaintedDogDay celebrations this Saturday with Wiki, Moto, Tamu, and our Carnivore team. We’ll have Meet the Keeper Chats sponsored by CenterPoint Energy Foundation at 10am, 11:30am, and 2pm.

Our Asian elephants can easily drink a bathtub-sized amount of water in a day! Learn more about how they stay cool when the temps go up on this week’s livestream.

#AsianElephantAwarenessMonth

☀️ During the peak of summer, you can catch our Galápagos tortoises cooling off with a morning spray down from their keepers and a mud wallow soak in the afternoon. Our tortoises range in age from 9 to 31 years old and they’ll continue to grow throughout their lifetime!

Hats off to our amazing staff! From animal care and horticulture to facilities, grounds, and more, our team came together and assisted with ride-out and recovery efforts last week. Hear more from VP of Conservation & Education Ben who helped lead our ride-team during the storm and Director of Animal Care Tarah, who shared more about preparations for our animals during the storm.

🏕️ 🪴 🪲 🦋 What’s your go-to summer activity? The next time you’re on a hike, camping, gardening, or playing outside, you may spot a variety of native insects that are beneficial for the environment. They can be great pest control, pollinators, and even be fun to interact with like – like praying mantises.

Learn more on this week’s livestream with Keeper Julie who highlights why bugs can be cool and beneficial.

Tomorrow is #WorldGiraffeDay! Join our team on Saturday at the Zoo as we celebrate with our Hoofstock team and Masai giraffe herd from 10am-2pm. There will be Meet the Keeper Chats sponsored by CenterPoint Energy Foundation, a life-sized Tino photo op, and additional activities. More info can be found here.

In case you can’t join us in person, watch this week’s livestream to see Tino and learn more about our giraffe herd.

The rain didn’t dampen our fun on this week’s Facebook Live! We hung out with our farm animals, including Zamir, Fiesta, Yzma, and our runner ducks. Learn more about our furry friends from Keeper Bailey.

It’s a good day to shell-abrate turtles! It’s #WorldTurtleDay and this week we spotlighted Bobbi, our rescued green sea turtle who acts as an ambassador for wild sea turtles. If you see a stranded or injured sea turtle while at the beach this summer, call 1-866-TURTLE-5 so that an expert can assess the turtle and provide care if needed.

This week, we celebrated #AmphibianWeek with our smoky jungle frogs, Alice and Jasper from South America’s Pantanal. They are nocturnal and have a brownish color to resemble dead leaves to act as camouflage from predators. Learn more from Keeper Julia on this week’s livestream!

Hi, Aurora! If you stop by our Wortham World of Primates, you’ll meet Aurora and Cheyenne, who are our youngest and oldest orangutans, at the Zoo. We closed out Ape-ril with a special livestream where they enjoyed a variety of enrichment including honeycomb boxes filled with mix nuts and hay.

Meet Murthy, our snake-saving conservation partner who’s helping protect snakes in India’s Eastern Ghats. Learn more about the work he does in the field, along with Keeper Franny who is telling us all about our King cobra, Hannah:

Capybara species are the largest rodent species on the planet and grow very quickly. Stop by the mixed species habitat in South America’s Pantanal to see our capybara herd. Learn more on this week’s livestream.

Stop by Wortham World of Primates to see our Schmidt’s red-tailed monkeys! You can spot our family group including mom and dad, Njeri and Kibali, along with three-year-old Peter Rabbit. This species of monkey is very social and live in groups of one male and multiple females, with some groups being as large as 25 monkeys in the wild.

🦒 Have you met our giraffe herd? Stop by the giraffe feeding platform during your next visit to feed Zawadi, Asali, Gigi, and Kamili daily at 11am and 2pm. Our giraffes eat about 80 pounds of Alfalfa hay throughout the day, along with grain, 20 heads of lettuce, and carrots.

Turtle-y awesome news! It was a second chance at life for 12 green sea turtles as we released them back into the Gulf of Mexico thanks to our partnership between Houston Zoo and Texas A&M University Galveston’s Campus Gulf Center for Sea Turtle Research. The sea turtles were found cold stunned in Galveston and Matagorda Bays during the subfreezing temperatures in January and spent a month and a half under Houston Zoo veterinary care. Read more: bit.ly/3PaHRyY

Breeding season kicks off this week for our Houston Toads Recovery Program. We have about 800 toads in our collection and will be working with our partners to release eggs every week in Bastrop County. In 2023, we released 1.3 million eggs into the wild.

Our Komodo dragon, Phoenix, helped us celebrate #LunarNewYear this week! 🐉 Komodo dragons are the largest lizard in the world and are found only in the Komodo Islands. Luckily, you can see both Phoenix and Boga during your next Zoo visit.

This week was three times sweeter at Houston Zoo as our critically endangered radiated tortoises turned one year old on Valentine’s Day. You can visit Dill, Gherkin, and Jalapeño in person at our Reptile & Amphibian House. 

Marv is 8 months old and as active as can be! He’s starting to brachiate, which is a hand-over-hand motion to use their long arms to swing from tree to tree. Marv even has a mini jungle gym to practice his climbing that has a lot of the same things in his exhibit. Watch Marv in action on this week’s livestream!

Our red river hogs, Neptune, Luna, and Pinto, made their debut on Facebook Live this week! They’re omnivores and are excellent diggers. The space of their face works like a shovel and helps them “root” aka forage for food. See them in action on this week’s livestream.

Asian small-clawed otters like to explore their environment with their hands rather than their noses like other otter species. They tap and feel around in the water and on land to forage for food like clams, shrimp, fish, and live crickets. See them in action on this week’s livestream.

🐧 Penguin Awareness Day is this Friday! Breeding season is officially underway, so our Humboldt penguins are starting to court each other and pair up. Stop by their exhibit inside of Galapagos Islands to see our colony in person and go up close with some of our penguins on this week’s livestream.

Click here to view our 2023 library.

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