Blog Archive

Posts for March 2010

Regent Honeyeater Reintroduction

It's been a very rewarding day today, and it started at about 6am this morning. We have been quarantining eight endangered Regent Honeyeaters in the Animal Health Centre. Regent Honeyeaters are extinct in South Australia and it is thought that there is only about 800 - 2000 individuals left in the wild.

We have been quarantining the honeyeaters in the health centre before sending them to Taronga Zoo to be released into the wild as a large group

Sunbear Surgery

Hello all,

As usual it's been a very interesting day! Over the last week our female Malayan sun bear Dewi, has been noted by her keepers to have a very swollen abdomen. Her attitude and appetite has remained normal, however keepers and veterinary staff were a bit concerned. So it was decided to plan to anaesthetise her so that we could examine her closely.

Serval Kitten update

Our beautiful “little” Serval kittens are 11 weeks old and growing so fast! Their ears and legs are starting to getting bigger and longer and they are getting more confident by the minute. A lot has happened since we first released news of our kittens to the world - they have had their first and second vet check and now can be seen out in their exhibit across from the African Lions.

At the six week health check our kittens were vaccinated, micro-chipped, weighed, sexed and given a visual check over by our Senior Veterinarian, Wayne Boardman. We are pleased to announce we have three very healthy Serval kittens consisting of two girls and a boy, each roughly weighing 2kg. Once the kittens were given the all clear by our vet it was time to work on getting the exhibit ready to let them out.

Settling into Panda-land

About the same time that the Giant Pandas moved into their beautiful new home, the Red Pandas were packing their bags and moving from their home near the Lions to their new homes in the Bamboo Forest

There are two Red Panda enclosures. The three girls, Sogyal, Imandari and Maya, are in one and two boys, Shahin and Himal, in the other.

Some cats DO like water

Some very lucky visitors (and myself!) were surprised to find a tiger taking a morning dip in the pond at the start of our Big Cat tour last week. Yes, contrary to popular belief, some cats do like water and some, like the Sumatran Tiger, actually like to swim in it.

Sumatran Tigers are one of the few big cats that can swim and they even have webbing between their toes, making them very efficient swimmers.

So who was the tiger in the water you ask…

It's Festival Time Again!

This is such a great time of year in Adelaide. I moved to SA in 2008 so last year was my first Fringe, my first Womad... I love it. And it’s so great that Adelaide Zoo is such a part of it all; even more so from this year with the new spaces for performance and exhibition at the new front entrance of the zoo.

You smell like a Giraffe but look like a Lion

Hi everyone

In addition to the food that we feed our animals on the Big Cat round, we like to stimulate them with enrichment - these may be food, sense or physical based. The animals all react differently to enrichment, they can have positive, negative or neutral reactions. Out of all the cats the two female African Lions, Amani and Yizi, have the best interactions with enrichment.

Recently, the girls have been given giraffe faeces...