In a little over a week, our western lowland gorilla infant, Zahra, will be six months old! Overall, she is doing great and has recently started going on many little adventures.
We have seen Calaya reach into Zahra’s mouth and pull a hard-won piece of food out
Snake-necked turtles look like creatures from fantasy—they’re a little weird and a little whimsical, but they’re beautiful, too. Last October, our Reptile Discovery Center team welcomed four snake-necked turtle hatchlings, the species’ first offspring at the Zoo in 9 years.
For now, they only have to compete with one another, so the odds are in their favor
The hawk-headed parrot is a colorful bird found in South American rainforests. When frightened, it can raise its neck feathers, forming a fan around its head.
Members of the Psittacidae family have zygodactyl feet, meaning two toes point forward
It’s not easy to be low on the food chain. But white-bearded wildebeests face a threat even greater than lions and leopards. Habitat loss and fragmentation are causing an alarming collapse in their numbers, says Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute scientist Jared Stabach. In March, he traveled to Kenya to join University of Glasgow and Kenya Wildlife Service colleagues track how these fantastic ‘beests’ are faring when food is scarce.
What most folks don’t realize is that many wildebeest populations have experienced
The black pacu is a large, nonaggressive, fruit-eating species of fish found in the upper Amazon River basin.
They have small eyes and an arched back.
Conservationists are establishing healthy amphibian populations in human care, called amphibian arks, for up to 2,000 species likely to go extinct in the next decade.
the world’s amphibians are in decline, and researchers believe that 122 species have
Barred tiger salamanders are one of the longest terrestrial salamanders in North America. They are mostly nocturnal and live in forests, fields, meadows, grasslands and deserts.
Fact Sheet Conservation Physical Description They have small, rounded heads
While Sumatra doesn’t have the cold weather that we have here, our Sumatran tigers
Tall birds with strong legs, wild turkeys are fast fliers and residents of the eastern United States. Wild turkeys were domesticated in Mexico more than 2,000 years ago, although many members of the species remain wild. At the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, D.C., visitors can see a breed of domestic turkey (which is the same species as the wild turkey) called the standard bronze turkey.
Fact Sheet Conservation Physical Description Wild turkeys have long, strong
A cousin of the mockingbird, these medium-sized gray songbirds are common across the warmer parts of North America, where they are frequently heard (but less often seen) in backyards and parks. They often return to the same summer territory year after year.
They can have a repertoire of up to 100 different syllables and their songs can last
