Penguin Conservation Update: Next Steps in Namibia

In early 2023, we wrote about African penguin conservation and a nascent seabird rescue center taking shape in Luderitz, a rugged port town in southern Namibia. Since then, ...

The Tortoise Trade

Egyptian tortoises (Testudo kleinmanni), also known as Kleinmann’s or Leith’s tortoise, are really small and mighty cool. They’re a favorite of Danielle Regan, Area Manager ...

Hamerkops on the Upswing: A Q&A with Jen Kottyan

If you visit our African Aviary in the springtime you may notice what looks like an enormous tumbleweed suspended in the trees or up on the trellis. This is actually a hamerkop ...

Bringing New Life to a Historic Zoo

What does it take to re-imagine the nation’s third-oldest zoo?  Last fall, the Maryland Zoo unveiled a strategic Master Plan that’s going to do just that.  Under the ...

A Bedtime Story: How Nature and Nurture Help Grizzly Bears Hibernate

Each spring, in a series of fits and starts, Nita and Nova, the Maryland Zoo’s two grizzly bear sisters (Ursus arctos), slowly emerge from their winter torpor as the temperature ...

From Maryland to Namibia: A Penguin Quest

Along the western coast of Namibia, desert meets ocean with stark and beautiful suddenness. In the north, the white-capped surf of the blue-black Atlantic laps at the edges of ...

Living with Black Bears

While driving west from Baltimore early one morning this past March, as fog lifted off the mountains, Laura Newman worried.  An educator at the Maryland Zoo, Newman was traveling ...

Animals in the Lead: Adopting a Behavioral Approach to Enrichment

Shortly before his death in 2012, the renowned animal behaviorist and zoo consultant, Dr. Hal Markowitz, published his final work. Enriching Animal Lives represented the ...

Navigating chimpanzee society by fission-fusion

The term “fission-fusion” was first used by the pioneering Swiss primatologist Hans Kummer to describe the social behavior of Hamadryas baboons, which he followed dawn to dusk ...

A New Geo-Tracking Project Aims to Demystify the Movements of African Elephant Bulls

Late this August or early in September, at approximately the same time AZA members gather for the 2022 national conference in Baltimore, a veterinarian working with the non-profit ...