95 Fun Facts About Zoo Animal

What plant makes up the vast majority of a giant panda's diet?

Bamboo is roughly 99% of what a giant panda eats, even though taxonomically it is a carnivoran.

Which field of study focuses on animal behavior, often in natural conditions?

Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behavior, particularly in natural environments. It explores how animals interact with each other and their surroundings, and how these behaviors have evolved.

Which type of animal relies on external sources to regulate its body temperature?

Ectotherms, often referred to as cold-blooded animals, depend on external heat sources, like the sun, to control their body temperature. This group includes reptiles, amphibians, fish, and most invertebrates.

What is considered the fastest land animal?

The cheetah tops out at 93-104 km/h (58-65 mph); the 93 km/h figure is the fastest recorded in GPS-tracked hunts.

Roughly how long is the gestation of the largest living land mammal, the longest of any mammal?

Elephants carry for 1.5 to 2 years, about 22 months in the African elephant, the longest gestation of any mammal; a cow then waits four or five years before her next calf.

Which animal is the only mammal capable of true, sustained powered flight?

Bats, order Chiroptera, are the only mammals that truly fly; flying squirrels, sugar gliders and colugos only glide.

Who coined the term 'echolocation' after showing with Robert Galambos how bats navigate in the dark?

Donald Griffin coined 'echolocation' in 1944 after he and Robert Galambos showed that bats emit ultrasonic calls and steer by the returning echoes.

Which animal is recognized as the largest land carnivore?

The polar bear is considered the largest land carnivore. Adult males typically weigh between 400-600 kg (880-1,320 lb).

Which animal is renowned for rapidly changing its skin colour and pattern?

Chameleons change colour most often for social signalling and in response to temperature, with camouflage a lesser motive.

Which animal holds the record for the strongest bite ever measured in a lab?

The saltwater crocodile set the laboratory record in Gregory Erickson's 2012 study, biting at about 16,400 newtons, roughly 3,700 psi, far above any hippo or bear measured.

Which amphibian order accounts for about 88% of living amphibian species?

Anurans are one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders; salamanders (Caudata) and caecilians (Gymnophiona) make up the rest of the amphibians.

Which flightless bird stands beside the kangaroo on Australia's coat of arms?

The emu, the second-tallest living bird, supports the shield opposite the red kangaroo on Australia's coat of arms; females produce its deep booming call through an inflatable neck sac.

Which African snake has potent neurotoxic venom and can raise much of its body off the ground?

The black mamba's venom is mainly neurotoxic and can bring on symptoms within ten minutes; when threatened it raises up to 40% of its body length, so bites often land high on the body.

Which great ape is primarily arboreal and native to the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra?

Orangutans are large, arboreal apes found exclusively in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Their name means 'person of the forest' in Malay, reflecting their tree-dwelling lifestyle.

Which big cat is the largest of all cat species?

The tiger is the largest cat species; big Amur and Bengal males run over 3 m from nose to tail-tip and can weigh around 300 kg.

Which endangered nocturnal lemur uses a very long, thin middle finger to tap wood for grubs?

The aye-aye taps trunks with its skeletal middle finger, listens for hollows, gnaws in with rodent-like incisors and hooks out the grubs; the IUCN listed it as Endangered in 2014.

Which Australian marsupial lives almost entirely on the leaves of eucalyptus trees?

Koalas sleep up to 20 hours a day because eucalyptus leaves are so low in nutrients and high in toxins.

Which large, herbivorous mammal is easily recognizable by the horn(s) on its snout?

Rhinoceroses are large, herbivorous mammals distinguished by the prominent horn or horns on their snouts. These horns are made primarily of keratin, the same protein found in human hair and fingernails.

What species of penguin is the largest of all penguins and breeds in Antarctica?

The Emperor Penguin is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species, found exclusively in Antarctica. They are the only penguin species to breed during the harsh Antarctic winter, enduring extreme conditions.

Which hopping Australian marsupial, the largest living one, carries its joeys in a pouch?

The red kangaroo is the largest living marsupial and the largest land mammal native to Australia; its young, called joeys, nurse in the pouch.

Which African mammal wears black and white stripes?

The zebra's stripes may camouflage it and deter biting insects; for the African diaspora, the animal also became a symbol of race and identity.

Which small tundra canid grows a thick white winter coat as camouflage against snow, moulting to brown or grey in summer?

The Arctic fox's winter coat is among the warmest of any mammal, letting it stay active at -40 C.

The meerkat, a favourite of zoo visitors, is a small member of which family of carnivores?

Meerkats belong to the mongoose family, Herpestidae; gangs of up to 50 forage for insects and scorpions in the Kalahari while a sentinel stands upright on lookout.

Which big cat is native to the mountain ranges of Asia, from the Hindu Kush and Himalayas to Mongolia?

The snow leopard's small rounded ears, broad paws and thick tail suit the cold heights; it cannot roar, and wraps that tail around itself like a scarf against the wind.

Which aquatic mammal is recognized for its long tusks, which are actually elongated canine teeth?

Walruses possess prominent tusks, which are elongated upper canine teeth that can grow quite long in both males and females.

The Komodo dragon, a large lizard often displayed in zoos, is native to which country?

Komodo dragons are endemic to several Indonesian islands, including Komodo, Rinca, Flores, and Gili Motang.

Flamingos owe their pink colour to which pigments in their diet of plankton and brine shrimp?

Liver enzymes break the carotenoids into pigments deposited in feathers and skin; zoo flamingos fed a plain diet fade to white.

Which flightless bird lays the largest egg of any living bird?

The ostrich lays the largest egg of any living bird, each weighing around 3 pounds; two species survive, the common and the Somali.

Which primate's females dominate the troop while males settle disputes with 'stink fights'?

Ring-tailed lemurs live in female-led troops; rival males rub their long black-and-white banded tails on wrist scent glands and waft them at each other in 'stink fights'.

Which burrowing Australian marsupial is famous for producing cube-shaped droppings?

Wombats produce cube-shaped droppings because their intestine stretches unevenly; the study explaining it won the 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics.

Which marine mammal, known for its intelligence, uses echolocation to navigate and hunt?

Dolphins, along with other toothed whales, utilize echolocation (sonar) to perceive their surroundings and locate prey underwater.

Which slow-moving, land-dwelling reptile with a domed shell is a 'turtle' to taxonomists but gets its own common name?

Tortoise is the name herpetologists reserve for slow, terrestrial members of the order Testudines, while 'turtle' covers the whole shelled group.

Which of these animals is an amphibian?

A frog is an amphibian, metamorphosing from a gilled, aquatic tadpole into an air-breathing adult; the other three are reptiles.

The Arctic's great white bear is specialised for preying on which animals?

It waits beside breathing holes in the sea ice for ringed seals, which is why shrinking summer ice cuts directly into its hunting season.

Which South American animal is the largest living rodent?

The capybara is the largest living rodent, weighing up to about 65 kg; it grazes in groups along rivers and wetlands across much of South America.

The giant anteater, a South American mammal, has a long, sticky tongue primarily used for consuming what?

Giant anteaters are specialized insectivores, using their long, extensible tongues to feed on ants and termites.

Which colourful zoo bird, ranked with crows among the smartest birds, is known for mimicking human speech?

Parrots, along with corvids such as ravens and jays, are among the most intelligent birds, and some species imitate human words and phrases.

Which snake of the Amazon River basin is one of the longest and heaviest in the world?

The green anaconda is a water boa, native to South America's tropics, and vies for longest and heaviest living snake.

Which flightless bird is known for its upright stance and waddling gait?

Penguins are iconic flightless birds, perfectly adapted to marine life in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly Antarctica.

The fossa, a carnivorous mammal often compared to a cat, is the largest predatory mammal on which island?

The fossa is the largest native mammalian predator on the island of Madagascar, evolving from mongoose-like ancestors.

Which African animal is the tallest living land animal and the largest ruminant?

The giraffe is the tallest living land animal, bulls reaching about 5.5 m, and with its four-chambered stomach it is also the largest ruminant.

Which large flightless bird wears a tall skin-covered casque on its head?

The cassowary's casque keeps growing with age; its dagger-like inner toe claw has earned it a reputation as the world's most dangerous bird.

Which large grey mammal has a trunk, a fused nose and upper lip, used for breathing, smelling, touching and grasping?

An elephant's trunk is its nose and upper lip fused together in early fetal development, and it is fully prehensile.

Which Australian animal is a monotreme, meaning it lays eggs?

The platypus is one of only five living monotremes (the other four are echidnas); it also senses prey by electrolocation with its eyes, ears and nostrils shut.

The kiwi, a nocturnal flightless bird, is endemic to which country?

Kiwi are found only in New Zealand; DNA shows they are closer kin to the extinct elephant birds than to the moa that shared their islands.

Which social carnivore lives in prides and is native to Africa and parts of India?

Lions are unique among big cats for their highly social structure, living in groups called prides.

The 'king cobra,' a highly venomous snake, is primarily found in which continent?

The king cobra, the world's longest venomous snake, is native to forests from India through Southeast Asia.

Which Central and South American rainforest animal is known for hanging upside down for long periods?

Sloths are arboreal mammals renowned for their extremely slow metabolism and their habit of spending most of their lives hanging upside down from tree branches.

What large semi-aquatic African mammal's 'sweat' acts as a natural sunscreen?

Hippos secrete a reddish, oily fluid often called 'blood sweat,' which acts as a natural sunscreen and antiseptic, protecting their skin from drying out and infections.

Founded in 1752, the world's oldest zoo still in operation is in which city?

Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna began as Emperor Francis I's imperial menagerie in 1752 and today sits inside the Schönbrunn Palace UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Who founded the Zoological Society of London in 1826?

Stamford Raffles, better known for founding Singapore, was the Zoological Society's first president; he died of a stroke in July 1826, two years before the zoo opened in 1828.

The oldest known zoo collection, from about 3500 BCE, was excavated in which country?

Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt held hippos, hartebeest, elephants, baboons and wildcats, buried alongside the town's elite around 3500 BCE.

A society founded at the Bronx Zoo in 1905 set out to save which animal from extinction?

Bison had fallen from tens of millions to a few hundred; in 1913 the zoo shipped fourteen to Wind Cave to restart a wild herd.

The San Diego Zoo began with animals left over from which 1915 event?

Harry Wegeforth reportedly heard a lion roaring in Balboa Park, left from the 1915 Panama–California Exposition, and founded the zoo in 1916 to house the exposition's animals.

Onya-Birri, the albino koala born at San Diego Zoo in 1997, has a name meaning what?

Onya-Birri means 'ghost boy' in an Aboriginal language; San Diego keeps the largest koala colony outside Australia, so a rare white birth was likelier there than anywhere.

Knut, the hand-reared polar bear cub who became a 2007 sensation, was born in which city?

Knut was born at Berlin Zoo in December 2006; his mother Tosca, a former East German circus bear, rejected him and his twin brother on a rock in the enclosure.

Knut the polar bear died in 2011 after collapsing into his pool while suffering from what?

Knut drowned after a seizure in March 2011; the necropsy found encephalitis, identified in 2015 as autoimmune anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a disease also seen in humans.

In 1882 London Zoo sold Jumbo the elephant to which American showman?

P. T. Barnum paid £2,000 for Jumbo in 1882; the sale outraged Londoners, and schoolchildren wrote to Queen Victoria begging her to stop it.

How did Jumbo the elephant die in St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1885?

Jumbo was hit by a train, an unscheduled freight locomotive, in the St. Thomas rail yard in 1885; the town raised a life-size statue for the centenary, and a local brewery brews a Dead Elephant IPA.

Jumbo the elephant has been the mascot of which US university for over a century?

The showman who bought Jumbo was a Tufts trustee and donated the stuffed hide, making Jumbo the university's mascot; it burned in a 1975 fire and the ashes sit in a peanut butter jar.

Harambe was shot in 2016 after a boy entered his enclosure at which city's zoo?

Cincinnati Zoo's response team shot Harambe on 28 May 2016, the day after his 17th birthday, after a three-year-old climbed into his enclosure.

The okapi, with its zebra-striped legs, is endemic to which country?

The okapi lives only in the rainforests of the DR Congo; Western science classified it in 1901 from strips of striped skin and a skull, and it is the giraffe's only living relative.

The red panda's genus name Ailurus comes from the Ancient Greek word for which animal?

Its species name fulgens is Latin for 'shining', so the full name reads roughly 'shining cat'.

The binturong, or bearcat, has scent glands that famously smell like which snack?

The popcorn smell comes from 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline in the binturong's urine, the same compound behind the aroma of popcorn, cooked rice and fresh bread.

The axolotl is native to lakes Xochimilco and Chalco in the valley of which capital?

Both lakes lie in the Valley of Mexico beneath Mexico City; Chalco was drained for flood control and Xochimilco survives mostly as canals, leaving wild axolotls critically endangered.

Lonesome George, the last of his tortoise subspecies, came from which Galápagos island?

Feral goats had stripped Pinta bare; George was found there alone in 1971, and Guinness later listed him as the rarest living creature on Earth.

Koko, the gorilla famous for her pet kitten, was born at which zoo in 1971?

Koko was born at the San Francisco Zoo on 4 July 1971; her full name Hanabiko is Japanese for 'fireworks child', after the holiday.

Which animal is often described as the most trafficked mammal in the world?

Pangolins are the world's most trafficked mammals: an estimated 100,000 a year are smuggled to China and Vietnam, where the scales are prized in traditional medicine.

The smiling quokka is most numerous on Rottnest Island, just off which Australian city?

Rottnest lies about 18 km off Perth; the quokka's 'smile' is a coincidence of facial structure, but selfies with them went viral in the mid-2010s anyway.

What is the tapir's short, flexible, grasping snout properly called?

The tapir's snout is a proboscis, a short prehensile trunk it uses to pull in leaves; as odd-toed ungulates, tapirs are closer to horses and rhinos than to pigs.

After China sent the US two pandas in 1972, what animals did America send back?

America reciprocated with two musk oxen, Milton and Matilda, sent to Beijing Zoo; the pandas drew more than 20,000 visitors on their first day on display.

Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, the pandas China gave the US in 1972, lived at which zoo?

They lived at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington from April 1972; Pat Nixon had admired pandas at dinner with Zhou Enlai, who replied, 'I'll give you some'.

Female spotted hyenas have a 'pseudo-penis'; which organ is it actually?

The pseudo-penis is an enlarged clitoris through which females urinate, mate and give birth, which makes first deliveries dangerous for both mother and cub.

Sea otter fur, the densest of any animal, has up to how many hairs per square centimetre?

Sea otter fur packs up to about 150,000 hairs per square centimetre, roughly a million per square inch; with no blubber at all, the fur is their only insulation.

Which TV wildlife presenter took over running Australia Zoo from his parents in 1991?

Steve Irwin took over his parents' Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park in 1991 and renamed it Australia Zoo; his Crocodile Hunter series made it a major tourist draw.

Chicks of the hoatzin, a South American bird, have primitive claws on which body part?

The adult is nicknamed the stinkbird because it ferments leaves in its crop like a cow, giving it a manure-like smell.

The pygmy hippopotamus is native to West African forests, primarily in which country?

The species name liberiensis gives the game away: most survivors live in Liberia, with smaller numbers in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast; the Nigerian population is gone.

How many chromosome pairs does Przewalski's horse have, versus 32 in domestic horses?

Przewalski's horse has 33 chromosome pairs (66 chromosomes) to the domestic horse's 32, yet the two can interbreed; once extinct in the wild, it was rebuilt from zoo stock and returned to Mongolia in the 1990s.

The London Zoo bear that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh was bought by a vet from which country?

Lt. Harry Colebourn paid $20 for the cub at a train stop and named her after his home city of Winnipeg.

Snowflake, the only known white gorilla, lived from 1966 to 2003 at which city's zoo?

Snowflake lived at Barcelona Zoo from 1966 until his death in 2003; his albinism came from a mutation in the SLC45A2 gene, inherited from parents who were probably uncle and niece.

Japan's oldest zoo, opened in 1882, sits in which Tokyo district?

Ueno Zoo opened in 1882 in Ueno Park; its monorail, opened in 1957 to link the zoo's two halves, was the first in Japan.

The venomous slow loris produces its toxic secretion from a gland on which body part?

The brachial gland sits on the inside of the upper arm; the loris licks it, mixes the secretion with saliva, and bitten predators such as sun bears back off.

A contagious cancer of which body part has ravaged Tasmanian devils since the 1990s?

Devil facial tumour disease spreads when devils bite each other's faces in fights over food; since 2013 devils have again been sent to zoos abroad as insurance.

The gharial takes its name from the Hindustani word 'ghara', meaning what?

A ghara is a round earthen pot; adult males grow a bulbous, pot-shaped boss on the snout tip that acts as a resonator in courtship.

Which brightly coloured African primate is the largest of all monkeys?

The mandrill is the largest monkey, males topping 30 kg; Darwin wrote that no other mammal is coloured so extraordinarily, and the blue on the face is structural, not pigment.

The fennec, the smallest fox species, is native to the deserts of which region?

The fennec lives across the Sahara of North Africa, from Morocco and Mauritania east to Egypt and the Sinai; its oversized ears shed heat and it can go without free water.

Which nocturnal New Zealand bird is the heaviest parrot in the world?

The kākāpō is the world's only flightless parrot and its heaviest: adult males can reach about 4 kg, far above the hyacinth macaw's 1.7 kg. It is nocturnal and breeds in leks.

The New Zealand tuatara has a light-sensitive 'third eye' on its head called what?

The tuatara's parietal eye has its own lens and retina but is covered by scales within months of hatching; it probably helps set the animal's daily and seasonal rhythms.

In Afrikaans, the name 'aardvark' literally means what?

Aardvark is Afrikaans for 'earth pig' (aard, earth; vark, pig), though it is no pig: it is the only living species of its entire order, Tubulidentata.

Bonobos are separated from chimpanzees by living south of which great African river?

Bonobos live only south of the Congo River and chimpanzees north of it; neither ape swims well, and the river's formation 1.5 to 2 million years ago is thought to have split them.

Which Ethiopian highland monkey, a grass-eater, is nicknamed the 'bleeding-heart monkey'?

The gelada's 'bleeding heart' is a bare red patch of chest skin; the only primate that lives mainly on grass, it feeds squatting and shuffling along like a lawnmower.

Which is the smallest of the five living rhinoceros species, and the hairiest?

The Sumatran rhino, usually well under a tonne, is the smallest living rhino and the only hairy one; last of the genus Dicerorhinus, it is the woolly rhino's closest living relative.

In which year did Dian Fossey begin her 18-year study of mountain gorillas?

Dian Fossey set up the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda's Virunga mountains on 24 September 1967 and studied the gorillas there until her murder in December 1985.

London Zoo's gorilla Guy, named for the night he arrived in 1947, came from which city?

Guy reached London Zoo from Paris Zoo on 5 November 1947, Guy Fawkes Night, hence his name; he died in 1978 aged about 32 and is commemorated by a bronze statue at the zoo.

Chester Zoo was opened in 1931 by which market gardener and his family?

Mottershead's 'zoo without bars' vision dated from a boyhood visit to Manchester's Belle Vue Zoo in 1903.