ZOO

A-to-Z Guide to Greater Cincinnati:
"Best Place to Live in North America"


Baby albino alligator meets
baby white lion

Here's looking at you, kid

BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer

All zoos are pretty much alike, right? A bunch of cages filled with a bunch of animals that don't hang around your backyard, right?

Wrong.

The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden is a little different from most zoos. Actually, it's a whole lot different.

It's relatively small as major zoos go - only 67 acres of hilly land tucked in the residential neighborhood of Avondale - but its collection is world-class.

Cincinnatians agree: Zoo attendance is 1.3 million a year; 42,000 local families are paying members.

Opened Sept. 18, 1875, Cincinnati is the second oldest zoo in the country. Only the Philadelphia Zoo has been around longer.

Here, grab our arm and join us for a tour.

"Sexiest zoo"

They call Cincinnati the sexiest zoo in the world because of its breeding record. It holds the U.S. record for lowland gorilla births at 43. In 1995 alone, the zoo had six gorillas born; that's another record.

It is one of only two zoos in this country to successfully breed the rare and endangered Komodo Dragon. With 48 hatchings, Cincinnati holds that U.S. record, too.

Ditto for black rhinos. The lumbering beasts don't breed well in captivity, but Cincinnati found a way. It holds the world record for black rhino births at 17.

What makes a great breeding program? Cincinnati zoo director Ed Maruska says it's a combination of care, diet, trainers who pay careful attention to their charges and, most of all, a stress-free environment where the animals feel at home.

Cincinnati is home of CREW - Center for the Reproduction of Endangered Wildlife - a futuristic facility which helps animals reproduce when the old-fashioned way fails them.

In 15 years, CREW has achieved a number of firsts:

  • First birth of an exotic animal produced through nonsurgical embryo transfer;
  • First exotic animal produced from a frozen-thawed embryo;
  • First nonsurgical interspecies embryo transfer (a bongo antelope born to a surrogate eland antelope);
  • First embryo transfer birth of an eland antelope from a demi-embryo;
  • First cat born from interspecies embryo transfer;
  • First cat born from in vitro fertilization;
  • World's first test tube gorilla.

One of the crown jewels in the zoo collection is a trio of Sumatran rhinos. There are two females and one male -- Em, Rapunzel and Bagus -- making Cincinnati the only zoo in the nation with a breeding pair. There are only 600-800 left in the wild.

Because the zoo has a lot of small animals - including birds and thousands of insects - it's impossible to determine the size of the collection. The generally accepted number is more than 750,000 different kinds of animals, including many on the endangered species list, says Barb Rish, the zoo's public relations director.

Happy trails

Ed Maruska's staff thought he had gone loco when he told them he wanted to build an authentic tropical rain forest on zoo grounds. Outdoors. We do, after all, have winters here and tropical animals don't do snow.

Nevertheless, Maruska charged ahead. Today, Jungle Trails is an award-winning indoor/outdoor exhibit so popular that it's not unusual to find a line of people waiting to get in. It's now full of animals from the rain forests of Africa and Asia, including the rare bonobo chimps (only five zoos in the U.S. have them); the potto (we have five, there are only 15 in the U.S.); and the banded palm civet (there are only three in the U.S. and we own them all; two are here, one is on loan to El Paso Zoo.)

Last survivors

The passenger pigeon is now extinct; the world's last, Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. The Carolina parakeet is also extinct; the world's last, Incas, died here in 1918. A memorial now stands on zoo grounds near where they died.

Many animals we once took for granted are now extinct in the wild. But there are still some at the zoo, including a Mhorr's gazelle; a Micronesian kingfisher; and a Lake Victoria cichlid (it's a fish).

www.cincyzoo.org

Did you know

  • The Cincinnati Zoo has three buildings on the National Register of Historic Places: The Elephant House, built in 1906; the Reptile House, built in 1875 as a monkey house; and the Passenger Pigeon Memorial, built in 1875, although it wasn't a memorial at the time.

  • Some zoo animals get vacations off zoo grounds. The zoo maintains an off-site breeding facility in rural Cincinnati. When it comes time to breed, some are sent away. Frequent visitors include a giant eland, goral (goat-like animal) and zebras.

  • The Cincinnati Zoo began wracking up historic firsts three years after it opened. The first California sea lion born in captivity was born here in 1878.

  • Cincinnati is the first zoo in the world to maintain Crested Auklets in captivity. They went on display June 28, 1996, when the zoo opened its renovated birdhouse.

  • The zoo takes that "Botanical Garden" part of its name seriously: It grows and maintains more than 3,000 varieties of plants, including many on the endangered list.

  • Thane Maynard, the zoo's curator of education, eats bugs. He does it in school programs and public appearances. Usually, he eats meal worms first, then has wax worms as a chaser.