The Fort Worth Zoo’s newest members of the pride were born this spring, on March 29, to parents Abagebe and Jabulani. Weighing only 2 pounds at birth, the two female African lion cubs will grow to weigh up to 275 pounds, while the male cub could weigh more than 400 pounds. Abagebe and Jabulani were born at a South African wildlife facility and arrived at the Zoo in 2012. The Zoo’s wildlife partnerships are global, and the lions’ unique genetic material makes them a valuable asset in the... Read More

In January 2015, the Fort Worth Zoo welcomed a female giraffe calf. Dilly, meaning “great” or “magnificent,” was born a towering 6 feet tall and with a heart-shaped marking on her neck. See if you can spot her with the rest of the herd in the African Savannah exhibit. The giraffe is the tallest of all living land animals. Its legs alone are often taller than most humans. The average height of a mature adult giraffe ranges from 15 to almost 20 feet, with males being... Read More

The Zoo is pleased to announce another conservation success with the recent hatchings of 16 endangered Louisiana pine snakes. This snake is nonvenomous and spends 90 percent of its time underground in self-dug burrows or those made by other animals. This elusive snake can grow up to 7 feet in length. This species only breeds one time each year, during the spring. Although this snake lays the largest eggs of any North American snake, it produces the smallest number, usually only four or five in a... Read More

A handsome new resident can now be seen in the Asian elephant yard. Romeo is the newest elephant to join the herd. The 22-year-old bull arrived in June from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation (CEC) in Polk City, FL. Romeo takes the place of Casey, who also belongs to CEC and has returned to the facility in Florida. Romeo will roam in the various yards in the elephant exhibit and soon will be introduced to the female herd and eventually he will be part of... Read More

In addition to the lesser flamingo chicks, 13 (and counting) Caribbean flamingo chicks hatched their way into the world this summer. These are the first Caribbean flamingo chicks for the Zoo in 2015 and the bird department has been successfully breeding Caribbean flamingos since 2005. In the wild, both parents help build a volcano-shaped nest where the female lays one egg; nests rarely contain two eggs and incubation lasts 28 days. Like the lesser flamingo chicks, these hatchlings are born with... Read More

The Zoo boasts the most successful lesser flamingo breeding facility in the world and is celebrating more success with the hatching of 19 chicks. Several of these chicks have been hand-reared by the Zoo’s bird staff, which includes feeding a customized formula of egg, smelt, shrimp, water and vitamin and mineral supplements, and daily walks to make sure they get necessary exercise and that their legs develop properly. The hatchlings are born with downy, gray feathers that they will keep... Read More

The Zoo is celebrating another exciting conservation achievement with the hatching of 550 Chiricahua leopard frog tadpoles this spring. The Fort Worth Zoo was the very first to successfully breed this threatened frog species in a captive, indoor environment. In 2012, thanks to the careful manipulation of environmental settings within the Museum of Living Art (MOLA), three females laid eggs naturally without the use of hormones.  Since that first successful hatching, the Zoo has bred... Read More

The arrival of these brightly colored birds is nothing new for the Fort Worth Zoo; the bird department has been successfully breeding the roseate spoonbill since 1967, one of the longest-standing roseate spoonbill breeding programs in the world. The chicks are all hand-reared by bird staff and fed a specially customized formula made of egg, vitamins, minerals and other components of the bird’s natural diet. Roseate spoonbills were over-harvested to the extent that by 1890, all Texas... Read More

It has been a successful year for the breeding of the Texas native spot-tailed earless lizard, specifically subspecies plateau earless lizards ( Holbrookia lacerata lacerate ) and southern earless lizards (Holbrookia lacerate subcaudalis). While not endangered, spot-tailed earless lizard populations have been declining in Texas since the 1970s and are only found in a small fraction of areas throughout their historic range. The greatest threat to the species’ survival is the use of... Read More