Zoo Atlanta

Zoo Atlanta's African Savanna, opened in 2019 as part of the Zoo's Grand New View transformation, houses wildlife native to the grasslands and desert of Africa, including African elephants, lions, giraffes, plains zebras, ostriches, warthogs, meerkats, white rhinos, kori bustards, and a bontebok.[7]

Scaly Slimy Spectacular building

Opened in 2015, Scaly Slimy Spectacular: The Amphibian and Reptile Experience was the world's first LEED Gold-certified amphibian and reptile complex.[8] The complex, which replaced the Zoo's former World of Reptiles, is home to more than 200 animals representing more than 70 species.

Notable reproductive successes include Arakan forest turtles, a critically endangered species harvested nearly to extinction for food and traditional medicine. A rare Guatemalan beaded lizard hatched at Zoo Atlanta in March 2012. A critically endangered bog turtle hatched at Zoo Atlanta in 2022 for the first time in 30 years.[9]

Amphibians[10]

Reptiles

Giant panda, Mei Lan

Zoo Atlanta is one of three institutions in the U.S. currently housing giant pandas. Lun Lun (female) and Yang Yang (male) arrived in Atlanta as juveniles in 1999 and reside at the zoo on loan from China. The pair's first cub, male Mei Lan, was born on September 6, 2006. A second cub, male Xi Lan, was born August 30, 2008. Female Po was born November 3, 2010. Po's name was announced by actor Jack Black in 2011; Po was named after Black's character in the DreamWorks films Kung Fu Panda.[11] A fourth and a fifth cub, both female,[12] born July 15, 2013, were the first twin pandas to be born in the U.S. since 1987.[13] Their names were announced on ABC's Good Morning America on October 23, 2013; 100 days after their birth, which is a Chinese tradition. The names are Mei Lun and Mei Huan.[14] As of October 2015, Mei Lan, Xi Lan, Po, Mei Lun, and Mei Huan reside at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China.[15]

A sixth and seventh cub, both female, were born September 3, 2016. Their names were announced on their 100th day of life: Ya Lun and Xi Lun. Like their older siblings, the twins will ultimately travel to China.

The giant pandas reside in the Zoo's Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation Giant Panda Conservation Center.

Families often pose with one of the Willie B. bronze statues at Zoo Atlanta.

Twenty-four western lowland gorillas have been born at the zoo since the opening of The Ford African Rain Forest in 1988. Kali and Kazi, a rare set of twins, were born at Zoo Atlanta on October 31, 2005.[16]

Zoo Atlanta also remains home to offspring of its best-known gorilla, Willie B. (ca. 1959–2000). The zoo is also home to six of Willie B.'s grandchildren: Merry Leigh (2011) and Mijadala (2016), born to Kudzoo; Anaka (2013), born to Sukari; Andi (2013) and Floyd (2019), born to Lulu.[17] Others reside at other accredited zoos.

Other famous gorillas who have lived at Zoo Atlanta include Ivan, who resided at the Zoo from 1994 to his passing in 2012, and Ozzie, who lived at the Zoo from 1988 until his passing in 2022.

The Living Treehouse is an extension of The Ford African Rain Forest completed in 2004. The exhibit houses an aviary of African birds, as well as black-and-white ruffed lemurs and ring-tailed lemurs, with adjacent habitats for Angolan colobus monkeys, drills, Schmidt's guenons, and Wolf's guenons. In 2017, Zoo Atlanta introduced two crowned lemurs.

Corridor to Change is focused on species impacted by the international wildlife trade. The complex is home to sun bears and Sumatran tigers. An adjacent area, Complex Carnivores, houses clouded leopards and binturongs.

The Asian Forest houses giant otters, a Komodo dragon and a red panda, as well as Bornean and Sumatran orangutans.

The Orangutan Learning Tree Project, launched at Zoo Atlanta in 2007, utilizes in-habitat touch screen technology to allow orangutans to engage in computer puzzles, games and problem-solving exercises while guests observe their activities on a linked monitor.[18]

A child pets a Gulf Coast Native sheep

Zoo Atlanta's Outback Station petting zoo is home to Saanen goats, Oberhasli goats, Nubian goats, Southdown babydoll sheep, Gulf Coast sheep, Nigerian dwarf goats, and two kunekune pigs.

Aviaries throughout Zoo Atlanta are home to more than 50 species. These include but are not limited to Bali mynas, white-headed buffalo weavers, superb starling, golden pheasant, king vulture, hooded vulture, Indian peafowl, blue-throated macaw, milky eagle owl, southern ground hornbill, tawny frogmouth, blue-throated laughingthrush, blue crane, wattled crane, and white storks.

Zoo Atlanta's flock of Chilean flamingos, visible just inside the Zoo entrance in Flamingo Plaza, has consistently bred and nested since 2001.

Zoo Atlanta is a participant in the AZA Species Survival Plan for the following programs:

Zoo Atlanta also participates in several international conservation initiatives for reptiles and amphibians, working to combat issues such as the Asian Turtle Crisis and Global Amphibian Decline. Staff members from Zoo Atlanta and the Atlanta Botanical Garden have established captive assurance colonies of Panamanian frogs threatened by the spread of chytrid fungus. (Chytrid is the cause of the infectious amphibian disease chytridiomycosis.) [20]