gracious/zoo

The Penguin Keeper highlights the challenges and fun involved in caring for loveable, unusual penguins at the Tennessee Aquarium. The penguins are a new exhibit and a new experience, not only for visitors, but the staff as well.

Here is The Penguin Keeper:

Edmonton's Valley Zoo is inviting the public to say "bonjour" to its newest Siberian tiger.

Staff at the zoo have discovered that while Boris, a seven-year-old male cat, has lived at the zoo for about a year, French remains his language of choice.

When the Quebec-born tiger arrived in May 2006, staff found him unresponsive to the English commands of staff. Ginette Heppelle, a French-speaking zookeeper from Saskatchewan, was then asked to try a few lines in French.

"I said, 'Bonjour, Boris,' " said Heppelle, 29, who started work at the zoo around the same time Boris arrived.

"I started to speak to him in French and he got up and came to see me."

A baby Binturong, also known as the Asian 'bear-cat', emerges from its nest box at Sydney's Taronga Zoo. The baby, named 'Indah', which means beautiful in Malay, is the zoo's first Binturong cub since they were first put on display more than 50 years ago.

REUTERS/David Gray (AUSTRALIA)

The Florida Aquarium is proud to announce the arrival of four additional African Black-footed Penguins to join the brother and sister duo currently appearing daily during Penguin Promenades upstairs lobby.

The four new juvenile penguins have arrived and need names!

The online naming contest begins on Wednesday, May 23 at 10 a.m. and continues through the end of May. Visit flaquarium.org [flaquarium.org] to vote and vote as often as you like.

Check the site to see the status of your favorite names.

The latest incident at the Shaoshan Zoo in the southern city of Kaohsiung began when an orangutan pushed his way out of his cage and wandered into a nearby restaurant courtyard.

As zoo officials scurried to bring the animal under control, he gleefully overturned picnic tables and motorbikes, forcing terrified diners to cower inside the eatery.

The orang-utan was finally subdued when an official shot him in the upper body with a a stun gun.

He was then carted off for treatment in the scoop of a small bulldozer.

Incident occurred just six weeks after a 200-kilogram (440-pound) crocodile chewed the forearm off veterinarian Chang Po-yu at the same zoo.

Opening on May 26, Oceans presented by Old National Bank is an experience Indianapolis Zoo visitors will not want to miss. As the name implies, the focus is those huge bodies of sea water that cover seven tenths of our world, and which are collectively refer to as the oceans.

When visitors reach the returning penguin exhibit, they will notice a transparent panel beneath their feet that allows them to see (and appreciate the speed) of the penguins as they "fly" underwater from one side of the exhibit to the other. Zoo visitors most certainly will be very glad to have the penguins back from their "vacation" in Texas, and they're bringing home an addition to the flock - a baby gentoo penguin (the first born from the Indianapolis Zoo gentoo flock) that has thrived in his temporary home.

Zoo Atlanta hatched a rare Arakan forest turtle this week, a victory for researchers trying to save the endangered species -- one shell at a time.

The hatchling is the fourth of the brown-and-tan spotted reptiles born there in the last six years, zoo officials said Tuesday. Two hatchlings have died, and another egg is near hatching.

The zoo is the only facility in the world successfully breeding the Arakan forest turtle, which is one of the planet's most critically endangered species. They were believed to be extinct for close to a century, but the turtles appeared in Asian food markets in the mid-1990s.

Scientists blame the rapid disappearance of the Arakan forest turtle -- much like other shelled reptiles -- on their popularity in Asia for cooking and medicinal purposes.

(photo credit: St Louis Zoo)

The first penguin chick to be hatched from an artificially incubated egg in Malaysia is now 13 days old and growing fatter at the Underwater World Langkawi (UWL).

UWL senior curator Tan Ean Kok said the Black Footed African penguin chick weighed just 72gm when it was hatched. It now weighs a healthy 170gm.

Tan said the success of the breeding programme through incubation would further ensure the survival of the penguins held in captivity.

"Some penguins reject the egg. Some lay two eggs and take more care of the first than the second.

"In such cases, we need to put the eggs in incubators to ensure their survival.

"We tried incubating five eggs last year, but none hatched.

"We were excited when the first chick hatched from the incubator on April 17 this year," he said,

Tan said that, so far, 10 penguin chicks had hatched at UWL. The first hatched on March 17 last year while the youngest hatched on April 17 this year.

"But so far, only the Black Footed African penguins have produced offspring.