Category — Night Hunters

Twigs snap. Leaves rustle. You get a prickly feeling on the back of your neck as you wonder whether someone, or something, is watching you, stalking you, hunting you. It’s an eat-or-be-eaten world and, in the Cincinnati Zoo’s new Cat Canyon exhibit opening next summer, you are the prey.

A fishing cat crouches in its Night Hunters exhibit. (Photo: Brian Jorg)

Cat Canyon will encompass and link up the new Night Hunters experience (opened in May 2011) with the former Tiger Canyon area and include new exhibits for cougars, tigers, and snow leopards. (The cougar exhibit actually opened already.) Cat Canyon provides an exciting, sensory adventure into the world of our great predators, the wild cats, while strengthening the Zoo’s commitment to the conservation of threatened species through education and scientific research in the wild and at the Zoo. [Read more →]

We’ve been collecting some great feedback from those of you who have experienced the new Night Hunters exhibit. Thanks to all who have shared their thoughts and advice via Facebook, blog comments, exit surveys, and so on. It is much appreciated and greatly helps us in being able to provide the best experience possible.

One of the major concerns that visitors have expressed is that it’s too dark. Yes, it is a nocturnal exhibit, but we certainly don’t want people stubbing their toes or losing their loved ones! We’ve added in more of the twilight blue lighting along the front hallway recently that should help with that. We’ve also added a bit more light to some of the darker exhibits such as the potto and Burmese python. [Read more →]

Night Hunters has been open for a few weeks now and we’re getting a lot of positive feedback, especially about how much better it smells The Eurasian eagle owl that greets visitors as they enter the building is a big hit, too.

The Saving Species interactive kiosks where visitors can create their own digital ID signs for some of the small cats have been pretty popular. In just the first five days, about 780 signs were created!

Visitor-created ocelot ID sign

People are scanning the Quick Response (QR) codes to download videos about the animals, too. In just the first two weeks, the QR codes in Night Hunters have been scanned more than 850 times. The ocelot video has been viewed the most so far.

There have been some questions about where all the animals that were on display in the old Nocturnal House and Cat House have gone. Some of them have been moved to other exhibit areas in the Zoo while others have been transferred to other zoos.

The armadillos, for example, rotate on exhibit in the Children’s Zoo and our roving interpreters often bring them out for live encounters, too.

Three-banded Armadillo

Other previous residents that make live encounter appearances include the barn owl and coatimundi.

Barn owl

A two-toed sloth hangs out in a tree in the Discovery Forest (attached to the Education Center).

Two-toed Sloth

We have a serval  in our Cheetah Encounter program.

Serval (Photo: Connie Lemperle)

Some other exciting news since the Night Hunters opening – we’ve had a baby bearcat and a baby tayra born! Hopefully, we can get some pictures up soon.