Latest news with #BronxZoo
New York Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Bronx Zoo's fascinating World of Darkness exhibit reopens after 16-year hiatus
The spotlight is back on New York's darkest exhibit. World of Darkness, the Bronx Zoo's 'groundbreaking' shadowy attraction showcasing more than two dozen rare and unusual nocturnal animals, is back after a 16-year hiatus. 4 World of Darkness, the Bronx Zoo's 'groundbreaking' shadowy attraction showcasing animals such as the sand cat (above), is back after a 16-year hiatus. Terria Clay / Bronx Zoo The revamped exhibit, which opened to the public Saturday, offers a glimpse into the behaviors and adaptations of 25 species across the world, from two-toed sloths and cloud rats to sand cats and vampire bats. Entry to the 13,000-square-foot, 21-habitat exhibit is included with the purchase of a Bronx Zoo ticket. 4 Aye-ayes also are part of the exhibit. Bronx Zoo 'The opening of the new World of Darkness will once again provide Bronx Zoo visitors with a unique immersion experience to observe amazing creatures that have evolved to live and thrive in darkness,' said Bronx Zoo Director and Wildlife Conservation Society Executive Vice President of Zoos & Aquarium Jim Breheny in a statement. The first World of Darkness exhibit at the zoo opened in 1969. It served as the first major zoo exhibit to feature nocturnal animals in a 'reverse light cycle' so that onlookers could watch the nocturnal world in action during daytime hours, officials said. The new modernized exhibit – the first iteration since the original closed in April 2009 because of financial issues – will continue on the legacy of creative lighting design, zoo officials said, with a new set of programmable LED lighting systems that simulate 'soft' sunrise and sunset transitions. 4 The modernized exhibit features creative lighting designs, zoo officials said. Bronx Zoo The 'reimagined' nocturnal house also offers 'immersive soundscapes, interactive elements, and meticulously recreated habitats' from tropical forests and wetlands to deserts and caves, the zoo said. Visitors can expect hands-on educational consoles, outdoor photo-op stations and up-close views of blood pythons, tarantulas and naked mole rats. The exhibit also serves as the zoo's only permanent bilingual attraction, with all signage, graphics and interactive elements in both English and Spanish. 4 A broad-snouted Caiman lays in wait at the Bronx Zoo's World of Darkness exhibit. Julie Larsen / Bronx Zoo The revitalized exhibit also features species rarely seen in zoos, including cloud rats, fat-tailed leumurs, and Guatemalan beaded lizards. 'Many New Yorkers have great memories of the exhibit which originally opened in 1969,' Breheny said, adding the zoo has 'updated all aspects of the experience to ensure an amazing opportunity to enter a shadowy world rarely seen.'
New York Times
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Spend an Hour in the Dark With Bats, Cats and Naked Mole Rats
On a recent morning in the Bronx, three vampire bats circled around a bowl to drink their breakfast: warm beef blood. Nearby, a red-rumped agouti — a South American rodent that looks like a large, long-legged guinea pig — scuttled behind a tree trunk. A few feet away, an Arabian sand cat put its paw inside a log to grab a mouse. The fluttering noise in the distance was coming from several Egyptian fruit bats that were zooming around. It was a bright and humid day, but inside the World of Darkness at the Bronx Zoo it was a cool dusk. The exhibit, which was originally installed in 1969, closed in 2009 because of budget trouble. It will reopen on Saturday, with a fully updated and reimagined nocturnal experience. The exterior of the building housing the exhibit, a 13,000-square-foot Brutalist structure near the zoo's Asia Gate, looks almost the same as it did back in 2009, but with a new charcoal paint job. The original World of Darkness sign from 1969, which provided a creepy thrill for kids for decades, with its spare sans-serif letters (a font called alternate gothic), still stands. And the concept is the same: to use a reverse light cycle, giving visitors a peek into the lives of nocturnal animals that are generally active while humans sleep. When it's daytime outside, it's nighttime inside the World of Darkness. The interior is all new. A soothing soundtrack plays cricket chirps and other nighttime forest sounds. There are acoustic panels shaped like forest canopy and a highly customizable LED lighting system that is tailored to each species and able to replicate the natural transitions of dusk and dawn. The twilight darkness is disorienting at first. It takes time for human eyes to adjust and, during a sneak preview this week, some onlookers bumped into walls, railings and signage as they slowly felt their way in the dim interior. Humans may fumble around, but the 25 other species in the building have unique adaptations that help them navigate and survive in the dark. The animals include blind cave fish, two-toed sloths and slow lorises — a type of venomous primate. 'Visitors to the Bronx Zoo's World of Darkness are entering another world with many strange creatures that many have never had the opportunity to see before,' said Jim Breheny, the director of the zoo. 'The key is to be patient. You need to give your eyes time to adjust and to explore this underworld of shadows,' he added. 'Even though the animals in the World of Darkness are active at night, they are shy and secretive by nature. You need to take the time to stop, look and observe.' A visitor tried. She stared through glass into a deep, black space where there was no perceptible movement. Suddenly, the ghostly shape of an animal, at least 25 inches long, not including the tail, appeared out of the murk. It was a northern Luzon giant cloud rat, a large species of rodent found only in the Philippines. It sniffed the air and, seemingly unimpressed, retreated back into the shadows. In another enclosure, a douroucouli — also called a night monkey — hopped from branch to branch, its bulbous eyes shining in the dark. Moments later, an aye-aye, with its long middle digit, crawled along a vine, probing a piece of bamboo. Since this is the Bronx Zoo's first permanent installation that is bilingual, the signage pointed out the animal's 'visión nocturna' ('night vision') and 'dedo que golpetea' ('tapping finger'). Visitors watched a colony of naked mole rats behind glass as they scurried from chamber to chamber in a kind of giant ant farm. Between waiting for your eyes to adjust and waiting for the animals to manifest out of the gloom, the experience, for humans, is an exercise in slowing down. You can feel your heart decelerate as you become nearly hypnotized by the rhythmic cricket chirps. A serene calm descends upon you in this world, where time has stopped and there is only darkness. Earlier this week, after the tour ended, the real world quickly intruded. Out on Boston Road at the elevated West Farms Square-East Tremont Avenue subway station, the 5 train screeched along the tracks and a huge green commercial dump truck clanged and clattered over a pothole. It was a noisy contrast to the chill vibes of the pink-toed tarantulas and the blood python hidden in the dark, just yards away.
The Guardian
19-06-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
‘This isn't a gimmick': the New Yorkers trying to restore the American chestnut
It was in New York City that a mysterious fungus was first spotted on an American chestnut, a blight that was to rapidly sweep across the eastern US, wiping out billions of the cherished trees. Now, 120 years later, there is fresh hope of a comeback for chestnuts, spurred not only by scientists but also eager New Yorkers planting blight-proof seeds in their back yards and local parks. The American chestnut was once found in vast numbers from Maine to Mississippi and known as the redwoods of the east due to its prodigious size. But 4bn trees were killed off in the first half of last century by a blight introduced from Asia to which it had little defense, spread by spores carried by the wind, rain and animals. The blight, Cryphonectria parasitica, first spotted in 1904 on trees at New York's Bronx Zoo, causes necrotic lesions on the chestnut's bark as it cuts off the tree's access to water and nutrients until it dies above ground. Some chestnut roots and shoots remain today, but very few trees reach their full imposing extent, of around 100ft in height and 8ft wide at the base. Decades of scientific and charitable work has sought to resurrect the chestnut, with varying results, and now a new project is turning to the citizens of New York to help restore the species to something of its former glory. New Yorkers have been invited to apply for and plant around 400 chestnut saplings tended to by the New York Restoration Project (NYRP), a non-profit group that was founded by the actress Bette Midler, in the hope that chestnuts can spread across the city in a new urban forest and eventually again thrive across the US east. 'The interest has surprised us, this has really touched a nerve,' said Jason Smith, director of north Manhattan parks at NYRP, about the response from a crowded city not typically associated with available green space and expansive back yards. Plantings require sunlight and must avoid areas under power lines but chestnuts can take hold in smaller gardens and, after five years or so, produce a prodigious bounty of tasty nuts. 'We've had requests for many thousands of trees, more than the seeds we have,' Smith said. 'I'm sure a lot of people have applied and don't really have the room, so there's an educational component there.' 'But the goal is to get as many potentially disease-resistant trees growing as possible and people can do something directly about that,' Smith added. 'When you talk to folks, they really do care about biodiversity loss, they just don't think they can do anything about it. Here, they can.' Project leaders are aiming for 1,000 chestnuts in New York but have to content themselves with a smaller initial number due to a constrained availability of seeds, garnered from plantings by the American Chestnut Foundation and also from the 230 or so chestnuts that remain scattered in New York itself. The saplings grown from this group are huddled in pots in a fenced off area in Manhattan and will soon be distributed to successful applicants. Around half of New York's surviving chestnuts are found in a promising initiative that has taken root in Highbridge Park, a strip of woodland in the upper reaches of Manhattan that slopes down towards the Harlem river. The New York Restoration Project started work here in the 1990s, a time when the area was a derelict dumping ground for car parts. In typical New York fashion the task of coaxing back an ecosystem has faced a myriad of unusual challenges – from battling invasive knotweed to dealing with a homeless encampment and even a group of resident nudists. 'There has always been something to keep us busy,' said Smith. His group has installed rain gardens, to help stem the flooding risk from the nearby river, removed debris and is in the process of installing a new path to allow locals to enjoy the revitalized park again. On a recent warm spring day, a single rusting car engine sat, like a museum piece, amid a verdant throng of ash, sycamore and sugar maple. Spores from cottonwoods covered the ground like a downy blanket. The crowing glory of this space, though, is its American chestnuts, planted in 2017 to stunning success. 'We didn't know what was going to happen but this tree here is probably like 35ft tall now,' said Smith, pointing to a chestnut that pierced the thin canopy. The blight still might take hold here but there has been remarkable resilience so far with just two of the more than 120 trees – which are hybrids with a Chinese chestnut variant but still genetically 95% American – struck down by the disease. 'We have an opportunity to have a distributed, community-based breeding effort in a way where we're giving all these seeds to people, asking them to track them, and hoping that some of them will prove to be very disease-resistant and largely American,' said Smith. The mass citizen science effort will, it's hoped, enlarge the pool of immune trees that, over the years, should steadily repopulate forests that have been decimated of chestnuts. The wellspring of healthy trees is still frustratingly small, only 2,000 or so across the eastern US, according to Sara Fern Fitzsimmons, chief conservation officer of the American Chestnut Foundation, meaning that restoration this way will be arduous. 'There aren't enough trees for high-scale restoration but we can breed them together to make them even more resistant,' Fitzsimmons said. 'We keep making incremental progress.' A few years ago, it was hoped that this attritional warfare could be surpassed by a sort of super weapon in the form of genetic modification. A new type of chestnut, with a wheat gene inserted into its genetic makeup, showed remarkably favorable signs of survival in the lab but then floundered when planted in the field. The chestnut foundation cut support for the project, called Darling 58, in 2023. Despite this, the genetically engineered variant's creators at the State University of New York are pushing ahead, with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) considering whether it should be deregulated and allowed to be commercially spread, to the alarm of some environmentalists. 'This isn't a restoration project, it's a genetically flawed science experiment poised for commercialization at the expense of our forests,' said Anne Petermann, co-founder of Global Justice Ecology Project. 'We are appalled that the USDA is seriously considering approving this risky GE tree when they know it is based on ten years of flawed research and has exhibited severe problems in controlled field tests. 'The forests deserve real science, not flawed experiments. The American chestnut deserves restoration, not commodification.' There is other work, too, going on try to give the fungus itself a disease but for now hope is mainly resting on the toil of hybrids and replanting as a path back for chestnuts. 'We all thought genetic modification would be a game changer that would revolutionize American chestnut restoration,' said Fitzsimmons. 'We still see promise in it, but it won't be a silver bullet. Instead of a singular product we need to do a diversity of things to not only restore chestnuts but also help other species like ash and hemlock that are under threat.' The tenacious attempts to revive chestnuts stems, in part, from a desire to atone for an environmentally ruinous era of American expansionism that, among other things, also wiped out the passenger pigeon and almost killed off all the country's bison. Fitzsimmons said that her family is from Appalachia, where the chestnut is still venerated as a versatile, fast-growing tree that supplies delicious nuts. 'You can use the wood for anything, it's a cradle to grave tree because you can use it for cradles or coffins, you can fatten your hogs on the nuts,' she said. 'I've heard it referred to as charismatic mega flora – people are just drawn to it. We have had the ecological tragedy of losing it but it's also a cultural tragedy. We want to restore those cultural connections.' This restoration could take decades, though. 'We should think of it as a cathedral building undertaking that will maybe not be complete in our lifetime,' as Smith put it. But at a time when the de-extinction of lost species, such as the wooly mammoth or dire wolf, is in vogue in an attention-grabbing way, the return of the chestnut has a more pragmatic rationale, its proponents argue. The tree can soak up vast quantities of carbon, vital amid the climate crisis, and fulfills all of the same roles for insects and birds even if it is crossed with a Chinese or Japanese variant. 'This isn't a gimmick, we are thinking about the ecological function of the tree,' said Smith. 'At a time when we are losing so much of our forests, we can't be purest about bringing back the most important tree in the northeast. We usually aim really low for conservation efforts in urban spaces, and we don't have to.'
Perth Now
18-06-2025
- General
- Perth Now
Giant Galapagos tortoise becomes first-time dad at the age of 135
A 135‑year‑old Galapagos tortoise has become a father for the first time. Goliath, who weighs a whopping 517 lb (234 kg), had finally sired a hatchling - after his partner Sweet Pea laid eight eggs at Zoo Miami in January and one baby emerged on June 4 following a 128-day incubation This is the first time a Galapagos tortoise has ever hatched at Zoo Miami - making it a double milestone. And Goliath is now the oldest male parent in the world. Zoo Miami is seeking recognition from Guinness World Records for both Goliath and Sweet Pea, who, at around 85–100 years old, might be the oldest mum ever. Born on Santa Cruz Island in June 1890, Goliath made his way to the US in 1929 (Bronx Zoo) before settling in Miami in 1981 - becoming the zoo's oldest resident. Zoo ambassador Ron Magill called Goliath a hero, stating: "He is living proof that where there's a will, there's a way. He's an inspiration to never give up hope!" The new hatchling is thriving, active, and healthy and is also living in its own enclosure.
Ammon
17-06-2025
- Science
- Ammon
Giant tortoise celebrates his 135th birthday
Ammon News - A giant Galapagos tortoise has turned 135 – and he's also just become a father for the first time, says Miami Zoo officials. Despite multiple breeding attempts throughout his lifetime, Goliath never successfully fathered any offspring. This all changed with a recent unexpected surprise. After 128 days of incubation, one egg out of a clutch of eight that was laid on January 27 successfully hatched on June 4. 'The hatchling appears to be healthy and has been removed from the incubator and placed in a separate enclosure where it is active and full of energy,' the zoo said. 'Goliath' hatched on the island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos on June 15, 1890, and later moved to the Bronx Zoo in July 1929. Ultimately, he settled at the Miami Zoo in July 1981. Independent
