Panda Updates – Monday, June 10

The well-being of all the animals at Zoo Atlanta is our top priority. In our continuing efforts to make Idgie the red panda’s life as comfortable as possible as she gets older and displays more age-related mobility issues, we have added additional modifications to her habitat. Originally she just showed signs of having mobility issues as she was climbing, so we built the ramps to give access to her air-conditioned house and new elevated sleeping spots instead of her tree. Lately, we’ve noticed that the steps leading to her behind-the-scenes area were also becoming a little difficult for her to navigate. So, we built her an additional ramp that she regularly uses! Additionally, with summer’s warm temperatures, we’re always trying to find ways to encourage Idgie to rest inside her air-conditioned house (she loves her elevated boardwalk and hut!). We have yet to figure out why the air-conditioned house is not her most favorite place to be (and knowing Idgie, we may never know). We recently removed the keeper-access door on the back of the air-conditioned house and installed freezer flaps. These flaps not only help hold the cold air inside the house, but they also give the area a more open feel, as well as give her yet another way to enter and exit her air-conditioned house. While we haven’t actually seen her use the freezer flaps, we have seen evidence of their use in that the bottoms of the flaps are sometimes lying outside the door lip instead of inside (indicating that she’s pushed through them to exit).
Jen W.
Keeper III, Mammals

(photo by Jen W.)