Thanks for your support!
Thank you for sharing our passion for our Zoo babies, and creating enriching habitats for our animals through engaging areas to thrive.
Your help supports hands-on training programs, medical care, enrichment activities, dietary expertise and more to our 3,600 animals. Your support is critical to the 24/7 care our animal residents receive. One aspect is ensuring proper nutrition by encouraging activities like our large carcass feeding for our carnivores, and our browse program, which provides year-round fresh vegetation for our herbivores, like our Asian elephants.
Enrichment includes things like providing varied feeding schedules, increasing feeding time with puzzle feeders or hidden food, providing habitats that stimulate exercise, and many other activities, all with a goal of encouraging and stimulating natural behaviors.
Enrichment opportunities enhance and improve health, mental and physical well-being.
Thank you for unleashing your wild side and supporting Denver Zoo’s world-class animal care.
From conception to birth, it can be a long, amazing road for both animals and Zoo staff (some of our animal pregnancies can run 18 months!). Zoo babies are typically a massive team effort with many different people, departments and outside groups working tirelessly to keep new babies happy and healthy. In the end, it all pays off…with new members of our Denver Zoo family.
Every expectant mother - whether animal or human - needs good health care before giving birth, to safeguard the wellbeing of mom and baby.
Just as with humans, animal nutrition is the foundation of a healthy and high-quality life.
Our Nutrition Department builds daily diet plans, based in animal nutrition science, for our more than 3,600 animals. Denver Zoo is dedicated to creating diets for every single one of our more than 600 species - as close as possible to what they would consume in the wild.
Excellent nutrition programs encourage natural behaviors, promote overall wellness, and help our animals live longer healthier lives.
The Nutrition Center Team distributes browse materials, which are the limbs, twigs and leaves that many of our animals eat. We receive and portion 926 lbs. of browse material each week, then bundle it up, and distribute to the appropriate departments. In the summer, we are able to feed our animals using browse grown right here at Denver Zoo. However, in the winter, we ship browse in from around the country to cover the needs of our animals.
The top priority at Denver Zoo is the welfare of our animals – and a large part of this is maximizing choice, control, and challenges. As much as possible, we want to develop opportunities to display natural behaviors, including food.
‘Carcass feedings’ are a fundamental delicacy for each of the carnivores in our care at Denver Zoo. Feeding large sections or whole prey - is one of the ways animal care staff and nutritionists continually enrich our animals' lives and support their physical, mental, and social health. This also stimulates the natural tendencies found in the wild.
Feeding on large food items exercises jaw muscles, increases strength and extends foraging time. Natural feeding strategies are also encouraged and can help form bonds among our social carnivores, like lions.
Eating carcasses takes more time, energy, and work to eat and digest, rather than meat alone. This extra work has been scientifically shown to improve oral and digestive health, as well as muscle tone.
Denver Zoo’s ability to provide extraordinary training and enrichment for our animals is an example of the commitment we are able to make because of generous support from our donors. Every animal living at the Zoo - from 12,500-pound Asian bull elephant, Groucho, in Toyota Elephant Passage to a tiny, one-pound shrew, Zuccho, in Emerald Forest, are encouraged to mimic their natural behaviors through carefully created enrichment plans.
You have the power to help our community learn, grow and thrive. Partner with Denver Zoo and let’s be a force for good.
