Where Does The Bronx Zoo Get Their Animals

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A Byte Out of the Big Apple

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New York City attracts captains of industry, innovators, and creatives. It's home to iconic skyscrapers and intricate subway tunnels, the neon lights of Times Foursquare and delicate flora of Central Park, brick-and-mortar shops and dotcoms — and they're all driven by the manufacturing industry.

Join Thomas Insights Senior Editor Stephanie Nikolopoulos as she takes a "byte" out of the history and future of the Big Apple in this column.

I feel very Holden Caulfield asking this, but where do animals at the Bronx Zoo become in the winter?

On a crisp belatedly summertime day, I visited the Bronx Zoo. Most kids had gone back to schoolhouse so I gloriously zipped through the line, but right before I paid my archway fee I caught glimpse of a sign: information technology was a little too cold for some of the animals so they wouldn't exist on view.

E'er common cold, I tightened the belt of my jacket around me, remembering one of my earliest memories of the zoo: wandering through an underground tunnel of the Children's Zoo there, where I'd pop my caput upwardly through a pigsty to run across prairie dogs scurrying around on the grass correct outside the plastic dome covering the "burrow." Information technology was similar I was the prairie dog!

That was around the age when I learned in my environmental science class that some animals burrowed under the ground or crawled into dens to hibernate. The prairie dog goes into a hibernation-like slumber, and indeed some exhibits are seasonal though the zoo is open year-round.

It was easy to imagine those smaller critters tucked abroad for a long winter's nap, but as an adult I wondered what happens to the more rebellious animals that were not biologically geared toward hibernation and would want to play instead of slumber? How could those magnificent elephants and giraffes, who grew up in the deserts of Africa, survive winter in New York?

Merely like people, in that location are some crazy animals that actually similar winter. The snowfall leopards seem to prefer chasing each other around in colder temperatures while lying lazily in the shade during summer hours. They're not the only absurd cats: tigers are out in winter too. Bronx Zoo tiger trainer Alison Werner says the Siberian tigers can tolerate -30 degrees Fahrenheit. Even some of the bears have been photographed rolling around in the snow.

Over in Boston, the Franklin Park Zoo takes a creative approach to helping its animals deal with the cold. The lion showroom features special heated rocks, while the African canis familiaris showroom includes a heated cave the animals can crawl into. The Bronx Zoo takes this arroyo for its tigers too, providing them with heated rocks.

In Chicago, at the Brookfield Zoo, animals are given the choice of whether they want to exist indoors or outdoors. Because big temperature changes are not good for animals, the indoor areas are kept cooler than ane might call up at effectually xl or 50 degrees.

Back in New York, Bronx Zoo animal handler Jose Vasquez says the winter weather condition for the animals "depends on the natural history of the animal." Whenever the weather condition gets too extreme, ScienceLine says handlers bring the animals "dorsum into these private rooms and turn on the heaters."

Those animals that practice non have the power to acclimate to cold temperatures pigsty up in the large quarters that exist behind-the-scenes, the same places where they sleep or find shade in the summer. Since they don't hide, they're given some extra attention by the handlers, who proceed them busy with exercise, toys to play with, and bug to solve.

HVAC Technicians Are the Unsung Heroes of Zoos

The giraffes were however out when I visited, but they're an case of an fauna that does not acclimate and must be indoors during winter. The U.Due south. Section of Agriculture warns that it's critical for these tall creatures to be entirely warm enough: "One giraffe became hypothermic and died within a heated, admitting drafty, befouled where the upper level of the barn was nearly 70 degrees but the lower area was but 45 degrees." Likewise, many continue to fence whether elephants should be kept at cold-weather zoos.

These aren't the simply sensitive souls at The Bronx Zoo. If the staff doesn't proceed the temperature of a mole rat's cage inside five degrees of its comfort zone, it could endure. Hope Pickney, a zookeeper in that location, said: "We accept tons of heating systems for their colonies."

Information technology seems to me that HVAC technicians may exist the unsung heroes of zoos. Jim Morley, manager of purchasing for The Wildlife Conservation Society of New York, headquartered at The Bronx Zoo, said: "One minute an air handler in a public facility requires work, the side by side minute something needs attention at the elephant shelter edifice — and y'all've got to remember to stay behind the xanthous line so you don't get caught nether foot."

Because of how precise atmospheric condition demand to be at the zoo, though, it's turning to automation. Honeywell installed its integrated controls platform, Enterprise Buildings Integrator™ (EBI), at The Bronx Zoo. To go on things running smoothly, Honeywell maintenance personnel are always on-site.

The zoo has worked to make its HVAC environmentally friendly. Every bit Thomas previously reported, when The Bronx Zoo began going "green," it installed HDPE (high-density polyethylene) cooling towers that brand the intercooler for the natural gas engines at the ability generation station cold. At present, co-ordinate to Robot Daily: "The Bronx Zoo produces much of its own power, cooling and heating through its cogeneration facility."

Headed to The Bronx Zoo? If you accept your heart set on seeing animals that might be indoors if it's a bit chilly, y'all tin can always check out the app to find out which attractions are opened and closed.