Zoo Knoxville Knoxville Zoo

snowleopard

snowleopard

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Two new red pandas born at zoo - Oak Ridge, TN - The Oak Ridger

More red panda babies!

The Knoxville Zoo, in the State of Tennessee, has had unprecedented success breeding red pandas. In the past 31 years there has been a staggering 93 births at the zoo, averaging exactly 3 babies a year. The "Boyd Family Red Panda Village" exhibit was finished in 2007.

The zoo is also well regarded for its reptile collection, with 400 reptiles of 90 species. In 2011 there is the 2-story "Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Center" opening to the public, which will increase the collection by another 50 species.
 
That's alot of Red pandas. What other species do they keep here and How many red pandas do they hold at once?
 
KNOXVILLE ZOO

The Knoxville Zoo has 815 animals according to their website, but the establishment is occasionally overlooked because of the expanding Nashville Zoo and the giant pandas at the Memphis Zoo. Those three are the notable collections in the State of Tennessee.

Besides the amazing success of producing 93 red panda babies, the zoo has also produced close to 30 white rhino calves and was the first zoo in North America to breed African elephants. The elephant yard has 3 pools and can hold a large number of the pachyderms, the white rhino paddock is a huge field with usually more than one bull, and the zoo can maintain up to 8 red pandas at once.

There is a 1-acre cheetah exhibit, a 1-acre outdoor gorilla enclosure, and the most famous habitat is "Black Bear Falls". The book "America's Best Zoos" claims that the enclosure for black bears "may well be the best single-species exhibit in America!" There is a 40-foot log tunnel that allows for visitors to watch the bears from inside their enclosure.
 
Knox Zoo

While traveling we saw a sign for the Knoxville zoo and knowing nothing about it, stopped to check it out. We were pleasantly surprised! It is not big and can be traveled in 3 hours, but I loved it. It seems that it is simply not finished or in the process of remodeling though. Toward the far end of the zoo many animals seemed to simply be in fenced in areas that were clearly not a permanent exhibit. The elephants were great, their famous black bear exhibit was outstanding, red pandas, gorillas, and a pride of lions. It is a very small but great zoo. I recommend it to anyone!
 
African Lion Pridelands is scheduled to open in late spring of this year however from the looks of things and the opinion of several staff members it would appear they really need to pick up the pace.A summer open looks much more realistic.The exhibit is also going to feature a troop of Hamadryas Baboons recently acquired from Cleveland.

The same goes for the zoos new tiger exhibit construction is on going with a spring open currently being targeted.

Knoxville has the 9th largest reptile collection in North America housing over 600 reptiles and amphibians however they are only able to exhibit 35 of them in the current substandard set up.A new reptile facility has been in the works since around 2001 and it looks like the zoo finally has the funds needed to start the project once lions,baboons and tigers are completed.What an addition to the zoo this would be with a collection like they have :).

Knoxville has just acquired four extremely rare Plowshare Tortoises from Atlanta.

Team Tapir
 
team tapir said:
Knoxville has the 9th largest reptile collection in North America housing over 600 reptiles and amphibians however they are only able to exhibit 35 of them in the current substandard set up.A new reptile facility has been in the works since around 2001 and it looks like the zoo finally has the funds needed to start the project once lions,baboons and tigers are completed.What an addition to the zoo this would be with a collection like they have :).

Knoxville has just acquired four extremely rare Plowshare Tortoises from Atlanta.

Team Tapir
Click to expand...

Nice one!

The plowshares .... how did they get hold of those? Are they recent confiscees? Are they to be on exhibit and B/L?
 
There are 8 Plowshares that were recently confiscated on the illegal pet trade.Atlanta is getting 4 and Knoxville 4.It remains unclear whether either zoo is going to exhibit them but we guess it would be more likely that Atlanta would.

Team Tapir
 
"The Valley of the Kings" opens in mid-June, featuring an almost 1-acre lion habitat for 6 lions and a third of an acre exhibit for 6 baboons (species not identified). Also, a pair of Malayan tiger brothers will go on exhibit Memorial Day and the zoo will next focus on a 2-acre Tiger Forest by 2014 or 2015. Along with the current 1-acre cheetah yard there will certainly be some spectacular big cat habitats, and hopefully my friend "Arizona Docent" is reading this thread.:)

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/may/20/lions-tigers-and-baboons-zoo-opening-new/
 
snowleopard said:
"The Valley of the Kings" opens in mid-June, featuring an almost 1-acre lion habitat for 6 lions and a third of an acre exhibit for 6 baboons (species not identified). Also, a pair of Malayan tiger brothers will go on exhibit Memorial Day and the zoo will next focus on a 2-acre Tiger Forest by 2014 or 2015. Along with the current 1-acre cheetah yard there will certainly be some spectacular big cat habitats, and hopefully my friend "Arizona Docent" is reading this thread.:)
Click to expand...

@snowleopard: what was your opinion of the Knoxville Zoo? Do they have a good African elephant exhibit?
 
Knoxville Zoo is red panda crazy, having bred over 100 of the little critters over the years and red pandas have become an iconic species at the zoo. Constantly having about 5 of them on exhibit in 3 different enclosures is pretty cool, and there has also been a lot of breeding success with white rhinos as well. The African elephant exhibit is too small and now would be regarded as outdated (and there was an awful recent tragedy there before the current implementation of protected contact -aka basic common sense) but there are impressive exhibits for cheetahs, chimps and black bears. The children's zoo is one of the best around, and the reptile collection is ranked in America's top 10 but the zoo badly needs to raise funds to build a world-class Reptile House. I'd love to visit again to see the new lion and baboon habitats, and now that my wife and I have two children we would probably spend many more hours at the zoo.

An excerpt from my 2008 review:

Knoxville Zoo only has 800 animals, and it has about 400,000 people visit each year. Nevertheless, for a small zoo there are a handful of super exhibits. The chimpanzees have a huge outdoor yard that is offset by concrete indoor quarters, the cheetahs have a full acre to utilize, there are many red pandas in two outdoor and one indoor exhibit, and the four black bears have a terrific enclosure with tons of climbing opportunities. I can always see the positives in the tiniest of zoos.

It doesn't take long to see the zoo, and my wife and I twice visited the black bears, twice visited the red pandas (both exhibits are right near the main zoo entrance) and also had lunch and spent more time than normal in the gift shop. After all of that we still were only 3.5 hours in total at this modest little zoo. It's interesting that for such a fairly moderate sized collection there are many well-known species: gorilla, chimpanzee, African elephant, giraffe, zebra, white rhino, lion, tiger, cheetah, black bear, ostrich, camel, otter and others.
 
Valley of the kings has been pushed back to a July 19 grand opening.Lions is about 90% complete,while the Hamadryas Baboon exhibit is about 75% done.

In other zoos the zoo has shipped 3 of its juvenile red pandas tothere zoos and is hopefull for another litter possibly early summer.

Team Tapir
 
That's a pretty grandiose name for what is essentially a pretty basic pair of animal enclosures. Nice, but basic.
 
Knoxville is one of my favorite zoos mainly because its right there near my favorite vacation spot the Smoky Mountains National Park.
 
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