Ultimate Zoo

Architects, zoo keepers and vets re-create animal habitats.

Hippos thrive in Missouri; a panda is born in Atlanta; an African savannah springs to life in Canada.

A Sumatran tiger may start a family; macaque sees a dentist.

Helping a barn owl; researching seahorses for preservation.

Tigers in an archeological exhibit, growing a live coral reef in an aquarium, and containing gators without many barriers.

Elephants get a revolutionary new exhibit, a massive desert within a dome, and an underwater cove for Steller's sea lions.

How an aquarium in the Mall of America made it possible for visitors to actually swim with sharks; steps Nashville zoo took with house gibbons.

Rebuilding an aviary after a hurricane; cheetah exhibit in which the cats can hunt their prey; containing a group of meerkats.

In-habitat birth of a rare Sumatran rhino; rain forests in an Ohio zoo; gorilla exhibit without barriers.

Learning about how highly intelligent chimpanzees are actually teaching the researchers at Chicago's Lincoln Park zoo; how penguins and puffins chill out at the zoo in St. Louis.

Ferocious lions; sun bears in California; vultures in France.

Three rhino species in one giant habitat; abandoned jaguar; endangered red pandas.

Spectacled bears in Zurich; the Congo comes alive at the Bronx Zoo; aquarium at the Mall of America breeds sharks.