About this season
There is a remarkable zoo in Nebraska that has enclosed its entire grounds and flipped night for day, allowing visitors to experience nocturnal animals in their natural habitat, when the animals are awake. In California, a zoo allows cheetahs to engage in free-roaming hunts. Another encourages rare, nearly extinct species to breed. This documentary is a close-up, behind-the-scenes look inside the world’s most fascinating and animal-friendly zoos.
Episodes (13)
1. Episode 1
Aired 7 January 2005 • 30 min
Architects, zoo keepers and vets re-create animal habitats.
2. Episode 2
Aired 14 January 2005 • 30 min
Hippos thrive in Missouri; a panda is born in Atlanta; an African savannah springs to life in Canada.
3. Episode 3
Aired 4 February 2005 • 30 min
A Sumatran tiger may start a family; macaque sees a dentist.
4. Episode 4
Aired 11 February 2005 • 30 min
Helping a barn owl; researching seahorses for preservation.
5. Episode 5
Aired 25 February 2005 • 30 min
Tigers in an archeological exhibit, growing a live coral reef in an aquarium, and containing gators without many barriers.
6. Episode 6
Aired 4 March 2005 • 30 min
Elephants get a revolutionary new exhibit, a massive desert within a dome, and an underwater cove for Steller's sea lions.
7. Episode 7
Aired 11 March 2005 • 30 min
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.
8. Episode 8
Aired 18 March 2005 • 30 min
Rebuilding an aviary after a hurricane; cheetah exhibit in which the cats can hunt their prey; containing a group of meerkats.
9. Episode 9
Aired 25 March 2005 • 30 min
In-habitat birth of a rare Sumatran rhino; rain forests in an Ohio zoo; gorilla exhibit without barriers.
10. Episode 10
Aired 1 April 2005 • 30 min
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.
11. Episode 11
Aired 8 April 2005 • 30 min
Ferocious lions; sun bears in California; vultures in France.
12. Episode 12
Aired 22 April 2005 • 30 min
Three rhino species in one giant habitat; abandoned jaguar; endangered red pandas.
13. Episode 13
Aired 29 April 2005 • 30 min
Spectacled bears in Zurich; the Congo comes alive at the Bronx Zoo; aquarium at the Mall of America breeds sharks.