San Diego Zoo

A summer-long "China Celebration" will bring acrobatic performers, new animal exhibits and an updated giant panda area to the San Diego Zoo . Photos : Panda Trek area set to open this summer at the San Diego Zoo Home to three giant pandas, the refreshed and rechristened Panda Trek area of the zoo is expected to open in late July or early August with new Asian-themed exhibits dedicated to antelope-like Sichuan takins,...

Did you know that strawberries, though considered a fruit, are technically a member of the rose family? Then you are ripe for the California Strawberry Festival this weekend in Oxnard. On 50 acres, the event features two concert stages and an array of strawberry treats, including strawberry beer. There's also Strawberryland for the kids. Info: (888) 288-9242 or www.strawberry-fest.org . . . . Speaking of kids, here's yet another summer activity in family friendly San Diego: Pirate Ship Adventures offers daily cruises aboard an 83-foot sailing ship , including a special July 4 cruise.

For the second time in less than two weeks, thieves broke into a locked cage and stole a rare bird from the San Diego Zoo. The stolen 30-year-old male African bateleur eagle had lived at the zoo since 1961. On June 3, a female African milky eagle owl was stolen from a cage about 100 yards away. Zoo officials said the thefts apparently were well planned by someone with specific knowledge about the birds. There was no evidence the thefts were committed by the same people.

For the record: Yes, that was Newt Gingrich at the San Diego Zoo on Tuesday for a 90-minute behind-the-scenes tour. Gingrich was in the area raising money for his bid for the Republican presidential nomination but found time to visit the zoo, including feeding a young panda, looking at elephants, polar bears and tigers, and posing for pictures with zoo staffers. Gingrich has made other visits to the zoo and Safari Park, including a sleepover at the park's Snore and Roar program.

Did you know that strawberries, though considered a fruit, are technically a member of the rose family? Then you are ripe for the California Strawberry Festival this weekend in Oxnard. On 50 acres, the event features two concert stages and an array of strawberry treats, including strawberry beer. There's also Strawberryland for the kids. Info: (888) 288-9242 or www.strawberry-fest.org . . . . Speaking of kids, here's yet another summer activity in family friendly San Diego: Pirate Ship Adventures offers daily cruises aboard an 83-foot sailing ship , including a special July 4 cruise.

If dirt and rocks were pages of a book, the soil of San Diego County would read like an epic novel, stretching across tens of millions of years. Two million years ago, mastodons, huge saber-tooth cats, bears, horses, deer and antelope contended for supremacy on rolling, grassy plains that are now the Anza Borrego Desert.

Is it a zoo or a museum? Yes to both. The San Diego Zoo and its Safari Park long ago shattered the mold for the cat-in-a-cage attraction. Now other visionary organizations are pushing the limits, putting nature on display more naturally, then adding a pinch of Smithsonian. If you're traveling the West this spring or summer, treat yourself and the kids to a genuine close encounter of the critter kind — educational benefits no extra charge. -- Ken Van Vechten Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, 2021 N. Kinney Road, Tucson; (520)

For the record: Yes, that was Newt Gingrich at the San Diego Zoo on Tuesday for a 90-minute behind-the-scenes tour. Gingrich was in the area raising money for his bid for the Republican presidential nomination but found time to visit the zoo, including feeding a young panda, looking at elephants, polar bears and tigers, and posing for pictures with zoo staffers. Gingrich has made other visits to the zoo and Safari Park, including a sleepover at the park's Snore and Roar program.

Reporting from San Diego -- Two ailing and aged elephants at the San Diego Zoo had to be euthanized this week, zoo officials announced Friday. The two Asian elephants were suffering and their chances for recovery were virtually nil, officials said. Cha Cha, estimated to be 43 years old, was euthanized Wednesday. To allow other elephants to see her a final time, her lifeless body was lifted on a forklift and taken to where other elephants in the Elephant Odyssey exhibit are kept.

I admit it: I fall in love easily. First, it was with a 268-pound guy. Despite his youth, he was gray and wrinkled. But there were others as the day wore on. One had a face like a horse. Another was nice-enough looking, but that neck — oh, heavens, that neck. And yet another was way too fast for me. Oh, baby. Or, more correctly, babies. These were all animal babies — an African elephant, a zebra, a giraffe and a cheetah, respectively — I saw on a two-hour photo caravan at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park.

Reporting from San Diego -- Two ailing and aged elephants at the San Diego Zoo had to be euthanized this week, zoo officials announced Friday. The two Asian elephants were suffering and their chances for recovery were virtually nil, officials said. Cha Cha, estimated to be 43 years old, was euthanized Wednesday. To allow other elephants to see her a final time, her lifeless body was lifted on a forklift and taken to where other elephants in the Elephant Odyssey exhibit are kept.

Reporting from San Diego -- Pteropus rodricensis was hanging upside down, doing some squeaking. That's mostly his daily routine, with occasional breaks to eat slices of fruit. He's primarily a dusk-and-night mammal. That's when members of his species spread their wings in a 30-inch span for some low-level flying and maybe some ritualistic courting. Arya Yari, 11, of San Diego was watching intently one day last week. He's kind of a bat expert, although until that day he'd never seen a Pteropus rodricensis, a.k.a.

Reporting from San Diego -- A postmortem examination has confirmed that Umoya, a 21-year-old elephant at San Diego Zoo Safari Park, was fatally attacked by another elephant, but other details of the death remain a mystery. No one witnessed the attack and it is unknown which elephant or elephants in the herd were responsible for Umoya's death or what may have prompted the deadly confrontation Nov. 17. Umoya had no visible injuries, but it was clear that the female African elephant had been hurt by what was initially termed an "aggressive interaction.

Newt Gingrich is a huge fan of zoos. The former House speaker dreamed as a child of becoming a zookeeper. He has visited about 100 zoos and wrote the introduction to the guidebook “America's Best Zoos.” Gingrich got his start in politics at an early age, when he tried to open up a zoo in Harrisburg, Pa. “An 11-year-old is fighting City Hall here in an attempt to establish a zoo in the city's Wildwood Park,” reads a 1954 report...

While all eyes will be on Disney California Adventure in 2012, plenty of other theme parks in California will be adding new rides and attractions in time for the summer crowds. Our Top 10 for 2012 is dominated by new rides coming to DCA's 12-acre Cars Land expansion , the grand finale in the $1 billion extreme makeover the Anaheim theme park has undertaken during the past five years. DCA's transformation is so massive that even Disneyland is taking the year off as far as new attractions go, letting the spotlight shine on its younger neighbor.

A baby boom is underway at the San Diego Zoo among the Grand Cayman blue iguanas, one of the world's most endangered lizards. Since 2007, the zoo has been part of an international effort to save the blue iguana. Despite elaborate efforts at providing the right environment, results have been modest: three or four hatchlings a year. But in the past week, nine blue iguana hatchlings were reported at the zoo's Anne and Kenneth Griffin Reptile Conservation Center. Jeff Lemm, the zoo's research coordinator for lizards, credits the changes that he made for the younger of the center's two breeding females.

Woe no more for the Galapagos tortoises at the San Diego Zoo. Although they are the oldest creatures at the zoo, the jumbo-sized reptiles have long been overshadowed by the charismatic vertebrates: pandas, koalas, pachyderms, big cats and even bigger polar bears. But now the tortoises — some of whom have been at the zoo since the 1930s — have a new $1-million upgrade to their enclosure on the zoo's Reptile Mesa. The refurbished digs are meant to be more comfy for the animals, more eye-catching for zoo visitors.

An outbreak of antibiotic-resistant skin infections at the San Diego Zoo last year began when a zookeeper infected an elephant calf that was being hand-raised because its mother couldn't care for it, according to a zoo and county health department investigation. The calf, in turn, infected as many as 20 of its human caretakers.

Vus'musi, a 4,500-pound, 7-year-old African elephant, was having his morning regimen with Curtis Lehman, a senior elephant keeper at the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park. Lehman held out treats for Vus'musi — who got his name, roughly translated as "to build a family," from the king of Swaziland. The mammoth mammal snatched the treats with his trunk and stuffed them into his mouth. On command, the elephant turned this way and that for Lehman to inspect his tail, his flanks, his anus, his tusks and his feet.

A summer-long "China Celebration" will bring acrobatic performers, new animal exhibits and an updated giant panda area to the San Diego Zoo . Photos : Panda Trek area set to open this summer at the San Diego Zoo Home to three giant pandas, the refreshed and rechristened Panda Trek area of the zoo is expected to open in late July or early August with new Asian-themed exhibits dedicated to antelope-like Sichuan takins,...