Hot days change everything. For humans? Beaches. Beer. Sunglasses. For zoo animals, the heat is a logistical problem keepers solve with frozen blocks of… blood? Yes. London zoo serves blood ice lollies to lions. And Sumatran tigers. It sounds dark but it is strictly business.
Habitats are engineered for comfort, obviously. Shade, mud, water. But the animals? They have their own methods. Cheaper methods, sometimes.
Chester zoo’s dusky pademelons lick their wrists. It works. Evaporative cooling cools the blood in surface vessels. A tiny wallaby’s hack. Meanwhile, aardvarks dive underground. They hide from the sun like raccoons looking for a trash can lid to nap under. African crested porcupines do the same.
Dr. Nick Davis at Chester zoo explains it better than I could. He’s the mammals manager there. He notes that rhinos and capybaras just wallow. Mud is good for the soul. Or at least the temperature. Sumatran tigers? Jaguars? Asian elephants? They swim.
“As temperatures soar, many of the animals findtheir own ways of keeping cool.”
Then there are the penguins.
Humboldt penguins come from Chile and Peru. Warm places. They shouldn’t struggle. Bare skin on their faces lets heat escape. Their bills vent temperature too. Evolution is clever like that. Still, ZSL at London zoo isn’t lazy. They run misting systems. Fans. The largest penguin pool in the country.
But let’s talk about the meat-eaters again.
Lions. Tigers. Hot weather doesn’t bother them as much as us, probably. They evolved near the equator after all. But the keepers don’t just watch them pant. They provide “treats.” Frozen blocks. Blood-based. Sometimes spiced. Sometimes stuffed with edible toys inside. It cools them. It also triggers hunting instincts. A frozen toy requires work. That is the point.
Chimps get fruit lollies. Bears do too. Red pandas are in on it. Gorillas sip sugar-free fruit tea… frozen into solid bricks. Greater one-horned rhinos? They get sprayed with hoses. A cold shower for the beast.
Angela Ryan from ZSL puts it bluntly. Choice is key. Some animals run for the shade. Others love the mist. It’s not about forcing a solution on them.
We aren’t trying to override their biology. Just supporting it. Most of these creatures are built for heat. We don’t need to over-manage the situation. Just offer the options. Watch closely. Make sure they aren’t suffering.
It’s a weird balance, watching apex predators chomp on frozen hemoglobin while humans melt outside the gate. Does it really make that much of a difference? Maybe not for the animal’s survival in the short term. But comfort is the goal here. And ice cubes are the language we speak to keep them sane.
