How ZooTampa's animals are cooling off from the summer heat

TAMPA, Fla. - It's hard to beat the heat in Tampa, and we all need a break from it from time to time, including the animals at ZooTampa.

Frozen treats, snowball fights, dips in the pool, and even bubble-baths are some of the ways ZooTampa animals are cooling off this summer.

"We've already been trying to come up with creative ways to offer the animals choices with how to cool down in the summer heat," said Kelly Trotto, an associate curator of behavioral husbandry at ZooTampa. 

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June 20 marks the official start of summer, although it has felt like summer for weeks now. The summertime offers the animals at ZooTampa fun and stimulating enrichment while taking into account what they do naturally.  

"I think there's a clip of Gronk [a ZooTampa rhino] playing in some water and wallowing in the mud, so that's a normal thing that a Rhino to do, so a lot of our enrichment with water play is what a rhino wants to do is wallow," said Trotto.

Most of the animals are from warm weather regions, so this 90-degree weather isn't anything they can't handle. However, the zoo added additional cooling activities like sprinklers, pools and mud wallows in the habitats to let them have more engaging options. A/C is a must, so the animals also have access to their air-conditioned night houses.

"One of the funnest things we came up with this year is our friends at Kona Ice, they donated 150 pounds of shaved ice for us to play with the animals and our primates team really got creative and came up with a snowball game for our orangutans, so that was really fun and the whole orangutans family had fun with that," said Trotto. 

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