{"id":238730,"date":"2026-07-08T21:14:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/238730\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T21:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:14:14","slug":"the-philadelphia-zoos-bears-got-a-dream-home-makeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/238730\/","title":{"rendered":"The Philadelphia Zoo\u2019s bears got a dream home makeover"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A new luxury residence has opened at the heart of the Philadelphia Zoo.<\/p>\n

The lavish home \u2014 which has housed residents for years \u2014 recently underwent an impressive $25 million renovation expanding the spot by 60%. A brand-new wing includes outdoor space with resort-style amenities such as hammocks, natural light, cozy dens, climbing trees, water-features and a swimming pool.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The residents? Three very lucky \u2014 and very fluffy \u2014 bears.<\/p>\n

\"\"Bhalu, a sloth bear living at the Philadelphia Zoo, explores the new Gould & Potter Crossing Zoo360 Trail which was created to enrich the bear\u2019s habitat and educate visitors on the bear\u2019s behaviors. (Kimberly Paynter\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

The Philly Zoo is the nation\u2019s first at 167 years old, so its habitats are ever-evolving. Carey Bear Country<\/a>, which opened last month, is the biggest major construction project at the zoo in over a decade.\u00a0The habitat also features a new Zoo360 Trail with sky tunnels where bears walk overhead of guests, which was officially unveiled to the public this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis took \u2014 from planning to completion \u2014 about four and a half years,\u201d said Maggie Morse, senior director of animal care. \u201cFive, if you want to incorporate the data that we really collected to figure out which habitat we needed to enhance first, because we\u2019re not done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morse said that the bear habitat was chosen because of how \u201cintelligent and curious\u201d the bears are.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized that our 1980s exhibit was good, but it could be much better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Zoo\u2019s three bears<\/p>\n

Carey Bear Country currently houses two Andean bears (Turbo and Alba) and one sloth bear (Bhalu). Guests can now see all three in their new and improved home, which is freshly landscaped and includes an additional third habitat.<\/p>\n

\u201cBears are naturally explorers,\u201d Morse said. \u201cWe have a trail that goes into this third habitat that has pools. It\u2019s going to have a wobble tree. It has climbing structures, and my favorite thing about the habitat is that it has face-to-face viewing with guests \u2014 protected contact of course \u2014 so that they can see the bears in caves and through the glass and feel like they\u2019re in the environment with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The zoo-staff has been using training ports and food rewards to acclimate the bears to use the new space and Zoo360 Trail.<\/p>\n

The two male bears, Turbo and Bhalu, have adapted quickly to the trails and already started using them. Turbo was the first and is known for his bold and explorative personality. Alba is still taking her time.<\/p>\n

\"\"Turbo, an Andean Bear, at the Philadelphia Zoo. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Zoo)<\/p>\n

\u201cTurbo has the lucky cards that he was born under human care, so he doesn\u2019t know natural threats very well. He just loves the world,\u201d Morse said. \u201cAnd we are really glad that we made such a confident bear. In the wild, that would probably not do him so well. Now Alba, she\u2019s like, \u2018I gotta make sure that the environment is safe, and I need to make sure that I am safe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Bears doing bear things<\/p>\n

During our visit, we got to see Bhalu enjoy his improved habitat. The little bear, who has a big fluffy head and sloth-like claws for digging up insects, had all the bare necessities. So much so, we wondered if he had undergone media training.<\/p>\n

Bhalu immediately came out to the exhibit space and utilized many of its features. He went on his back and began playing with a ball filled with food. He climbed a tree structure, felt stuck up top and then adorably figured out how to make his way back down. He dug in his new digging pit. He made a bunch of loud and silly \u201csnarfing\u201d sounds, which Morse joked was the technical term for his noises. He also confidently used the new trail system overhead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Visitors to the Philadelphia zoo can come face-to-face with Bhalu, a sloth bear living at the Philadelphia Zoo. Sloth bears are native to the lowland forests of India, Nepal and Sri Lanka where their habitats are threatened. (Kimberly Paynter\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a great bear,\u201d Morse said proudly, as she looked on.<\/p>\n

During the visit, different zoo staff came by and joked with each other \u2014 taking pleasure in the bears doing bear things. One person noted that she had never seen Bhalu climb so high. Perhaps, watching them explore and play doesn\u2019t get old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We also got to see Alba, who has a lovely spectacled fur-pattern on her eyes, like all Andean bears. She appeared very demure in her movements.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is just so particular, and she likes everything her own way,\u201d Morse said. \u201cIt\u2019s her way or the highway. She loves to build nests up high. She loves to take naps in her behind-the-scenes holding, and she\u2019s just more [about] the world on her terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting a standard for bear care<\/p>\n

Morse hopes that the public understands just how much work went into building the new habitat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went over welfare data to see where we needed to improve for bears,\u201d she said. \u201cWe looked at ACA, which is the Association of Zoos and Aquariums guidelines for bears, and we were like, we don\u2019t want to just do the minimum, we want to go beyond, and so we really set a standard for bear care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Alba, an Andean bear living at the Philadelphia Zoo, chows down on some food at the new Francis J. Carey Bear Country exhibit. (Kimberly Paynter\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

The team relied on engineers and contractors who came, worked with the zoo\u2019s development team and brought this vision to life. The mission is to improve empathy not just for bears, but all wildlife.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these bears have what we call an SSP, or a species survival plan, and it\u2019s because they are threatened in the wild,\u201d Morse said. \u201cThere\u2019s human encroachment, habitat loss, all sorts of things that make it really important for our guests and our community to understand the plight that bears face out in the wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recently, the zoo\u2019s team sent two of their animal care specialists to India to engage in sloth bear rehabilitation and reintroduce them into the wild.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout SSPs and without ACA zoos, these bears are very likely going to go endangered. So we are here to share their mission to help their genetics stabilize in human care, and to tell people how to coexist with wildlife, so that we can keep bears here for a really long time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. A new luxury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[102706,2600,4988,102707,102708,564,69,71,70,2357,102709,5105],"class_list":["post-238730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-andean-bears","tag-animals","tag-bears","tag-carey-bear-country","tag-conservationism","tag-featured","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-zoo","tag-sloth-bears","tag-zoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}