Philadelphia Zoo

Loud, unrelenting, and often profane.

With all of their loud disruption, it wasn't surprising that police began paying closer attention and it was at the Philadelphia Zoo where their first confrontations with police began.

MOVE members hurled insults at families on weekend visits to the zoo.

Officers shouted back.

It was.

And, and Jason, you'll know from the Philadelphia Zoo, there's frequently peacocks.

They don't, they don't necessarily escape.

They just-

For Plume, that connection is the point.

He's brought his music to the US only twice, first to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Anchorage, and now to the Philadelphia Zoo.

And as unusual as those reactions may seem, science may help explain them.

Researchers have found some animals can respond to rhythm and tempo.

She doesn't feel super close to either of them.

Like her dad works at the Philadelphia Zoo, actually.

Shout out.

Hmm.

Pretty good zoo, though many of the, uh, of the cuter animals, they, they've had a bad run-

They've had a really unlucky run-

... lately at the Philadelphia Zoo

... with animals lately here at the Philadelphia Zoo.

Yeah, please don't bring that over here.

If you're trying to maybe plan that visit to the Philadelphia Zoo, tomorrow is a great day to do so.

We've got some unsettled weather chances by the time we hit Sunday.

We'll go through everything related to the weekend and beyond coming up in that exclusive AccuWeather 7 day forecast.

The organizers hoping to break records for sales of memorabilia from the beloved franchise.

And still ahead here in our next half hour today, the Philadelphia Zoo was the first official zoo in America.

Christy Leto will be back to tell us the history of how it came to be in our Maiden PA segment.

It's fast and free.

Our founder went to the London Zoo, and this was one of the first zoos in the world.

When he came back, he said, why doesn't Philadelphia have something like this?

By 1859, the Philadelphia Zoo had a charter becoming America's first.

But because of the Civil War, they opened in 1874 with just over 500 animals and 3,000 visitors on the first day.

It's, it's hard to make a full lifestyle from it.

And my grandfather was actually, he was, um, a zookeeper at the Philadelphia Zoo.

So, um, God rest his soul, I never got to meet him.

I'm sure he was a great gentleman.

So for example, like for big cat species that we've observed, so that's leopards, tigers, lions, we've seen a lot of these animals being kept very closely to animals that they would consider prey.

So just at the Philadelphia Zoo, for example, that we just visited and evaluated, we saw that a lot of the big cats were kept directly across from their barnyard animals exhibit, which had animals like goats, sheep, birds.

So Those animals are both in a state of stress and frustration because from the predator standpoint, from the big cat standpoint, they're smelling and hearing and seeing these animals that they view as prey, but they're not able to get out of their enclosures and get them, right? And then from the prey animal's perspective, it's extremely stressful because they're aware of these predators that are very close to them.

They can hear, see, smell them, but they also have no option to escape They don't have any option to put more distance between them and these animals that they perceive to be dangerous.