Safari west has a new and exciting partnership to share with you! We have partnered with Zoolife, the world’s first online zoo, to show a livestream of our giraffe tower and the animals they live with, 365 days a year.
Zoolife was started at the Toronto Zoo, providing a live stream of the zoo’s giraffe habitat during the pandemic to help guests stay connected with the zoo during an uncertain and difficult time. Over the last 5 years they have expanded to partner with dozens of zoos and showcase more than 100 different species across the world, from koalas at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Australia to maned wolves at the Endangered Wolf Center here in the US.
How did the Zoolife and Safari West partnership come about? Our assistant animal manager Erika learned about Zoolife during a zoo conference, and reached out to see if they would be interested in partnering with us. She happened to reach out at the perfect time—while giraffes at the Toronto Zoo were Zoolife’s first stream, their fairly early bedtime and small herd was resulting in no visible giraffes on east coast evenings. Our large tower of 10 giraffes on the west coast was a perfect match!
Zoolife sent us a state-of-the-art camera, which we decided to mount on top of our giraffe barn. This camera allows stream viewers to take control of what they are watching, panning the camera around a 180° field of vision and zooming in with 25x optical zoom at high resolutions. With this camera, not only can you watch our giraffe tower—you can also see the entirety of our Savanna and Gazelle Pasture habitats, including more than 10 different species of antelope and birds.
Viewers can also record short clips of whatever they’re seeing and share it with the rest of the Zoolife community. Our giraffe camera went live on Valentine’s Day, and we have been blown away by the engagement in the Zoolife community! Hundreds of clips have been created of fun moments, capturing everything from our young giraffes playing together to giraffe training sessions with our keepers, our llamas curiously following local geese around, a veterinary procedure taking x-rays of a dama gazelle leg, and a new roan antelope baby born this week!
If you love the giraffe tower that lives at Safari West and want to see what they’re up to every day, join us on Zoolife! If you make a Zoolife account, you can access three streams for free, including the Safari West “Reticulated Giraffes & Friends” stream.
