You can tune in to watch animals play, relax and eat all from the comfort of your own home. 

Many zoos and wildlife parks worldwide have been temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the animals still need lots of care, attention and of course, food! You can tune in to watch animals play, relax and eat all from the comfort of your own home. 

Cincinnati Zoo

https://www.facebook.com/cincinnatizoo/live

The Cincinnati Zoo introduced a new Facebook Live 'Home Safari' show, airing every weekday at 3pm ET. Each episode features a different animal and an accompanying educational kids activity that can be done from home. Once each day's show is over, the video is posted to the zoo's website. Visitors can see famous hippo Fiona swimming around and Rico the porcupine eating a spoonful of peanut butter.

The San Diego Zoo 

The San Diego Zoo live streams a number of animals on its site, including koalas, giraffes and polar bears. The zoo is also hosting special live streams on its Facebook page, most recently featuring koala Omeo’s first tree climb. Every day, visitors can contemplate various animals at https://zoo.sandiegozoo.org/live-cams.

Explore.org Live Nature Cams 

Explore.org, the world's largest live nature cam network, provides a large array of live streams to soothe boredom. You can choose to see a penguin beach in California, a sea lion beach in British Columbia, an elephant park in South Africa and many more.  

Pandas at play

People who love giant pandas can enjoy watching them through the Wolong Grove live cam at the Shenshuping Gengda Panda Centre in China's Wolong Valley Nature Reserve. It provides views into 11 different panda yards. We can spend all day watching the furry black-and-white in their lush bamboo oasis at https://explore.org/livecams/panda-bears/china-panda-cam-1.

The National Aquarium

The National Aquarium in Baltimore offers three live streams every day: Blacktip Reef, Pacific Coral Reef, and Jellies Invasion.

Elephant park

Tembe Elephant Park in South Africa is hosting a live stream of their fabulous elephants.

Edinburgh Zoo

Edinburgh Zoo’s website and view an entire range of live cams; from their resident giant panda, to penguins, koalas and tigers.

Yangguang the panda at Edinburg Zoo.

You can have a zoo at home for yourself thanks to Google’s initiative. In these days of social distancing, it’s easy to see children posing with the augmented reality feature from Google. All you need is to google an animal, for example: “tiger”, click the “view in 3D” button, then click “view in your space” to see the tiger moving in your own surroundings. There are loads of different animals you can see through the feature such as lion, panda, cheetah and shark. Your device will need to be AR-enabled and use Android 7.0 or iOS 11.0 or later. VNS

Children enjoy playing with 3D tiger through smartphone. Photo courtesy of Van Nguyen

Minh Thu