00:02Well, in anticipation of Koala Palooza January 15th through 18th, the public's able to name our
00:08Koala Joey by going to the zoo's website at www.sandegazoo.org. We're going to be naming
00:17our little Joey whose mom is Orana, and our Joey's eight months old. And she's a really,
00:25really interesting girl. Her mom has had many, many Joey's, and she's a great mom. She's
00:30actually one of our best moms. And this Joey has really started coming out of the pouch
00:35pretty early. She seemed very curious about us. Oftentimes, when they come out of the pouch,
00:41they're kind of scared of us. They'll go back in the pouch. But when we started seeing her
00:45come out, she just looked at us, and she's very curious. She also was very brown in color,
00:49more brown than we see. Typically, they do come out in their gray, just like the adults.
00:54But this one seemed to be very brown, which was interesting. And right now, she's trying
00:59to eat leaves. She hasn't eaten a lot of leaves yet, but she's really, really trying hard.
01:05We did have Koala Palooza last year, and it was so popular that we decided to bring it back
01:10this year. And there's many, many fun activities, like there's scavenger hunts, face painting,
01:16Australian food specials, Australian music. It's just a really good time.
01:22Behind me is a female koala that actually has a Joey with her. And the Joey is about eight
01:29months old right now. And so it rides on mom's back or on the stomach. And we've just recently
01:33started seeing it sit next to mom.
01:44Oh, I know, I know. It's so horrible.
01:48It is still really young, so it still is nervous when we have to weigh it and take it away
01:55from
01:55mom for a couple of seconds. But then we put the Joey right back with mom. So she gives one
01:59a little squeak, and then she's pretty quiet. So she seems to be a pretty quiet and calm koala,
02:05but we're still waiting to see what her real personality is going to be.
02:13So the mom's name is Orana. And you can see Orana and her Joey every day. They do live outside
02:20in the koala area at the San Diego Zoo. We're having a big event called Koala Palooza, which
02:26is going to help showcase our koalas and also what's going on with koalas in other areas,
02:32especially in Australia. And there's going to be a naming event. So you can put in your name,
02:37request for a name of what you think the koala Joey should be named.
02:53We're out front of our temporary koala exhibit, and we are going to be naming our newest female Joey.
03:00The koala keepers selected a few aboriginal names that they thought would be appropriate for our
03:05little girl here on exhibit. We submitted those and put them online for our visitors to vote on.
03:09After a couple of weeks of voting, over 4,000 people submitted their suggestions. 40% of the vote
03:15went to Kira, which is an aboriginal word that means leaf. Kira was one of the selected names by our
03:21keeper staff because she's quite an independent little girl and started eating eucalyptus at such
03:27an early age. So we thought that leaf might actually be an appropriate name for her. Visitors
03:33are going to see here at the temporary koala exhibit, they're going to see three adult koalas
03:37and one juvenile Kira. And this is a family group. We've got a grandmother, a mother, a sister,
03:43and an aunt. So it kind of is four generations here. So in the new Australian outback, all of the
03:49koalas
03:50will be housed outside. It will be giving a great experience and opportunity for our visitors to see
03:55the koalas close up and in a more naturalistic habitat.
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