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WEEKLY NEWS 1: Frozen Zoo

There's a new zoo in Louisiana that has many of the usual attractions. Its goal--like most zoos--is to preserve wild animals and educate the public. However, the Louisiana Audubon Nature Center is more than a wildlife center. It has a planetarium, a forest, and a special frozen zoo that rarely has visitors.

Saving species from extinction is the primary goal of the Nature Center. While tourists visit the public areas of the Nature Center, the real work is behind the scenes where scientists hope to prevent extinction. They hope that the frozen zoo will one day safeguard all the animals and birds on our planet.

The frozen zoo doesn’t have any live animals in cages. Instead, it has live cells--tiny building blocks of the animals--in liquid nitrogen tanks. Liquid nitrogen is very cold and it preserves the cells perfectly, so the cells should be safe for hundreds of years. The frozen zoo has over 1,000 different species preserved in nitrogen. If one of these species becomes endangered or extinct, the scientists can defrost the cells and bring the species back.

The future is promising for animals who are currently struggling to survive. More zoos are becoming involved in the frozen zoo project, and environmentalists are working to save habitats. Hopefully we will be able to save the animals from extinction and give them a safe place to live.

--Written by Katheryn Troyer

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