Shigeru Ono, a 49-year-old man fresh out of prison, was growing increasingly desperate. In the four days since his release, Ono, not his real name, had spent half of the ¥250,000 he earned from prison labor during his 10-year incarceration. He used the money on ...

Visitors to the Toyama Municipal Family Park Zoo won't find popular exotic animals such as elephants or lions. Instead they can reconnect with a natural environment they're already familiar with. The zoo is dedicated to animal and insect species long present in Japan, including raccoons, ...

African elephants brought to zoos in Japan are often unable to raise their offspring because many lost their parents to poaching by ivory hunters. But they are smart enough to learn from their keepers, said Osamu Shiina, who cares for the animals at a prefectural-run ...

To help save the rhino from extinction, a young keeper at Kanazawa Zoo is striving to make the captive environment for the mammals as close to what their natural habitat in the wild would be. "I hope visitors to our zoo will sense the world ...

As an artist working in the medium of pyrography, Soji Hamada must execute every stroke of his heated pen with precision as he burns images of birds and animals into wood. Pyrography does not permit "another try once you make a mistake in drawing an ...

Zoos play an increasingly important role in the preservation of wild animals, says Daisuke Kiryu, a keeper of reptiles at Yokohama's Nogeyama Zoo, which is known for successful artificial breeding of turtles designated as endangered species. "We succeeded in breeding the radiated tortoise and Indian ...

Ko Tanaka likes to answer questions from children about the nearly 20 red pandas he helps look after at Nagano Chausuyama Zoo. But he recalls being stumped once when asked if the raccoonlike mammals, also known as lesser pandas, yawn like cats. Luckily, just then a ...

Naoki Kamezaki, head of Suma Aqualife Park, Kobe's municipal aquarium, is known as an expert on sea turtles, a status he acquired by being an academic maverick. Raised in the coastal cities of Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, and Oita, Kamezaki, 57, was attracted to sea turtles ...

Miyazaki City Phoenix Zoo is charming visitors with a flamingo show in which the pink birds actually fly. The Flying Flamingo Show began last spring after the zoo suspended the original one to repair its aged facilities, according to Toshihisa Deguchi, head of the zoo. The ...

The Antarctic Ocean-dwelling ocellated icefish is an anomaly in the natural world, as the only vertebrate with transparent blood. Icefish have "no hemoglobin that carries oxygen into the blood," said Naoaki Kawahara, a fish keeper at Tokyo Sea Life Park, the only aquarium in the ...