On April 20th, Maria reached new potentials, for three-banded armadillos. She celebrated her 25th birthday, with a festive ‘cake’ topped with her favorite bugs, and can now claim her place as the oldest living among her species and mark the occasion, with friends and fans, at her home since 2000, the Woodland Park Zoo.
“We wanted to do something special to commemorate her milestone birthday,” said Alyssa Borek, a zookeeper at Woodland Park. “There’s a lot to celebrate. She’s a quarter of a century old, she’s the oldest living three-banded armadillo in North America and she’s surpassed the life expectancy by almost 10 years.”
Maria currently lives in the grotto of the day exhibit at Woodland Park, with the Burmese Mountain Tortoise, and has become acclaimed for her incredible architecture and construction skills. “She builds amazingly deep and long burrows in the exhibit that are able to withstand the weight of a person walking over them,” explained Borek.
The award-winning Woodland Park Zoo is famed for pioneering the naturalistic exhibits and standards of animal care, conservation and education programs that contributed to Maria’s health and happiness, and ability to exceed previous expectations about her longevity. Visit the Zoo Blog to read more about Maria’s birthday celebration, and see more photos from the party!