A mountain lion kitten – with killer blue eyes, but too young and weak to prey on anything larger than a butterfly – is getting a one-way ticket from Eastern Washington to a Pennsylvania zoo. A Kettle Falls homeowner found the 3-week-old male kitten dehydrated and malnourished on the front porch.

TACOMA – Sharks might have a bad rap with some people but officials at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium insist it’s the sharks that usually face danger when they cross paths with humans. Hoping to shift public perception, the Tacoma zoo is debuting an attraction where people can swim with the sharks in the South Pacific Aquarium’s 240,000-gallon saltwater tank. The idea is to offer a fun experience that also will spark interest and awareness.

Police arrested a 22-year-old man Monday after a monkey at the Boise zoo was found dead over the weekend, shortly after a zoo security guard frightened away two intruders.

BOISE – A break-in at Zoo Boise early Saturday left a Patas monkey dead from blunt force trauma to the head and neck, and police were analyzing blood found at the scene to determine if it came from the monkey or one of two human intruders. Two males wearing dark clothing were spotted by a security guard at 4:30 a.m. outside the fence near the primate exhibit, police said. Both fled, one of them heading into the interior of the zoo. Boise police used a thermal imager in searching the 11-acre zoo grounds but didn’t find the person.

The Spokane Valley parks department is helping to revive a little piece of the old Walk in the Wild Zoo. The zoo used to sit on the land that currently houses Mirabeau Park and the CenterPlace events center in Spokane Valley. Walk in the Wild closed its doors in 1995 after struggling financially for several years.

WASHINGTON — Two cheetah cubs have a new home at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and are being raised by human hands after a risky birth last month at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia.

Spring is off to an early start at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, where two penguin chicks already have hatched.