More than 1,000 animals live at the 65-acre zoo, including elephants, giraffes, primates, flamingos, alligators, extinct-in-the-wild Panamanian golden frogs and rare red wolves. For now, ZooTampa is well within Milton’s projected path. It lies less than 10 miles from Tampa’s waterfront, where storm surge was expected to exceed 10 feet.

Evacuation is unrealistic for many zoo and aquarium animals, so staffers are rolling out all their safety precautions as Hurricane Milton bears down.