Name Chosen for Santa Ana Zoo Exhibit

“The Amazon’s Edge,” a phrase dreamed up by a Santa Ana fifth-grader, has been selected as the name for a new, $800,000 exhibit at the Santa Ana Zoo--the first of a 10-phase, $10-million expansion.

Natika J. Padilla, a pupil at John Adams Elementary School in Santa Ana, won the zoo’s “Name-Our-New-Exhibit Contest.” More than 400 entries for the contest were received to rename the exhibit, originally dubbed Monkey Island. Padilla’s class receives a free field trip to the 39-year-old zoo and her family gets a yearlong pass.

Groundbreaking for the new exhibit, which has a South American theme, is scheduled for the fall. The major attractions at the exhibit will be black howler monkeys, which will make their homes on dead tree branches on the 34,000-square-foot island. Also resident will be capybaras, 100-pound South American rodents that look like Gargantuan guinea pigs and will swim in the 20-foot-wide moat surrounding the island.