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The Wild Life Movie: Meeting the “Stars” at the San Diego Zoo

The Wild Life, a new animated family movie about a Green Wing Macaw named Mak and his cohort of animal friends on a desert island, opens in theaters on September 9th. My family and I were guests of Lionsgate Films for a screening of The Wild Life and a sleepover trip at the San Diego Zoo, where we got to meet some of the animals portrayed in the film in real life.

The San Diego Zoo sleepover is a super fun program where you get to go behind the scenes and learn about some of the animals and the conservation work they do there in a much deeper way than if you are a daytime visitor.

The terrific Zoo keepers team helped us to meet a Green Wing Macaw, just like the character Mak in the film, and we learned about the San Diego Zoo’s daily tradition of the macaws flying out to greet Zoo guests every morning.

Green Wing Macaw at San Diego Zoo
Echidna at San Diego Zoo

We also got to meet an Echidna, and animal native to Australia, and whose name in the film is Epi. My 13-year-old son had just written a paper about the echidna, so he already knew that it was the only other mammal, besides the platypus, that lays eggs. It’s a fascinating animal, and just a bit adorable, too.

We also met a Pangolin, which has an incredibly strong prehensile tail, and in The Wild Life, his character name was called Pango. It looks a bit like an aardvark, but the scales are so different.

And we didn’t get to meet a Kingfisher, like the character Kiki in the film, but we did get to meet her bird cousin, the Kukaburra, in a wonderful moment at night at the Zoo.

Here are some of the other animals we met at the Zoo, too:

San Diego Zoo animal collage
Wolves, Cheetah, owl, meerkats, turtle and my family, all at the San Diego Zoo sleepover

MomsLA co-Founder Sarah Auerswald and her family were guests of Lionsgate Films for a screening of The Wild Life and a sleepover trip at the San Diego Zoo.

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