Zoboomafoo

About the series

Contains story spoilers.

Zoboomafoo is a children’s wildlife series built around a meeting place rather than a classroom. At Animal Junction, brothers Chris and Martin Kratt call for Zoboomafoo, a Coquerel’s sifaka lemur whose arrival turns a topic into a playful investigation. The puppet host is intercut with live footage of Jovian, the real sifaka chosen by the Kratts as Zoboo’s animal counterpart. Visiting animals give the Kratts reasons to ask questions about behavior and habitat, while a recurring Jackie segment connects that curiosity with practical ways to help animals. This is the original 1999–2001 series, distinct from the later animated Wild Kratts.

The show’s inquiries often begin with a practical problem. In “The Nose Knows,” the Kratts’ smell after a bat-cave adventure attracts Toothbrush, a baby elephant. Her trunk leads into a comparison with coatis, but curiosity gives way to responsibility when the group realizes Toothbrush needs to return to her herd. They follow clues with a harmonica, a bloodhound and elephant footprints, turning a lesson about smell into a reunion. The parallel Animal Helpers story has Jackie leave part of her lawn unmown after finding a garter snake, giving it shaded grass for cover. Both threads make noticing an animal’s needs the first step toward helping it.

“Eye Spy” asks how seeing changes with the viewer. Two black jaguar cubs arrive, and their dark spotted coats and night vision prompt Chris and Martin to wonder what other animals perceive. They build Eye Spy goggles that let them approximate the visual worlds of a jaguar, butterfly, hawk and frog. Instead of presenting vision as a single human standard, the device makes differences legible through a playful experiment. Jackie’s activity follows the same idea of adjusting a familiar place for another species: she and the helpers decorate a Christmas tree with apples and popcorn for birds. The episode links sensory adaptation with small acts of attention.

In “Who’s in the Hole?” a flying squirrel glides into Animal Junction looking for somewhere to live. Helping it means discovering that the Junction’s apparent empty spaces are already occupied. Foxes, snakes, rabbits, prairie dogs and porcupines use holes in soil, rock or trees as safe, warm homes, so the search becomes a tour of how shelter depends on habitat. Jackie’s story sharpens the stakes when she sees someone about to cut down a dead tree. She explains that its cavities house animals and persuades the person to leave it standing. The episode moves from a cute visitor to a concrete conservation choice: a tree that looks finished can still be a home.

“Puppies” shifts from observation to care work when eight puppies are found inside Animal Junction. Chris, Martin and Zoboo take on feeding and watching the litter, then learn why young animals need close supervision when one puppy goes missing. They help its mother find it, making reunion the outcome of their attention rather than a lucky accident. Jackie and the Animal Helpers encounter a different separated youngster on a bike ride: a calf that has wandered from its mother. They return it, echoing the Junction rescue in another setting. The two stories give the episode a through-line about young animals’ dependence and the practical responsibility involved in helping them.

“Dinosaurs” turns a model-building project into a playful encounter with the past. Chris and Martin set out to make a huge dinosaur model, but Zoboo does not know what a dinosaur is; after hearing their description, he mistakes a visiting monitor lizard for one. The group’s own collapse-prone construction nearly defeats them before the “Martinandchrisaurus” finally stands. Jackie’s owl pellet discovery leads her to examine bones and then meet Chris and Martin at the Royal Ontario Museum to see dinosaur fossils. In “Night Time,” the gang camps at Animal Junction to explore animals active after dark, including binturongs, raccoons, owls, ringtails and dormice. Zoboo vows to stay awake but falls asleep quickly, while the Kratts take a night hike and Jackie quietly watches raccoons near her home.

Winter gives the helpers a different problem in “Snow Day.” Chris and Martin hurry to Animal Junction during a heavy storm, where a cold Japanese macaque prompts them to consider how to warm their visitor. Jackie and the other children shovel paths for animals struggling through the deep snow. The changing conditions make a familiar habitat harder to navigate, so helping means changing access rather than simply looking at the creatures. Another visit tests Zoboo's enthusiasm in “Fierce Creatures.” Arctic wolf cubs make him want to join their pack. The Kratts teach him about howling and hunting, but learning where the wolves live changes his decision. The barren Arctic cannot offer the mangoes and familiar companions he enjoys in Madagascar, and he says goodbye instead. Jackie helps a trapped spider by laying a towel over the edge of a bathtub so it can climb out. These are different responses to different needs: a cleared route, a suitable home and a surface an animal can use for itself.